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Text File | 1987-07-30 | 29.4 KB | 673 lines

PC-PR MANUAL Version 1.4 PROGRAM DESCRIPTION PC-PR is a payroll writing program for small and medium size businesses. The program runs on a IBM PC or compatible computer with one disk drive and 128k memory. PC-PR is a user supported program. Your are encouraged to give copies to anyone who might use it. Since the federal tax tables are included in the program, you will need an updated version of the program each year. The cost for the updated program is $35. The program as distributed, includes the 1987 federal tax tables. To receive a copy of the program with 1988 tax tables send $35 to: Jerry Medlin 310 S. Jefferson St. Napa, Ca. 94559 The updated program and a program to print W-2's will be available in December 1987. Your payment will entitle you to a telephone number for limited telephone assistance should you require it. To run the payroll program, simply type "PC-PR". If you want to specify a drive and path for your data just add the drive and path description after the program name. i.e. type "PC-PR C:PAYROLL\" to use a directory named PAYROLL on the C drive for data files. If you just want the root directory on B: drive you would type PC-PR B: You will be asked to enter a date. This date will be used to date all of the payroll checks written. A menu is then displayed for operator selection: Enter or Change Employee Data Enter or Change Payroll Checks Print Employee Listing Print Payroll Check Listing Print Payroll Ledger Zero Employee Balances Enter or Change Employer Data Export Employee Data End Processing Use the arrow keys to highlight your selection then press return. PC-PR is fast because it works with data in random access memory, but the capacity is limited by available memory. Available memory is shared by the data. With more employees on file, fewer payroll checks can be entered. PC-PR allows a maximum of 500 employees and 1000 payroll checks per accounting period with 512k of memory. With 128k the capacity is reduced to about 200 employees and 200 checks. Each time the menu is displayed, the number of payroll checks that can be added with the available memory is printed at the bottom of the screen. The number of employees that can be added is obtained by dividing this number by 2, as each employee takes up twice as much memory as a payroll check entry. Since a power interruption will result in loosing all the data currently entered into the program, you should occasionally save your data back to the disk. This is done by selecting End Processing from the menu. The current data will be saved to the disk then you will be asked "Do you want to end ?". Just answer with an "N" and you may resume processing. THE PROCESSING CYCLE Payroll checks may be written on any cycle from daily to annually. After each batch of payroll checks, you should print the Payroll Check Listing report and the Payroll Ledger report. This will provide a printed "audit trail". Although the program will work just fine without printing these reports, you will not have any printed record of where you got all those numbers on the employee's W-2. Each time the program is run, all employee data is loaded into memory. You will then be asked: "Do you want to start a new payroll period? (Y/N)". Usually, you will answer Y to this question and a new payroll period will be started. If you ended the previous payroll without printing any reports you should answer with a "N", and all payroll checks written since the last "Y" answer will be loaded into memory. You can then continue writing checks to be added to the previous batch of checks. Payroll Checks are usually printed as the payroll data is entered, but you have the option of entering the data and then printing the checks one at a time. When all of the payroll checks for the current payroll have been entered, you may begin printing reports. Reports may be printed in any order and as often as desired. If you discover an error in any of the reports you may correct the problem and reprint the report. At any time you can stop processing by choosing the End Processing selection from the menu. Data will automatically be saved. ENTER OR CHANGE EMPLOYER DATA Before you can do anything with PC-PR you need to enter a screen of employer information. This employer information need only be entered once and then changed whenever any of the relevant data changes. This is done by selecting ENTER OR CHANGE EMPLOYER DATA from the main menu. When the program is first run, most of the data is blank. By using the up and down arrows, you can select each field to be changed then by pressing "C" you may change the information in that field. Space is provided for the employer name (2 lines), employer address (2 lines) and employer federal and state identification numbers. The first line of the employer name will be printed on all reports. The remaining name and address information is used only for printing W-2's at the end of the year. The number of paydays per year is necessary to calculate federal income tax to be withheld and must be a number between 1 and 52. Weekly payroll would be 52 paydays per year, semimonthly payroll would be 24 paydays per year, biweekly payroll would be 26 paydays per year and monthly payroll would be 12 paydays per year. Next you must fill in the information for payroll deductions. There are 6 deductions possible with PC-PR. The first deduction will always be federal income tax withholding (FWH). The remaining five deductions must be named by the user. You may also set a limit for each deduction and the percentage to be withheld. For instance social security tax (FICA) for 1987 is limited to 7.15% of the first $43800 of income. Anyone who earns more than $43800 will not have social security tax deducted after they reach $43800. A zero value for the limit and percentage means that this deduction must be input by the user. Such is the case with some state income taxes and for any miscellaneous deductions. A negative value for deduction percent will tell the program to calculate the tax as a percentage of federal withholding. So, if your state income tax is 10 percent of federal income tax, you should enter 10.00- for the deduction percent for that deduction. A value of 99.99 for the deduction percent will tell the program to use the California state income tax withholding tables. Next, you may input information for calculating up to 6 payroll tax amounts. This information is used to print at the bottom of the payroll ledger report a summary of payroll taxes due for the quarter. It is especially useful for calculating employer paid payroll taxes like federal unemployment insurance (FUI), which is based on payroll paid up to a certain amount for each employee. Since PC-PR requires a printer capable of printing at least 96 characters across a page, you must let the program know what printer codes are required to set your printer to 10 and 12 characters per inch (cpi). If your printer is already set up to print at least 96 characters or you use switches to set the printer width then you can leave this part blank. Otherwise, enter in Hexadecimal the code or codes required to change your printer to 10 cpi and 12 cpi. Your printer manual should contain this information. If your printer does not allow 12 characters per inch, enter the code for compressed printing. For instance, if you have an older model Epson printer you would enter the following: 10 cpi 12 12 cpi 0F The following is an example of a completed employer data screen for the state of California for the 1987 tax year and using a Prowriter or C-Itoh 8510 printer. Your data will vary depending on state law and the type of printer you are using. Employer Data >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Name 1 JOHN HENRY'S DRILLING Printer Control Codes Name 2 & EXCAVATING INC. Address 1 333 OAT HILL ROAD Address 2 CALISTOGA, CA. 94598 10 Cpi 1B4E Federal ID 94-2678232 12 Cpi 1B45 State ID 250-7432-4 Paydays per year 26 Deduction Limit Percent P/R Tax Limit Percent FWH None Table FICA 43800 7.15 FICA 43800 7.15 SDI 21900 1.20 SUI 7000 2.30 SWH 0 99.99 ETT 7000 0.10 Insur 0 0.00 FUI 7000 0.80 Other 0 0.00 SDI 21900 1.20 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Use the up and down arrows to move the pointer then <C> to change or <Esc> to exit. ENTER OR CHANGE EMPLOYEE DATA Employee information is entered and changed using this selection from the menu. The following information is entered for each employee: Employee name - Up to 25 characters are available. Street Address - Up to 25 characters for the street address. City, State & Zip - Up to 25 characters for the city, state & zip code. Sort by - A ten character code that will be used to sort employees in alphabetical order. Employees are sorted each time you leave the ENTER OR CHANGE EMPLOYEE DATA section. In most cases you will want to enter the employee last name, followed by as much of the first name as will fit in the remaining characters. For instance, if the employees name is Jerry Medlin, the employee code would be MEDLINJERR. When a new employee name is entered, the program will make a pretty good guess and enter a sort code for you. If you want to change it just press the escape key and you can type the sort code. Social Security - Enter the employee social security number without spaces or dashes. Dashes will be added later when the social security number is printed on reports. Status - Marital status can be either M for married or S for single. Allow - The number of allowance claimed by the employee. Enter a number from 0 to 9 or the letter E if the employee is exempt from federal tax. Entering an S for allowance will tell the program to input federal tax from the keyboard instead of calculating it. Rate - The employees hourly wage rate. If you wish, you can enter the pay rate for a whole pay period then enter the hours as 1 when entering payroll check data. Dept - Enter a department number between 0 and 9. This number will be used to summarize payroll by department at the end of the Payroll Check Listing. When an employee no longer works for you, you can enter an "X" for department and the employee will be omitted from payroll and employee listings but retained for W2 purposes. Pressing the Escape key during entry takes you back to the previous field. Pressing the Escape key at the first entry takes you to the command mode. The command mode allows you to scroll up and down through the employee names, delete employees and change employee information. Pressing the Escape key from command mode takes you back to the menu. If you don't know the employee's address or social security number, you can leave that information blank for now and fill it in later using the <C> Change option. The <E> Enter New Balances command allows you to enter new quarter and year to date balances for an employee. Be careful! The principal purpose of this selection is to allow you to enter opening balances