Expert: Shirley McAllister, CPP, PHR - 10/16/2011

Question
Currently our payroll is sun-sat a two week period, and we pay that 2 week period on the following Monday.  we would like to make our payroll 1 week behind so that when an employee leaves we have a weeks worth of work to take expenses out of if needed.  I have tried shortening each pay period by 1 day, but that messes with there overtime.
do you have any suggestions on how to make this transition without employees having to use vacation time or the company making a loan to the employees.

thank you

Answer
There is no painless way to do this. Vacation time, or loans (which I discourage), are two ways to help bridge the gap of the week.

If you do it when there is a 3 day holiday you only have 3 days to worry about instead of 5 days. If there is a holiday there is no overtime in that week anyway. So perhaps you could shorten the pay period 1 day each 3 day holiday, or simply let them know 6 months ahead of time that their check will be 3 days short one holiday week.

No really easy painless way to do this. We did allow vacation time to be used when we switched payperiods from semi-monthly to bi weekly.

Shirley