New Stat Pay Feature

One more thing: with the "Stat Pay - Average Daily Wage" pay item only being a lump sum on the "Run Payroll" window I can no longer allocate the cost of the stat pay to a project via the time sheet. I will now have to run a separate report and post a manual journal entry which will be very time consuming for multiple projects and employees. 

Good morning, 1133.

Thanks for turning to the Community for support. QuickBooks Online Payroll is designed and set up in accordance with government guidelines. At this time, there isn't a way statutory holiday can be turned off. However, you can simply leave that box blank for the employees that shouldn't receive statutory holiday.

I can see being able to turn off statutory holiday would be beneficial for you, so I encourage you to leave feedback by heading to the "Gear" icon and selecting the "Feedback option. Our developers view and take into consideration each comment as they create new features and updates for QuickBooks.

Feel free to reach back out here if you have any other questions.

Thank you for the reply but that does not address my concerns:

1. When an employee is paid an average daily wage for a unworked stat holiday the hours they would have typically worked are supposed to be recorded as insurable. If I use the new "Average daily wage" lump sum in the payroll window is that amount converted into insurable hours on the back end?

2. What do you recommend for allocating the cost of stat pay to projects?

3. Why is the YTD amount of unworked stat pay now showing on the pay stub as "Stat Pay - Hourly Premium" instead of the "Stat Pay - Average Daily Wage" ? 

Hi 1133,

Thanks for getting back to us here.  Statutory holiday pay is mandatory in Canada, and is automatically turned on.  For this reason, it cannot be deactivated.  However, it is important that you're able to enter the appropriate amount for your employees.  Due to the recent update, there are a couple of known issues that require additional calculation, and can be rather time consuming for you.  Our Development Team is currently working on these concerns and for this reason, I suggest contacting us outside of Community.  A member of our Customer Care team will have the ability to work with you personally, and assist you with the calculations.  In addition, they'll be able to set you up with email notifications when the issue has been resolved.

Schedule a Callback or start a Chat: click (?) Help in the upper right in QuickBooks Online > enter "Contact support" > hit Contact Us > provide a brief summary of your situation > hit Let's Talk > choose Get a callback or Start a Chat.

Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Support hours are from Monday to Friday between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. ET.

Should any other questions or concerns arise, please don't hesitate to get back to us here.  We would be glad to help!

This new STAT pay feature really made a mess of things for payroll.  QBO updates like this, that affect millions of dollars shouldn't be messed with. OR a very CLEAR email update to ALL QBO customers.  Currently, the STAT pay option in my QBO is OT rate. Naming it a "premium"  QBO doesn't give me an option to edit the hourly rate in this premium option.   The "average daily" rate only works for two employees.  

What do I do??  I need to submit payroll tomorrow!

I see customers have asked for support in this area, with QBO support not even answering the questions asked.  I feel this is a huge failure on QBO's side of things.  Quite time consuming attempting to fix. 

Make this make sense QBO. 

Good afternoon, srorke. 

Thanks for joining in on this thread. I feel you'd benefit more by reaching out to our support team outside of the Community for virtual assistance. They'll be able to verify your account details in a secure setting, as well as view your screen to better assist you. You can reach them by following one of these methods:

Schedule a Callback or start a Chat: click (?)Help in the upper right > type and enter "Contact support" into the QB Assistant > click Contact Us > explain your situation > click Let's Talk > choose Get a callback or Start a Chat.
Social Media: Facebook and Twitter

If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out here.

Perhaps you can roll back the update and return the program to its prior state until QBO has managed to program a update that does not remove functionality, create more work for payroll professionals instead of less, and does acurately track mandatory insurable hours. Giving us a a half-baked update that inaccurately tracks hours, changes/confuses the appearance of historical payroll info and removes functionality is not appreciated.

I discovered the issue myself last night when I went to run a payroll for one of my clients. I have the same concerns - how does the average stat pay get translated into insurable hours, and do I really have to go and calculate the average pay for each employee...isn't this what we use payroll software for??