when you first begin using PC-PR. I will also allow you to enter incorrect balances! At times you may want to find an employee without scrolling through the entire employee list. The <G> Go to Employee selection from the command mode allows you to do this. Just enter the employee's name or even the beginning of the name and the program will take you immediately to that employee. The acceptable commands at any point are printed at the bottom of the screen. ENTER OR CHANGE PAYROLL CHECKS Payroll checks are printed on a common check form with the check stub on the bottom of the check. The checks should be ordered pre printed with your company name and account number. The following is a partial list of suppliers, their toll free order number and their catalog number for the pre printed check forms you will need: NEW ENGLAND BUSINESS SVS (NEBS) 800-225-9550 Form 9022 CHECKS TO GO 800-854-2750 Form 188-01 800-552-8817 In Calif. FORMS SERVICE INC. 800-553-5125 Form 3020 312-671-2821 In Illinois MOORE BUSINESS FORMS 800-323-6230 Form M17566 With the PRCONFIG program provided to registered users you can elect to print on a top stub check such as the NEBS form number 9020. There is no way for you to change the layout of checks. The ENTER OR CHANGE PAYROLL CHECKS selection allows you to enter or change payroll checks. Payroll checks are normally printed as the payroll information is entered. This normally causes no delay with most printers and results in a shorter overall time for doing a payroll. If you prefer, you can skip printing the checks as they are entered and print them one at a time using the <P> Print command. Before any payroll checks can be entered you must have your employer information entered into the program as explained in the previous section. The following information must be entered to calculate a payroll check: Date - The date entered at the beginning of the processing period is automatically entered for each payroll check. The only way to change the date is to go back to the date entry at the beginning of the program and enter a new date. Employee Name - No, you don't have to type in the employees name. Just use the up and down arrows on the number pad to search for the employee you want to pay. When you find the right employee just press the return or enter key. There is no need to memorize employee numbers. Payroll checks are entered by name only. Check Number - Up to 4 characters for the check number. Alphabetic characters are allowed. Pressing the return or plus <+> key enters a number equal to the previous check number plus one. Total Hours - The total hours worked by this employee for the pay period. This will be multiplied by the rate entered for the employee to determine regular pay. The total hours should include any overtime hours to be entered below. O.T. Hours - Overtime hours worked for the pay period. This number will be multiplied by one half the rate entered for the employee to determine the overtime excess pay. Other Income - Enter the dollar amount of any other income to be paid during this pay period. You could use this entry for entering total pay for salaried employees. Non Taxable - If you want to add a non taxable payment to the check such as an auto allowance or reimbursement for supplies paid for by the employee, you can enter it here. Be sure the amount you are entering is, in fact, non taxable. The amount will simply be added to the net check with no deductions taken. The program will then instantly calculate the payroll deductions that are supposed to be calculated and prompt you to enter the deductions which are not calculated. You will then be presented with four choices: <Return> or <+> Print this check <C> Change this check <X> Skip Printing <Esc> Cancel this check Normally you will press the return or plus key and the check will be printed. If you made an error in one of the steps above, or if you want to change one of the deduction amounts you should select <C> and you will be given an opportunity to change any of the check information and then returned to the above four choices. Should you not want to print the check at this time you can press the X key. The <X> Skip Printing choice is usually used when you want to enter a manually written check into the payroll. Pressing the Escape key will cancel the check just entered. Pressing the Escape key during entry takes you back to the previous field. Pressing the Escape key at first entry position (Name) takes you to the command mode. The command mode allows you to scroll up and down through the entries, delete entries, change entries, and print any checks you left unprinted. From the command mode you may press the <T> Total key to print the total all of the payroll checks written so far. Pressing the Escape key from command mode takes you back to the menu. All the available commands are printed at the bottom of the screen and may be chosen by a single keystroke. PRINTING REPORTS When you first enter the PC-PR program you will be asked to enter a report date. This date will be used on all reports. If you want to change the report date you must end processing and start over, otherwise the same report date is used on all reports and checks printed during a payroll session. PRINT EMPLOYEE LISTING This is a listing of all current information for each employee. You may use this sheet as a payroll input sheet for the next pay period and to check addresses and social security numbers for accuracy. PRINT PAYROLL CHECK LISTING This report