Introduction to Odoo Payroll
What's up Odooers and welcome back. In today's video, we're talking about my favorite application, the Payroll app. Everybody loves payroll because everybody loves getting paid. Our payroll officers love the payroll app too because it takes the guesswork out of processing paychecks by managing work entries, pay slips, batches, reports, and a lot more. So let's jump right in to see how Odoo does payroll.
Navigating the Payroll Dashboard
Welcome to our payroll dashboard, Odooers. Let me show you around. Up here on the left is our warning section. This section highlights any issues that could prevent pay slips from being generated. We can fix the issue right here instead of being surprised with an error during our payroll process. Over here on the right, we have our batches card, which displays the most recent payroll batches and their current status. I can see which batches have been paid and what still needs to be processed.
Now the employees cost card here on the bottom left helps us visualize how much our company spends on payroll, whether by year or by month. Next, we have the employees Trends card, and this is where I can see an overview of new hires month by month or by year. And over here on the right, we have a notes section where I can share notes with my colleagues. If I ever need to create a new note, I can just hit the plus icon here on the far right. Now I have a new note, and I saw an article that I need to share with my colleagues, so I'm going to go ahead and click into the note. And when I do, I'm presented with a bunch of different formatting options which help me write a nice note.
I need to tell them about a new labor law ruling and it's very important, so I'm going to go ahead and click these three dots here on the far right, which will reveal a drop-down menu, and I'm going to scroll to the banner section and select our Banner warning. Next I'll type a note into my banner and this note says, "Read this new article about a new labor law ruling." I need to add the link, so I'll highlight some of the text and connect the link directly to it by clicking this link button. I'll paste that link into the URL field and then select apply. And when I do, there's a quick preview of the link as well. I'll also let them know that we're going to have a meeting about it, so I'll also leave a note directly under it which simply states "We will have a meeting on this in two weeks." I also need to add a summary to the tab, so I'm just going to double click the tab here and just put "Labor Law Updates".
Understanding Work Entry Types
Perfect. Alright, now that I got a little bit of housekeeping out of the way, let's go take a look at work entry types. To do that, we're going to select configuration and then click on work entry types. Here's a list of all the different types of work entries that can be entered onto a payslip. Each work entry has a corresponding code, and this code will appear on pay slips and explains that particular work entry and how it gets calculated. So let's take a closer look at one, and let's go ahead and choose sick time off because we all know what sick time is, especially around cold or flu season.
Now this form tells Odoo what type of calculating a pay slip or work entry has to do. We have the name of the work entry type here at the top along with the code that's used when calculating the pay slip beneath that. Now for a quick, super important note: do not change the codes on any work entry type that are preconfigured when you install the payroll app. These codes are used in a variety of different applications and changing a code can cause a lot of issues and possibly prevent payslips from even being processed. Now this external code field is used for when exporting data into a third party for payroll purposes. Down below, we can also specify a color for the work entry, and in this case we're using pink. If this work entry type was specific to a country, I could select that country in the drop-down field right here, but since this one is universal, there's no need to add anything else.
Now in this display in Pay slip section, we have the rounding down drop-down field. And here, this is explained how time is calculated. My options are No Rounding, Half Day, Full Day, but we're going to go ahead and keep this on half day for now. The rounding is set to half day, which means these work entries will always be rounded to half a day or 4 hours. The round type determines how this is rounded, so in this case, we're rounding down. So if you took five hours of sick time, it would be rounded down to just half a day, or in other words, four hours. Next, if we didn't want the employee to be paid for this type of work entry, we'd select the structure types here. If I select worker pay, then any sick time off work entries logged for an employee who's paid according to the work or pay structure would not get paid for their sick time. But I don't want to do that, so I'm going to go ahead and remove this.
Next, we have our time off options. Ticking time off here means the work entry type is linked to a time off type, which is specified at the bottom time off type field, which is in this case Sick Time Off. And last, if this work entry is related to an unforeseen absence and you want to include it in the absentee report, tick this checkbox. If I wanted to make a new work entry type, I just need to click the new button here in the upper left corner. And when I do, a blank work entry type form loads and this is where I can fill out all the information. Now, almost every type of work entry is preconfigured when setting up your database and selecting your localization. However, in the unlikely scenario you need to add a new work entry type, this is where you would do it.
Managing Working Schedules
Okay, let's now take a look at our working schedules, which are used to determine when our employees are supposed to work. To see all the currently configured ones, we can click on configuration and then click on working schedules. Here's a list of all of our currently configured schedules. We can see their name as well as their working time rate, as well if they have flexible hours or not. So let's go ahead and click on the standard 40 hours a week one. And from this form, I can see all the details for this schedule. The company has a full-time schedule of 40 hours a week and we can see the average day here is also eight hours and the work time rate is set at 100%. And the time zone is sent to US Eastern. Below that, we have a full list of working hours with a morning and afternoon shift along with a lunch break.
If this working schedule was flexible, meaning employees can work whenever they want, I can just go ahead and take the flexible hours checkbox here at the top, and when I do, the whole section disappears. Wow. But I don't want to make any changes just like that, so we're going to untick the box. And instead, let's make a new work schedule. We have a new Apprentice program teaching high school students about furniture design manufacturing and it has a focus on carpentry and tool safety. They need a separate working schedule, so I'll go ahead and click new in the upper left-hand corner, and then a new schedule form loads. Notice that this is not blank and has a ton of info that automatically populates.
I'm going to go ahead and name this Apprentice 20 hours a week. The schedule is flexible since it's for high school students and their schedules are all a little different, so I'm going to go ahead and tick the flexible hours checkbox. Next, I'm going to change the hours per week. Right now it's at 40, we're going to change it to 20. And for the average hour per day, we're going to change this to four. And then we're going to change the time zone here to EST. And that's it, we just created a new working schedule.
We just checked out our payroll dashboard, left a note about new labor laws to share with our payroll colleagues, learned more about entry types, and made a new working schedule. Stay tuned for more payroll tutorials where we dive into work entries, pay slips, batches, reporting, and so much more. Now get back to work.
