Payroll is a rather complicated and responsible type of accounting. At the enterprise of any form of ownership there is a position of a payroll accountant. His responsibilities are not so simple these days, with the existing variety of types and forms of remuneration.
If you have to calculate wages for an incomplete month
Quite often, you need to know how much is supposed to be paid to an employee if he has not worked out a full month. In this case, you need to explain to him why this amount is accrued. And to tell in an accessible language - in order to avoid misunderstanding and complaints to the labor inspectorate. Yes, and does not interfere with safety in case of possible claims from the latter.
The rules by which accrual occurs are determined by the payment system adopted by the organization. Which is certainly fixed in the Regulation on payment and the personal employment contract of any employee. Most often, it is either time-based, or piece-rate, or a commission form of remuneration.
In case of time-based payment, the employee has an official salary or tariff rate (daily, hourly). The latter option is much more convenient if the work is carried out in shifts.
When you have stability
First of all, we will consider the most common form of all - the so-called "solid" salary. Such calculations are used in cases where you need to know, for example, how to calculate the salary of a kindergarten teacher or public servant.
So, if the whole month has been worked out, the employee is entitled to his full salary. It does not matter how many working days were in the past month. Even if it was very short (for example, January, taking into account the long winter holidays), wages for workers are paid in full in time. Thus, there are no difficulties with the question of how to calculate the salary according to the salary.
It should be noted that this situation is by no means always the case. A huge number of workers work out the current month not completely for many different reasons. Someone was on vacation or a business trip, someone was sick or took short leave at their own expense, and someone simply got a job not from the 1st, but, say, from the 10th or, on the contrary , quit before the end of the calendar month.
In all these cases, the accountant must know how to calculate the salary based on the days or hours worked upon.
Report card as the main document
According to the Labor Code of the Russian Federation, in the process of formation of salaries, they matter and are taken into account only working days. And the accrual of the amount of earnings for the month that is not worked out in full is proportional to the actually worked out time. At the same time, the administration is obliged to keep a strict record of both days of going to work, and passes with an indication of the reason (sick, on vacation, etc.). Why at any large enterprise there is a position of a time-attendant, whose task is to daily note the exit or absence of each employee.
These marks are put in the document in a special form with the signature of the person in charge and the head of the enterprise. At the end of the month, the report card is handed over to the accounting department. In small organizations, it may be the responsibility of the clerk, secretary or human resources inspector to keep track of employees working out their time.
Please note that it is working days, not calendar days, that are taken into account.
If you are on vacation
Now consider the payroll for an incomplete month on specific examples. To begin with, we take the case when an employee was on vacation for some time. There are two different options for calculating your salary.
The first. According to the production calendar, a part of the month before (or after) the holidays has a certain number of working days - we do not take weekends and holidays. In this case, the accountant must divide the full salary of the employee by the norm of working days (i.e., calculate the cost of one working day in this month), and then multiply the amount received by the number of days that the employee spent at work.
Second. The employee went on vacation, for example, immediately after the May holidays (or New Year's holidays). That is, although he is not on vacation from the first day, he does not have actual working days this month - only weekends and holidays. Then he will receive only vacation pay for the mentioned month.
If you are "brand new"
Similarly, the calculation is carried out if the employee got a job in the organization not from the beginning of the month. How to calculate the salary in this case? Two options are also possible here. If there was a certain number of working days from the 1st day of the month until the date of employment, then they are discarded, and accrual starts from the date specified in the acceptance order.
If, for example, employment occurred immediately after the New Year holidays, which did not take a single working day, a person is obliged to receive a full salary (of course, subject to a daily conscientious appearance at work and corresponding marks in the time sheet).
The reverse situation is also possible. Suppose an employee immediately after the New Year holidays takes a vacation without maintenance, the end of which lies outside the calendar month. Then how to calculate the salary? And is the employee supposed to have at least something?
Unfortunately, in this case, he does not have to rely on any amount, because in fact there were no days worked this month.
About the minimum wage
How to calculate monthly salary for low paying categories? Sometimes the whole amount (if the month is not worked out in full) is less than the minimum size (minimum wage). The employee begins to make complaints, referring to the legislation, and even sometimes can confuse an inexperienced accountant. Is it worth it in this case to pay him to the "minimum"?
In fact, there is no contradiction or violation here. And there are no grounds for such surcharges. Article 133 of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation informs us that below the minimum wage, the monthly salary of those workers who have completely "chosen" the working time limit should not fall. That is, workers all month and full time.
If this condition is not met, the accrued amount may be below the minimum wage. And there will be no violation. The main condition is the initially established salary in the amount not lower than the “minimum wage”, taking into account regional allowances.
However, the essence of this provision can be understood even through ordinary logical thinking. Suppose an employee has worked out only one or two days in the current month. On what basis will he demand a full salary, albeit a minimum?
Weekend - special article
It happens that a month is not fully worked out, but at the same time a person went out to work on weekends or holidays. (Moreover, part of the month was missed, for example, due to illness). How to calculate the salary of an employee in such a situation? If in the end it turns out that the total amount of days worked corresponds to the production calendar, this does not mean at all that the month has been worked out completely. And accruing full salary is wrong.
The fact is that for work on weekends and holidays a double (at least) payment is due. And replacing a working day with a weekend just won't work. In this situation, a separate count of working days and those worked on weekends or holidays should be kept.The former are paid according to the scheme discussed above, the latter are paid separately and in double size. It is important that the employee’s exit at the “wrong” time was justified by the order of the management and recorded in the time sheet. Without this, it will be difficult to prove the legitimacy of accruing "festive" hours to him in the face of inspectors.
