View Payroll Changes

In this article, we’ll review how to view employee and benefits changes that will be relevant to update manually in your payroll system. You should use this tool to update your payroll system each pay period.

Here’s what’s covered in this article:

• Step 1: Enter your date range
  
• Step 2: Read the results
  
• Step 3: Download a changes-only report
  
• Administrator permissions
  
• Notes
  

Follow the below steps to view payroll changes since your last pay period. Typically, you’ll want to do this the day before or the day you run payroll to make sure you have the latest information.

Step 1: Enter your date range

1. Head to Payroll > View Payroll Changes
2. Enter an "Initial Date" and a "Final Date”
   • Example:  Your company is on a semimonthly pay frequency with pay dates on the 15th and the 31st. To see changes for the 9/15 pay date, you’d want to enter a date range of 8/31 to 9/14.
     
     
     
   • The results will display the differences in employee and benefit data between those two points in time.
   • Choose a date range that will capture relevant changes that occurred since you last ran payroll. Best practice: enter the day before your last payroll run as the "Initial Date" and the day you're looking to run this payroll as the "Final Date."
   • Click View Payroll Changes and the results will display.
   • You can further filter information by:
     • Pay Frequency (i.e. monthly and bi-weekly)
       • Note: Only available if your company has different pay frequencies for employee eligibility groups
     • Change Type (i.e. Benefit Info and/or Employee Info)
       • Benefit Info includes only payroll changes that affect employee benefits
       • Employee Info includes any demographic changes to employee information that you may also want to update in your payroll system.

Step 2: Read the results!

If any employees had a payroll-relevant change to employee or benefit information, they will be displayed in alphabetical order. This should be straightforward, but there are some things to know about the results that display:

• Changes will display if they were made in the Maxwell system in the date range provided. They will not display based on the DOH, date of termination, or change date provided (see circled below) when entered. This means that future events or benefits with future effective dates may be listed. The effective date is displayed clearly both in the display and on the report, so you can identify when the change needs to be processed in payroll.
  
  
  
  
  • Example: On 1/30/22, I added a new hire who starts on 2/8/22. If I’m looking for changes to report on the 1/31/22 pay date and use the date range 1/15/22 - 1/30/22, I will see the new hire listed, although they shouldn’t be listed on 1/31/22 payroll.
  • You'll want to make sure to close out change events as soon as they are completed, so that closing it out doesn't cause it to display in the view when you may not want it to.
• All change reasons that occurred in the date range will be displayed.
• There are four types of change reasons:
  • New hires
  • Life events (such as marriage, birth or adoption of child, administrative change, etc.)
  • Terminations
  • Other
    
    • This will display if the change was caused by something other than a specific life event, new hire, or termination. This could include a change that's caused by a system action behind-the-scenes (like age reduction) or a change due to Open Enrollment.
• The only information that will display are those relevant to payroll. This means that:
  • Dependent information will not display here, as it’s not relevant to payroll. (Of course, a deduction change as a result of changing to dependent coverage will display—see below.)
    
    
    
  • Also, only enrolled benefit information will display, benefits that have only been selected or confirmed by the employee could change. This is a good reason to make sure you process enrollments.
  • Remember: you can always run a Change Report to see more all-inclusive changes.
• If there’s no data in the system as of the “Initial Date,” then the "From" data will show as "No Initial Value.” This will always be the case for new hires, since they weren’t in the system before. If there is no data in the system as of the “Final Date,” then the "To" data will show as "No Final Value.” Please note these fields will display as blank on the Payroll Changes Report.
  
  
  
  
• Terminations will always show the deductions as “Terminated” in to “To” field, with the Benefit End Date change so you can see when their coverage ends.
  
  
  

Step 3: Download a changes-only report

You can download the view as our Standard changes-only Excel file (.xlsx) or in a Paycor compatible Excel file format. These options will help streamline the transfer of information over to your payroll vendor. 

>> Download a sample Payroll Changes Report here

You can save the report you’re downloading right in Maxwell to access for historical reference if needed. Rename the report to the name of the relevant payroll period.



Find the saved reports under Payroll Changes > Downloads, where you can re-download the report, see who generated the report and when, as well as the filters they applied.

Administrator permissions

Standard Administrators will:

• Only be able to see employee changes to eligibility groups and salaries that they have access to
• Only be able to filter by the pay frequencies of the eligibility groups that they have access to
• Only see their own downloads in the "Payroll Report Downloads" section. Master Administrators will see all downloads.

Notes

• If multiple changes were made to one set of information within the time period you specify, each instance will not be displayed. However, each Change Reason and Date of Change Event will be displayed.
  • For example, you enter an “Initial Date” of 2/1/22 and a “Final Date” of 2/15/22. The employee’s address changes in Maxwell on 2/5/22, 2/6/22, and 2/10/22. The screen will display multiple “Change of Address” Change Reasons, but the address field highlighted with only the address on 2/1/22 (the initial value) and 2/10/22 (the final value).
    
    
  • We recommend ending change events as they are closed out, so you don’t end up with many change events displaying here if you're closing one event out and opening another. Read more about change events here >
• Deleting a benefit will not display as a change, as that should only be done in the case where there’s been a mistake.
• Benefits that are waived for the first time (i.e. if a new hire waives medical coverage) or that have a $0 deduction will not be displayed as those do not affect payroll.
• Benefits that naturally expire because their benefit end date passes will not display as terminations.