Payroll Reporting: Building reports
Objectives:
Learn how to create payroll-related reports within AllPay, like a payroll register, payroll summary report, labor distribution, and invoices. The powerful reporting tools in AllPay will also let you customize our existing report templates and build your own reports so that you can always meet your business needs.
What's in this article?
Instructions for how to create reports in AllPay, including:
- How to use Reports, which are standard pre-built reports in AllPay that you can customize. They run as a PDF, but you can also run to generate other file types, like a CSV, Excel file, or text file.
- How to use Exports, which also includes standard pre-built reports in AllPay that you can customize. They are mapped and formatted to export as an Excel files.
- How to use the Report Writer, which is totally customizable and allows you to create any report from scratch and formatted to your particular needs.
- Frequently used reports, which lists the reports our clients use most frequently.
- An on-demand reporting webinar, which covers many core principles of payroll reporting in AllPay.
💡 Good to know: Reporting is a key part of keeping tabs on your business and making sure things are going well. You can learn about sharing and protecting reports, report groups, and scheduled reports in separate articles.
While we're going to be looking at reporting through a payroll lens in this article, many of the principles about reporting are relevant no matter what you need to report on. If there's a data field in AllPay, then you can report on it!
AllianceHCM tips: Keep an eye out for tips from our experts!
Reports
We can start by taking a look at how to pull standard reports. The first thing you’ll need to do is log into AllPay and hover over the Reports menu, where we’ll click on Reports.
From within the Reports section, it’s easy to see all the existing reports and add new ones. Let’s create a new one by clicking on Add New Report in the top right corner.
The Add Report pop-up will show all of the existing report templates within AllPay.
You can scroll through this list, or you can start typing in the Search Report field to show all reports related to a keyword.
When you select a report from the list on the left, a Report Title will automatically be created.
You can change the title to anything you’d like, though.
Once you’ve created a report, it will get added to the list under the Reports section and visible to others who will have the permissions to see it.
Let’s take a look at a report that already exists. We’re going to click on this Payroll Register report, and then click on the Properties icon, which is the first icon of three icons that each report has on its row.
AllianceHCM tip: The other two icons are Add to Group and Run.
Clicking on the Properties icon for any report opens a view from the right with the Report Properties.
If you take a closer look at the Report Properties, you’ll see that you have lots of options. We explain the options under this image:
Output Format: AllPay reports are formatted to run as a PDF, but you can also run to generate other file types, like a CSV, Excel file, or text file.
Companies: Hold the Shift key to select a group of companies, or hold the Control key to select individual companies.
Dates: Select your date range.
Filters: This will be available if the report type supports filters. You can limit the information on the report based on customized criteria with this section, and once you choose a Filter from a drop-down menu, then the other fields will give you options based on the Filter. One example of using this would be to see only salaried employees or only employees with Auto Pays.
Grouping: This will be available if the report type supports grouping. You can group data in a report by various groupings available in a drop-down menu. One example of using this would be to group a report by location or department.
Sorting: This will be available if the report type supports sorting. You can select criteria for sorting from the drop-down menus, and the sorting will occur within any Grouping parameters you specified.
Additional: Each report template has its own unique set of Additional formulas. This lets you control the level of detail on the report and change the fields displayed.
Visibility: This lets you choose where in AllPay you’d like the report to display, as well as control who can see and edit the report.
Save: This saves any changes made to the Report Properties.
Save & Run: This will save any changes made to the Report Properties and will run the report.
Run: This runs the report but does not save any changes made to the Report Properties.
Back in the Reports section, you’ll notice that you can add Notes to a report. This can be helpful to explain how a report is used or when it’s used. You can also have as many duplicate reports as you want and you can name them whatever you want–we don’t want you to have to recreate the wheel every time you do reporting!
AllianceHCM tip: There's never an extra charge whenever you create or run reports, so all of this has unlimited potential for you and your company.
Ready to run a report? You can simply click on the Run icon on the report's row. When you or a colleague gets a report and opens the PDF or Excel file, it’s easy to jump straight to the section or number or stat you need. You can use the Control + F keys to look up a keyword or a number. This can let you hone in on a specific company code, or an employee’s name, or something else.
Exports
Let’s go over to the Exports tab. This section has much of the same information as the Reports tab, but everything here is mapped and formatted to export out of AllPay as an Excel file.
One particular report in this section that most of our clients find useful is the one for Employee Demographics. We’ll add that as a new export. Click on Add New Report from the action icons.
And again, you'll get a pop-up that will show all of the existing report templates within AllPay.
If we take a peek under the Report Properties for this Employee Demographics export ...
... we can see there are 34 different fields we can pull for each employee.
That means we can have a handy spreadsheet of almost any data that’s available on the employee records. You can filter this report, sort by birthdates, group by location, and format it in any way you need to get information about your employees.
Another good report under the Exports section is the Labor Detail report. It’s similar to a labor distribution, but it’s formatted for Excel and can also incorporate more fields.
You can run a report from the Exports tab at any time. When you or a colleague gets a report and opens the PDF or Excel file, it’s easy to jump straight to the section or number or stat you need. You can use the Control + F keys to look up a keyword or a number. This can let you hone in on a specific company code, or an employee’s name, or something else.
Report Writer
Now that we’ve taken a brief look at the report templates available under the Reports and Exports tabs, let’s take a look at even more customized options. We’ll go to the Report Writer tab.
The Report Writer tab is totally customizable. If you can’t find the information you need in one of the report templates available under the Reports or Exports tabs, you can create anything from scratch here.
Start by clicking on the Add New button.
Then fill out the Report ID field and click on Save.
Once you save, a new set of options will appear for your report. In order from left to right, they are: Build Report, Properties, Add to Group, and Run.
Click on Build Report (the first icon) to open all of your options for the report.
This may look overwhelming at first, but as with other parts of AllPay, you can click on Add New for each section to start putting together everything that you need.
For example, clicking on Add New under the Fields section will give us a tabbed and collapsible view of all of our data fields throughout AllPay that we can choose from. There are data fields for Employees, as well as for HR, ESS, and Company.
Up at the top of the Build Report screen is a Properties button, which will let you set things like font options, formatting, margins, and whether the report should have a summary.
Be sure to Save any changes that you make, and you can run the report at any time. When you or a colleague gets a report and opens the PDF or Excel file, it’s easy to jump straight to the section or number or stat you need. You can use the Control + F keys to look up a keyword or a number. This can let you hone in on a specific company code, or an employee’s name, or something else.
AllianceHCM tip: If you're having issues creating a custom report, get in touch with your customer service representative. They can answer questions and help with writing custom reports, too.
Frequently used reports
We sometimes get questions about which reports our clients use most frequently. The Payroll Summary Report, the Payroll Register, the Invoice Report, and the Labor Distribution Report are frequently used after each payroll, so those are some of our most commonly used reports.
We also have reports around agency checks, auto pays, 401(k)s, benefits, OSHA, and even a W-2 Edit Report that will preview W-2 employees and see if they’re missing information before the end of the year.
AllianceHCM tip: Remember that if there's a data field in AllPay, then you can report on it! Get in touch with us if you ever have questions about which reports will meet your company's needs.