CollSoft Payroll
Earnings, Hours & Employment Costs Survey
User Guide
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Earnings, Hours & Employment Costs Survey
User Guide
Introduction What is the Earnings, Hours and Employment Costs Survey (EHECS)? The Central Statistics Office is conducting a new quarterly earnings survey which will eventually replace all other short-term earnings surveys currently being carried out by the CSO. The new survey will, in time, be expanded to cover all sectors of the economy. This survey will produce an index of labour costs per hour worked. The survey will require the collection of wages & salaries, employer’s social contributions, other non-wage costs, and hours worked. If your company does not currently record this information, you may need to make some adjustments to your payroll system in order to calculate these figures on a quarterly basis.
All EU member states are obliged to compile Labour Cost indices. They will provide vital information for future social and economic planning, such as wage agreements, etc.
What’s involved? Each quarter, you will receive a questionnaire relating to the number of people employed in your business during that quarter. Each employee will need to be categorised into one of the following three occupational groups: 1. Managers, Administrators, Professionals & Associate Professional (Legislators and senior officials, corporate managers, managers of small enterprises, professionals and associate professionals) 2. Clerical, Sales & Service Workers (Clerks, office workers, service & sales workers). 3. Production, Transport Workers, Craft & Tradespersons and Other Manual Workers (Plant & machine operators & assemblers, skilled craft & trade workers and other manual occupations) You will need to provide the total labour costs, the total hours worked and the total hours not worked (e.g. annual leave) for each category of employee. Instructions will be provided with the survey form. If you require any additional information or help see the contact details below. Once the survey is fully operational, enterprises with small numbers employed will only be required to send data for a set number of quarters before being replaced by other enterprises. This will help to spread the burden of response while still providing good data on all sectors of the economy.
Is it compulsory? Yes. The legislation is the Statistics (Labour Costs Surveys) Order 2005, and Council Regulation (EC) No. 530/1999.
Is my return confidential? Yes. Under the 1993 Statistics Act, the CSO is legally obliged to treat all information received as confidential. Under no circumstances will any return be made available to any Government Department, Agency or outside organisation. Information provided will be used for aggregate statistical purposes only.
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Want more information? For further information on the Earnings, Hours & Employment Costs Survey please contact: Earnings, Hours & Employment Costs Section Central Statistics Office Skehard Road Cork Phone: LoCall 1890 313 414 (ROI) 0870 8760256 (UK/NI) Fax: 021 453 5553 Email:
[email protected] CSO Website: www.cso.ie
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Getting Started There are some preliminary settings that you must configure before you can generate an EHECS return in CollSoft. These settings are required to categorise pay elements and employees according to the categories required by the CSO.
Company Pay Elements Each pay element in your payroll needs to be assigned an equivalent CSO type so that it can be categorised correctly on the EHECS report. Pay elements can be categorised as follows; Category Regular Pay
Description Regular wages and salaries are wages and salaries, inclusive of any allowances but exclusive of overtime, that are received at each pay period during the quarter. It should include all payroll codes, except overtime, that affect gross earnings and are paid at each pay period, even though the amount paid may vary. N.B. See footnote below about the correct treatment of sick and maternity pay.
Overtime Pay
The gross value of overtime payments made to workers. It is the full amount paid for working overtime that should be entered here and not just the overtime premium.
Holiday / Bank Holiday Pay
This is actually counted as regular pay, but the number of hours taken by each employee for holidays and bank holidays is counted as “Paid Hours Not Worked” and reported separately.
Irregular Bonus
The total of gross irregular bonuses and allowances paid to all workers. Irregular bonuses and allowances are payments, other than overtime, that affect gross earnings and are not paid at each pay period during the quarter, e.g. end of quarter productivity bonuses, golden handshakes, backdated pay awards relating to periods prior to the current quarter.
Redundancy Pay
Refers to both statutory and non-statutory redundancy payments.
Maternity Pay
This is actually counted as regular pay, but the number of hours taken by each employee for maternity leave is counted as “Paid Hours Not Worked” and reported separately.
Sick Pay
This is actually counted as regular pay, but the number of hours taken by each employee as sick leave is counted as “Paid Hours Not Worked” and reported separately.
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Employee Benefit – Motor
The total cost to the employer (or notional income calculation) of the private use of company vehicles (i.e. cars, commercial vehicles etc) for an employee.
Employee Benefit – Stock Options
The total cost to the employer of stock options and share purchase schemes provided to an employee. N.B. It is the actual cost to the employer that is required here (i.e. exclude any amounts which are refunded to the employer through deductions from employees’ wages etc).
Employee Benefit – Health Insurance
The total cost to the employer (or notional income calculation) of voluntary sickness insurance (e.g. VHI, BUPA) provided to an employee.
Employee Benefit – Accommodation
The total cost to the employer (or notional income calculation) of staff housing provided to an employee.
Employee Benefit – Other
The total cost of other benefits provided buy an employer (e.g. meals, crèche, parking etc)
Training Cost
Cost related to the provision of training for an employee.
Other Cost
Cost to the employer of any other labour related expenditure. E.g. recruitment and relocation costs, uniforms/working clothes provided by the employer.
Continuance Insurance
Cost to the employer for the provision of Income Continuance insurance.
Other Employee related Payments Excluded Pay Item
Other employee related payments e.g. study grants etc. Items that should be excluded from the CSO report such as vouched expenses.