After reading this thread I did exactly what was suggested by the Quickbooks Team commenters on here and contacted customer support for help. Here's what happened in a 1 hour phone call:

• Customer service agent (who was friendly, and trying his best to help) thought I needed to edit the stat pay type for each employee. When he walked me through how to edit the pay type he found out it is a locked pay type that can not be turned off. (I didn't want it turned off, just an explanation on how it will record insurable hours and if/why I have to calculate out the average dollar amount for each of the aprox 45 employees that need to be paid this week.)
• I was put on hold. Then he came back and said it was a known issue and that the engineering team was working on it. There is no ETA on when it will be fixed, but they will email me when it is. I asked if it was likely to be fixed today as I have to get the payrolls submitted in time for the direct deposit cut off, and today was the only day my schedule would allow for it. He said there was no ETA, but they would let me know when it was fixed...
• I asked what I should do if it was not fixed in time for the direct deposit cut off. He said they would email me when it was fixed. 
• I said that this didn't really help me, but it looked like he was only able to give me that as an answer, so could I please speak to a manager. I was not mean, and acknowledged that I could tell he was doing what he could to help. He said he would get a manager and put me on hold
• He came back and asked when would be a good time for me to get a callback. I said any time today. He said the callback would be in 24-48 hours. I explained that that won't help if it's in 48 hours because the direct deposit deadline is tomorrow and my schedule requires me to do the payroll today.
• He was sympathetic and put me on hold. He came back and sent me an article explaining the new stat pay types (I had read it last night). I asked him how the stat average pay works - if I enter it as a dollar amount, will it figure out the insurable hours. Also, why do I have to calculate out the average pay when I used to just enter the average hours. He explained that the stat pay had been updated and I could look at my provincial employment standards to see how to calculate it. I said that I knew how to calculate it (have been doing payroll for 15 years) and that I just wanted my questions answered. He put me on hold.
• He came back and said the engineers were working on it and they would let me know when it was fixed.
• I said that I had been on this call for 45 min at this point, and that all I was getting was a repetition of the same answers, which if they didn't help me 45 min ago, they weren't helping me now. I said I'd like to speak to his manager
• He said he would schedule me a callback for 24-48 hours. I said no, that will not be in time to address my concern, who could he put me on the phone with right now. He said his supervisor would be happy to talk to me...you guessed it, in 24/48 hours (maybe sooner, no promises)
• I asked him how that would help me get all the employees I am responsible for this week paid on time. (Per the deadlines set by the same Employment standards he had referred me to in order to calculate the stat.) He said the engineers were working on it and they would let me know when it was fixed.
• I decided that an hour of unbillable time was all I was willing to throw at this, and said that I would still like to be contacted by his manager so I could leave some feedback. As I was saying goodbye, he asked if he had answered my questions today, and did I know I would be getting a survey about my experience....

I don't even know how to process the experience, it felt like I was in an alternate reality where if you tell someone the same non-helpful information enough times it will suddenly help. I also began to wonder if he was trying to stall long enough for the engineers to fix the problem ??! 

I definitely do not recommend the usually decent customer service route on this one, unless you have time to kill, or just want to experience an alternate reality for kicks.

Since, after that phone call, I have zero faith in a fix coming through on time for the direct deposit deadline, I'm working on Plan B which is to switch the entire lot of employees over to paper cheque, and paying those that are physically too remote for a cheque by etransfer. Also working on plan C in case the problem is not fixed by payday, which is to estimate the payroll and issue advances, then enter a retroactive payroll and clean it all up once the engineers are finished.

If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Oh wow Wendy777, what a frustrating (though not surprising) sounding interaction. I do not understand the current propensity for service agents to just keep saying the same unhelpful things over and over again. I guess when you have nothing helpful to add it is the quickest way to get us off the phone?

For calculating my client's employees' stat holiday pay, I ran a time activities report and exported it to excel. In excel, I calculated the average hours and from there could calculate the lump sum stat holiday pay. I have to export to excel every pay period anyway but having to calculate the lump sum amounts by inputting pay rates for each employee and then transferring that info back to QBO is a waste of time and opens up potential for errors. I am generally not a fan of QBO but they are really not in my good books right now.

Hi

I had the exact same concerns and response today. I was told that they are aware of the issue and it is suppose to be updated soon.  I also need the stat pay YTD totals now under "Stat premium" to not show and state that its being paid out at time and 1/2. I really hope that this gets corrected very soon. Its caused a major concern.