list all of the payroll checks written for the payroll period. At the end of the payroll check listing the total of all checks is printed followed by a breakdown of payroll by department. This report should be printed and retained after each payroll for a permanent record. PRINT PAYROLL LEDGER The payroll ledger is an important "audit trail" for the PC-PR program. It lists each employee with his or her payroll balance at the beginning of the payroll period. Then each payroll check for the employee is then printed followed by the quarter to date and year to date balances for the employee at then end of the payroll period. Important! If you don't print the Payroll Ledger Report before starting a new payroll period, you will not have a permanent record of how the payroll balances arrived at their total for the year or quarter. This means that you won't be able to show the employee or the IRS where all those numbers on the W2 form came from. The Payroll Ledger should be printed after each payroll. At the end of the Payroll Ledger report the quarterly payroll tax liabilities are calculated and printed. These numbers have no effect on payroll, but are there to help you fill out the various state and federal payroll tax forms. The calculations are based on information you entered in the ENTER OR CHANGE EMPLOYER INFORMATION section of the program. EMPLOYEE HISTORY REPORT The program retains payroll checks from the last 14 payroll periods on your data disk. The employee history report allows you to review those checks for any or all employees. This report is sometimes helpful in filling out state or local reports that request the number of payroll periods worked. ZERO EMPLOYEE BALANCES At the end of each quarter, before you print the first payroll check for the new quarter, you should use this selection to set all employee quarter to date balances to zero. At the end of the year you should set all employee year to date balances to zero. When you select this choice from the menu you will be asked to enter a "Q" to zero quarter to date balances or a "Y" to zero year to date balances. Hitting any other key will return you to the menu with no changes made. It is up to the user to remember to set quarter to date balances to zero at then end of each quarter and to set year to date balances to zero at then end of the year. EXPORT EMPLOYEE DATA This selections allows you to print at least some of the employee data to a file called PR.PRN. This file can then be read into many spreadsheet and database programs, allowing you to use the employee data for other purposes. The file PR.PRN is created as soon as you select this option from the menu. You can view the file after you exit PC- PR by typing TYPE PR.PRN. You can also load the resulting data into LOTUS 123 using the import/numbers option. The Export Employee Data option is provided only as a convenience for those advanced users who need the data for other purposes. SAVE DATA AND END When processing is completed you must exit the program using this selection. If you just want to save the current data to the disk without ending, you may answer "N" to the question "Do you want to end processing?" and you will be returned to the menu. PROGRAM LIMITATIONS I have tried to write a simple payroll writing program that complies with the multitude of laws regarding payroll. As a result, the program works for most payroll situations, but not all. The program is not recommended for many payroll applications that require FICA wages to be different from taxable wages. This includes companies that deduct for pension and deferred compensation plans, supplemental unemployment compensation plans and students working for private schools. The program will handle tips declared by employees, but the tax summaries at the end of the Payroll Journal will always include the tips, which may not be correct in some situations. If you have different payroll periods for different employees the program won't work for you. In addition, the following situations will require amounts to be manually entered or changed before the check is printed: State Income Tax Withholding - Many state legislatures have created withholding schemes that are even more complicated than the federal system. With the exception of those states that use a fixed percentage or a percentage of federal taxes, and the state of California, I am unable to support state withholding. Most users have found that it doesn't slow them down too much to manually enter state withholding. If you wish to purchase the program source code (see last page) a reasonably good programmer should be able to program your state's tax calculation. Family employees - If you are a sole proprietorship and you pay family members you must manually change the FICA deduction to zero. Remember that the tax due calculations at the end of the Payroll Journal will include the family employee, so that amount must be subtracted before calculation the tax due. Earned Income Credit - I have never known an employee to claim this credit. If you have one, you must manually calculate the amount and enter it in the federal withholding field and keep a separate manual record of the amount. Additional withholding amount - If an employee wants an additional amount added to his or her federal withholding, you must enter it manually. USING THE CONFIGURATION PROGRAM The configuration program (PRCONFIG.COM) is provided to all registered users. It allows you to change certain features of PC-PR. The