Notes: 1. Particular care must be taken in situations where the employer receives refunds from the Dept. of Social and Family Affairs (DSFA) for sick and maternity pay. If the amount that is included as regular wages and salaries, includes sums that are subsequently refunded to the employer by DSFA, then the amount that is received/receivable from DSFA must be included as a refund in the relevant section.
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Each pay element in payroll can be mapped to its CSO equivalent using the Pay element mappings Screen. To open the “Pay Element Mapping Screen” select the “Company” > “CSO Settings” > “EHECS” > “Pay Element Mappings” menu (below)
Selecting this option will open the following screen where you can make the relevant selections.
Press the “Save” button to save the settings once you are finished. Please Note: Payroll will automatically assign default CSO categories to each Pay Element, but they may be incorrect. Please ensure that the setting are correct before you run the EHECS report to ensure that your return is correct.
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Hours and Value Multipliers When using the hourly rate fields in CollSoft, it is assumed that the user is entering the number of hours worked by an employee. However this may not always be true. For example the User may be using the hourly rate fields to pay the employee for the number of days they have worked using a daily rate in place of an hourly rate. So when it comes to entering the number of hours the employee works in any one week, the user might have the number of days entered in place of the number of hours. If the user were then to run the EHECS report, CollSoft Payroll would count that enter as 5 hours which would be incorrect. Using the “Hours Multiplier” the user can specify that the total in this field should be multiplied by a user defined amount. Suppose for instance that the employee works a 7.5 hours day, then in Payroll the user would specify a multiplier of 7.5 for this pay element, and when Payroll generates the data it will transfer 5 x 7.5 or 37.5 hours onto the EHECS report. Another example of where you would use the Hours multiplier would be a case where the pay element was used to calculate pay that is not based on the amount of time the employee worked at all. Perhaps it’s the number of miles the employee has driven in the week, or the number of rooms they have cleaned in a hotel, or the number of new customers they have set up etc. In these cases the quantity has nothing to do with hours worked, and as such should not be transferred onto the EHECS report. For such items the user can specify a zero multiplier which will effectively zeroise the number of hours that this pay element contributes to the EHECS report, but it does not affect the monetary value of the payment on the return. There is also a multiplier for the monetary multiplier that works in a similar manner as the hours multiplier, but it effects the monetary value of the pay element in the EHECS return.
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Employee Settings In the EHECS return each employee is categorised according to their grade and employment status. Employees can be categorised as follows; Categorisation Grade
Description Manager, Administrator etc Or Clerical & Service worker Or Production, transport, craft & tradesperson etc.
Type of Employment
Full time, Part Time, Apprentice or Other
By default Payroll will designate each employee to be a “Full Time Production Worker”, but these settings can be changed via the “CSO Employee Settings” screen. To edit these settings please select the “Company” > “CSO Settings” > “EHECS” > “Employee Settings” menu (below)
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This will open the following screen where you can categorise each employee correctly.
Please Note The “Weekly Contracted Hours” field is used to specify the number of standard hours that a salaried employee works in any given week. If your employee is paid by the number of hours that they work then you should leave this field zero as payroll will add up all the hours worked by such employees in the quarter. In the case of a salaried employee where the hours worked each week has not been entered in Payroll, the figures used for the CSO EHECS return will be calculated as the “Weekly Contracted Hours” multiplied by the number of weeks worked.
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Running the EHECS report Please Note It is important that your company’s pay elements and employees have been correctly categorised before you attempt to run the EHECS report. Please refer to the previous sections if you have not done this already. You can start the EHECS report wizard by selecting “Reports” > “CSO” > Earnings, Hours & Employment Cost Survey” menu item (below).
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The first step of this wizard enables you to select the Quarter for which the report should be run;
Press “Next” to continue.
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Step 2 – Select the data to be used for report This step lets you specify if you are running an “Original” or an “Amended” return, and what data should be used to compile the return. You can only submit an amended return below to CSO if you have already submitted an original return.
In terms of the data that is used to generate the report the user has 2 options; 1. Runs the EHECS report based on the data currently contained in your Payroll files. If you had previously run the EHECS report for this quarter, and you have made some manual adjustments to the figures, then the selection of Option 1 will result in the loss of those amendments. 2. If you had previously run the EHECS report for this quarter then the data that was used to complete that return will be recalled, including any manual adjustments that were made. Any changes that have been made to the underlying payroll files will be ignored. In most cases the user should select “Option 1” Press “Next” To Continue.
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Step 3 – Basic Company information This screen enables you to enter your companys details such as name and address, enterprise number etc. The Enterprise Number is a unique number allocated to you by the CSO which you can find on the EHECS return that was sent to you by CSO. You must enter this information in order to proceed to the next step.
Please Note: The telephone number must be entered as an area code – telephone number e.g. 046-9050800 or 01-1238872 or 021-33224 etc. Press “Next” to continue.
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Step 4 – Other data Step 4 enables you to enter some other various information that is required for the EHECS report.
Press “Next” to continue
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Step 5 – Comments This step lets you enter any additional comments that you would like to make in relation to your return. These comments are only included in the XML version of the return.
Press “Next” to continue
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Step 6 – The final step. You are now ready to create your report, and in this step you have a number of options; 1. You can View/Edit the underlying data that will be used to compile the return. 2. View/Print a copy of the report. This report is in a similar format to the EHECS form that you received from CSO, and it includes a detailed breakdown of the data behind the report that you can keep for your own records. 3. Create an XML version of the report that you can upload directly to the CSO. 4. Connect to the CSO Secure deposit web page.
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