What a joke. Unreal that anybody thought adding work to an employer's payroll was a good idea.

This new "feature" is a joke. I have spent 3 hours today on the phone trying to fix this issue and it still isn't fixed. Payroll is today. And for some reason in the last two weeks my stat pay hourly premium rate has somehow changed and is not correct. Quickbooks fix the problem, I pay for this program to make my life easier not harder but now I am considering finding an alternative because I do not have time to waste. 

Hi Amanda,

I can understand the stat holiday pay premium was created to match government rules but there are still instances that fall through the crack. As such, we are a construction company that requires us to pay our employees at least 3.6% of wages which is what we used the previous stat holiday pay for. With it gone I guess I can enter it manually and calculate each employees stat holiday pay myself but this would add an extra step and force me to keep an separate excel for the calculation when before it was all setup on QB. Would it not make sense to have two stat holiday pay types one "stat holiday - standard" and "stat holiday - premium" that way the employer can choose which one applies in their specific case?

Hey there, Brianstse.

I appreciate you chiming in on this thread. I hear you on this. I recommend leaving feedback for our developers by heading to the "Gear" icon and clicking on the "Feedback" option. These comments are viewed and considered as they create new features and updates for QuickBooks. 

Don't hesitate to reach back out if you have any other questions.

This new feature is a mess!

It moved the OLD amounts of a daily average into the YTD for "Hourly premium", so I've seen several files who run their own payrolls already mess this up.
They ran their payroll as usual, added the average hours an employee worked, and they were paid time and a half.

The new option is a flat dollar amount.
You have to calculate this amount yourself and can't just enter the average hours as you used to which means more work on the end of someone calculating it.

It also appears as though those totals end up on a paystub as "other", which means it's being grouped in with other payroll items automatically by the system and is confusing employees.

The new dollar amount entries ALSO AREN'T ACCRUING VACATION! 
Stat Holiday Pay (at least in BC), is an insurable total and hours should be calculated and vacation earned on them.

If they were going to make a new item, they should have made BOTH to be an "hour" entry, and not have one of them be a dollar amount.
They also shouldn't have made the old option into the new option, because now the YTD balances are inaccurate.

Is this mess of a stat pay update going to be fixed by Christmas? 

Will Quickbooks offer an apology to all of its clients whose payrolls and bottom lines have been negatively impacted by this?

Has anyone heard any more about whether or not QuickBooks is working on this? And when we will get a fix? 

Apparently they changed it again on December 5th. There is a some info about it in this support article .
There was a little notification at the top of my bank transactions page (dumb place to put it) that told me there were "Statutory holiday pay feature improvements" with a link to the support article. 

I see that now. Thanks so much!!

It looks like they reverted the STAT holiday pay (1.5x rate) back to an hourly calculation but the average daily pay is still entered as a dollar amount and NOT tracking insurable hours. I am understanding this correctly? This is still an issue for ROE's. How can QBO be saying this is "in-line" with government regulation when its not tracking insurable hours correctly?

We should not have to click on the gear to send feedback to nameless developers that will never read it.

*THIS*, right here and ALL these responses ARE the feedback you should be listening to.

Instead, you just keep repeating the same "please click on gear" platitudes and nothing gets fixed on a timely basis.   

You guys made a complete mess of this.  Worse yet, you don't seem to realize that.

What QBO has done here is not inline with the regulations.    It's a half-baked 'improvement' clearly implemented with little forethought and definitely no client feedback.

I'd bet that those of us who have used QBO payroll have already have processes (like a custom pay type) to handle stat holidays .. and having QBO add this as a mandatory and non-removable type just complicates things and causes MORE, not less, work for customers.

This may come to late for your question of "if anyone has any ideas", BUT ..

What we've done (for as long as we've had payroll) is:
- Created a custom pay type "Stat Holiday Pay" and pay stats using that custom pay.

For stats, we export our timesheets from Connecteam (our scheduling system) for the previous 4 weeks, do a formula to divide by 20 and enter that in the custom pay.  Takes us about 10-15 minutes to do the stat holiday for our entire workforce.

Stat Pay is mandatory for the majority of businesses, but NOT for farm employees.  Please advise how to remove the stat holiday pay from their pay advices and calculations.