Transcript:
"Hello, this is Cathey Pangborn! The knowledge tip from CS3 today is my favorite things in Sage HRMS compared to Abra Suite. I’ve been asked by several clients to identify some of the items that I favor in Sage HRMS compared to Abra Suite.
The first item to talk about is database health. In Abra Suite, we are required to run maintenance processes in order to keep the database healthy. Some of these processes are optimized databases and reform indexes. Depending on your file size, sometimes these processes can take several minutes—delaying you in the processing of your payroll. In Sage HRMS, these two processes go away due to the SQL background.
The second item I’d like to talk about is the Future Dated Adjustments. In Abra Suite, we do not have the capability of entering a Future Dated Adjustment for a deduction code and earning code—due to when you finalize the payroll, and print and post checks; all time cards are then deleted from the system. In Sage HRMS, you can enter time-cards in the future with futuristic pay period end dates. And they will not be removed in the processing of each payroll until that pay period end date falls within the parameters of that current payroll you’re processing. An example of this would be if you had an employee that was out on leave, and they missed two medical deductions for their medical coverage. You could go ahead and enter futuristic time-cards for those two deductions to double that up and collect those. And as that time-card falls within the pay period end date parameter, it will double up that deduction and process the payroll. This is a wonderful feature in this sense; you can go ahead and enter all of the adjustments when you receive the notice, possibly from your HR department, not having to remember (or have a post a note on your monitor) to remind you to collect those missing deductions.
Another favorite of mine is the possibility of ignoring zero and negative checks when processing payroll in Sage HRMS. I’ve had several clients share with me, active flat dollar earnings that have been changed to zero will create a zero check-in their payroll process. Or possibly leaving in a ‘Group Term Life Flat Dollar Earning’ (which is taxable only not in net) will cause issues in their current Abra Suite payrolls. This issue goes away in Sage HRMS due to the option that you see under process. You can select to ignore negative and zero checks, therefore a check number will not be created in association to that zero checks. This is a huge savings and really eliminates a lot of frustration.
Fixing the balancing issues is much more simplistic and Sage HRMS than an Abra Suite. In Abra Suite, we would edit payroll history, which would give us the capability to adjust the earnings or deduction or tax history. Depending when you do these adjustments, you may be required to either add additional totals into your month to date quarter to date or year to date totals. Where in Sage HRMS, you can simply just add a line item, increasing the amount for that earning, or deduction, or tax code—eliminating a lot of room of error when processing in the Sage HRMS.
The last item I’d like to share with you today is the ‘Quarter Closed Process.’ The ‘Quarter Closed Process’ that we know an Abra Suite today consists of running reports, running a trial quarter close, balancing reports, running a final quarter close, and then processing forms. Throughout that process, we have several backups among the process as well. In Sage HRMS, this process is significantly more simplistic. We do not have a trial or final quarter close process. We simply run our reports for the dates that fall within our quarter, we validate our totals, and then we process our forms. This is a huge savings of time, and it is much more simplistic than Abra Suite.
Those are my favorite items when comparing Sage HRMS to Abra Suite. And the reason I would say they’re my favorite is by far—they are either eliminating frustration, saving time, or reducing the amount of liability when balancing and processing payroll. Thank you, and have a great day."
