Introduction

Due to the pandemic resulting from COVID-19, Solutions360 customers may want to track specific labor costs in accordance with the U.S. Department of Labor Family First Coronavirus Response Act (FFRCA). This document provides the best practice on how to effectively track costs related to COVID-19 labor expenses by branch and department, while complying with the FFRCA guidelines.

If at any point in this process you require assistance, contact the Solutions 360 Customer Care team. In this difficult time, we appreciate the urgency of such requests for your business and are diligently working to ensure that each request is addressed with high priority.

Step 1: Create a project and tasks

• Create a separate admin project for COVID-19.
• Model the project after your existing admin projects and segregate it by branch and department.
• Create admin tasks titled “COVID-19”. These are the ADMIN tasks against which your employees can time bill.

Step 2: Setup wage types and wage rates

• While you can use the STANDARD, PREVAILING, and OVERTIME wage types typically configured in Q360, you may wish to create specific wage types for employees based on the COVID-19 rates, as defined by the U.S. government guidelines for employee rights.
• Wage rates can also be defined by your payroll vendor. For example, if an employee is taking time off for caring for family, only 2/3rd of the employee’s wage rate is paid time off (PTO). See the FFRCA guidelines for more details.

Step 3: Setup time bill categories and sub-categories

• Create a time bill category for COVID-19
• Create sub-categories for specific COVID-19 leave types. These sub-categories can be setup as advised by your payroll vendor or they can be defined according to the FFCOVID-19 guidelines (i.e. taking PTO for one’s own ill health vs. family member’s caring).
• For each of the created new time bill category and sub-category combination, define the corresponding labor master to be used in Accounting > Admin > Labor Rates
  • Optionally, you can create a new labor master specifically for such time bills.
  • Then for this new labor master, in the Master form > Extended Accounts tab, define the GL you want these COVID-19 time bills to post to. This allows all COVID-19 related time bills to be posted to a specific GL.

Additional information

• The U.S. Department of Labor guidelines for the FFRCA can be found at https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/ffcra
• Discuss this information with your accountants, auditors, HR department, and your payroll vendor to ensure that all personnel are aware of COVID-19 labor tracking and processing
• You may contact the Solutions360 Customer Care team at support@solutions360.com for the following:
  • Assistance with setting up the project, tasks, wage types/rates, and time bill categories
  • Directives from a payroll vendor that require a payroll export customization
  • Anything else related to this matter as it pertains to Q360

Published: April 8, 2020