PRCONFIG.COM program and the main program (PC- PR.COM) should both be on the same disk drive when you configure your copy of PC-PR. Just run the program by typing PRCONFIG at the Dos prompt. Use the up and down arrows to move the pointer and then press <C> to change an item. You will be allowed to change the following information: Display Colors - If you have a color adapter and monitor, you can change the colors for screen borders, program prompts, data, and background. Allowable colors are from 0 to 15 except for background color which can only be from 0 to 7. The display will be instantly updated as you enter the new colors. Laser Printer? - You will also be able to change the way PC-PR starts a new page. Usually, PC-PR starts a new page by counting lines until the page total equals 66 lines (or 42 lines for checks). If you enter a "Y" for the laser printer question, PC-PR will start a new page by issuing a form feed command. This would work just fine on most other printers too, but requires that you set the top of form before you start printing. Disk Drive and Path - Enter a drive and path designation for PC-AP data. If you want the program to read data from the B drive just enter B:. Non Taxable Name - Normally this is just called "Non Taxable", but if you want to get more specific by calling it "Auto Allowance" or "Expense Reimb" you can do so. Payroll Periods to Save - The PC-PR program saves previous checks on your data disk for later review with the Employee History Report option. Normally the payroll checks for the previous 14 payroll periods are saved. You may modify this number to be anywhere from zero to 30 payroll periods. Remember, the more data you save, the more room you need on the data disk and the more time it will take to review an employee's history. Top or Bottom Stub Check - PC-PR normally prints on a check form with the stub on the bottom. (NEBS form number 9022 or equivalent). You may choose to use a check form with the stub on the top. (NEBS form 9020 or equivalent). Enter a "T" for top stub or a "B" for bottom stub. When you have finished making your changes, press the escape key to exit the program. You will then be asked if you want to save the changes. If you answer with a Y, both the configuration program and PC-AP will be changed until you run the configuration program again. HELPFUL HINTS The program makes liberal use of the ten key pad for both numbers and commands. The Num Lock can be on all the time. When inputting information, the plus <+> key has the same effect as the return or enter key. Numerical information is entered "calculator style". The decimal point is placed automatically. The minus <-> key enters a negative number. This makes using the numeric key pad even easier. The escape key is always used to go back to the previous operation. From anywhere in the program if you continue to press the escape key you will eventually return to the opening date question. The first 13 times you start a new payroll period more disk space is required for historical files. If you have a large business and you are using floppy disks for data storage, you could run out of disk space. Check available disk space with Dos's DIR command occasionally. If you void a payroll check before you start a new payroll period, you may simply delete the check from the payroll checks by pressing the delete key when the check is displayed on the screen. If you void the check after a new payroll period has started, you must enter the check as a negative payroll check so that the amounts will be reversed from the employee's payroll totals. Negative numbers are entered by first entering the amount then pressing the minus <-> sign. The California withholding tables are already built into the program. California withholding taxes will be calculated if the deduction percentage for state withholding is entered 99.99. Go to the employer data selection and change the deduction percentage for state withholding to 99.99. PC-PR is written in Turbo Pascal and the source code is available for $125. SPECIAL WARNING: Garbage In - Garbage Out. Although I have made every effort to eliminate the most common operator errors, it is still possible to enter complete nonsense into this program and get incorrect payroll from the program. Just because it is a computer doesn't make it automatically correct. Look at the checks and printouts and make sure the numbers are reasonable. If you enter an incorrect check, be sure and void it. It is your responsibility to see that your employees and the government get correct information. ADDING A LITTLE COLOR If you have a color monitor and wish to have colors other than the normal black and white you may specify the colors when you run the program. Just include the decimal values for the colors after the path description. The numbers specify the colors for border, data, prompts and background in that order. For example, if you run the program by typing: PC-PR C:PR\ 6 14 10 1 you will be telling the program to look for data on drive C in the sub directory PR and use brown borders, yellow data, light green prompts on a dark blue background. Beware - the program does not check to see if the colors are valid or tasteful. Once you decide what you want, put the command in a batch file to avoid typing errors. If you want colors, but don't want to specify a path, you must still specify the drive designation. So to get the same colors while using drive B: you would start the program by typing: B: 6 14 10 1.