Should tax deduction be split up?
As you know, employee income - for tax purposes - can be reduced by the amount of tax deductions. The most widely known of them is the deduction "for children" by personal income tax. We are talking about the amount not subject to income tax for workers who have children and have provided relevant documents.
According to labor law, the amount of deduction remains unchanged, regardless of the full or incomplete working of the month. It is a fixed value, and is provided in any case, as long as the employee maintains labor relations with the organization. It is not necessary to recount it in case of illness or vacation.
Moreover, if the amount of the tax deduction is more than the salary due to the employee for the month, the rest of the deduction is carried forward to the next calendar period (but certainly within the framework of the current year).
If you have a fixed rate
With the same time-based form of payment, when applicable tariff rate, the number of days actually worked is multiplied by its daily size, which greatly simplifies the calculation.
And how to calculate the salary by the hour? If the hourly rate is applied, the hours actually worked out in the month are likewise taken into account.
At the same time, one should not forget about the proportional payment of nightly nights (these include time from 22 p.m. to 6 a.m.).
About those who work piecework
We now turn to the piecework payment system, that is, one that directly depends on production. As a rule, it is applied where accurate accounting of the amount of work performed (for example, the number of manufactured products or services rendered) is possible, and the employer is interested in increasing this amount. The manual is established production rate and unit rate. How to calculate the salary of working piecework?
In both full and part-time months, wages are determined by multiplying the unit rate by the volume of manufactured products (or services rendered). Thus, we see that the calculation of piecework payment is extremely simplified, the main thing is the accurate accounting of what was done for the month.
Working for a percentage
The third option is the so-called commission system. In this case, the binding of the employee’s salary to the amount of revenue, for example, from the sale of a particular product, is implied. That is, the income of the worker directly depends on its "usefulness" for the company. Higher sales - higher commissions. And the absence of an employee at work for any reason immediately affects the payment.
It would seem that there is no difficulty in calculating the percentage of salary. But in its pure form, the commission system is rarely used, because low sales can occur for reasons beyond the control of the employee. More often than not, we encounter a variation of it called salary + interest.
How to calculate an employee’s salary for an incomplete month with such a system? Very simple. The salary (that is, the fixed part) is calculated according to the hours worked (exactly the same as with the usual time-based system), and commission percentages depending on the amount of revenue for the days worked.
About teacher salaries
There are much more complex cases of payroll, for example, remuneration for pedagogical work. School funding has increased, money is currently being issued not in the form of estimates with pre-scheduled cost items, but as subsidies. What to spend them on is decided mainly by the school itself. And not every accountant, especially an inexperienced one, imagines how to calculate the teacher’s salary.
Previously, teacher salaries depended on workload, length of service, and assigned category.Now a number of other indicators are taken into account - the number of students, their performance, the state of the office, and much more. Different regions have their own options for the ratio of the two parts (basic and stimulating) of which the salary consists. The basic part cannot be less than the legislatively established one, and which and whom to give the award to is decided by the school itself, having coordinated the issue with the trade union organization and the educational management body.
How should teacher salary be calculated? The basic unit of calculation is the so-called cost of one student-hour. This value is multiplied by the number of children in the class and the number of hours per month for each subject, then by a raising coefficient, which depends on the degree of priority of the subject, and on another - reflecting the degree of qualification of the teacher. In addition, a surcharge for another load (non-audit) is added to the amount received.
It's not so scary
The complexity of calculating a teacher’s salary can scare an inexperienced accountant, especially when it comes to accruing for less than a month. But it should be remembered that teachers belong to the category of workers on a time-based payment system (more precisely, time-bonus), and the calculation for an incomplete month is made according to the above scheme. The bonus part is paid depending on the "local" conditions for the payment of premiums - in accordance with legislative standards.
To facilitate the work of an accountant, payroll for all categories of workers has long been automated. The classic, universally used software package for this is 1C Accounting, which allows you to keep track of any business operations of enterprises of all forms of ownership. A separate module is dedicated to personnel issues and payroll.
The computer will help us
How to calculate salary in 1s? With pre-entered data (employee salary or the amount of the daily tariff rate, all necessary allowances and surcharges), the calculation is automatic. The task of the accountant is only to correctly enter the number of days or hours worked. The program calculates not only accruals, but also deductions.
Using this interface, payroll is fast and clear. In the list of documents you should enter all the required types of charges with an indication of the parameters of each. Amounts are calculated automatically according to the selected method. The algorithm persists for a given period, and the question of how to calculate the average monthly salary (for any purpose) no longer presents any difficulty.
Tax issue
As you know, income tax must be withheld from salaries. When calculating it, deductions are applied: standard, property, social and others. The employer, as a rule, deals with standard ones.
How to calculate payroll taxes? First of all, you should decide if the employee is tax resident or not. Then take into account all relevant odds and salary increases, incentives and bonuses. Material assistance, allowances, scholarships and similar payments that do not have income status are not taken into account.
If, however, not the entire billing period is worked out - the employee went on vacation or was sick - the income tax is taken on the basis of average earnings.
How to calculate the average salary? It is necessary to summarize all payments received in the billing period, then divide by the number of days in this period. Thus we get the answer to the frequently asked question: "How to calculate the salary for the day?"
The resulting sum of average daily earnings is multiplied by the number of days actually worked by the employee. This will be the tax base for the specified period.
