As of April 1, 2020, eligible employees at businesses covered under the 2020 Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) are entitled to sick leave or expanded family and medical leave for specified reasons related to COVID-19. The full details of this act are available from the US Department of Labor.
The FFCRA is far from the only new paid leave law responding to Covid-19. Several, several state and local governments have enacted their own laws that provide additional paid leave for Covid-19 purposes. For example, the City of Los Angeles recently enacted a law that almost mirrors the FFCRA but extends it to large employers with 500 or more employees. Be sure to check with your own state and local government for additional paid leave requirements and set them up in your Deputy account.
In this guide we will cover:
Set Up and Pay FFCRA Leave
Follow these steps to set up the new leave and input it into your payroll provider.
1. Create the three new leave policies in Deputy
Please note, that you must be a system administrator in Deputy to set up new leave rules. Log in, click on your name and select ‘Business Settings’.
Under Business Settings, select the ‘Leave’ tab and then ‘Leave Rules’ link as seen here.
To create each of the three new leave types, click ‘New Leave Condition’, and enter the details for each of the leave types listed below.
Name: Families First Employee Pay
Paid Leave: ON
Type: Sick Leave
Visible to Employees: ON
Export Rule for Payroll: Export using Export Code
Export Code: [Enter the Payroll Earning Code from your Payroll Company]
Name: Families First Family Care Pay
Paid Leave: ON
Type: Sick Leave
Visible to Employees: ON
Export Rule for Payroll: Export using Export Code
Export Code: [Enter the Payroll Earning Code from your Payroll Company]
Name: Families First FMLA Expansion
Paid Leave: ON
Type: Carers Leave
Visible to Employees: ON
Export Rule for Payroll: Export using Export Code
Export Code: [Enter the Payroll Earning Code from your Payroll Company]
Now that you have created the new leave rules, you need to assign them to your eligible employees
2. Assign the new leave rules to eligible employees
Navigate to the People tab and select eligible employees. Then select ‘Bulk Actions’ and choose ‘Add Leave Type’ to choose the appropriate leave type. Click 'Save' to apply the leave rules to employees.
Pro Tip: Quickly validate you have added the leave type to the eligible employees by selecting ‘Also Show’ and then ‘Leave Balance’ as seen here.
3. Assign a leave balance to eligible employees (optional)
FFCRA provides an allowance of hours under each new leave rule based on employment status and hours worked. The full details of hours and employee eligibility are available on the US Department of Labor website.
Pro Tip: Adding the balance of these hours into Deputy allows employees to see available hours and helps managers track if an employee has enough hours to request the time off. Please note this is entirely optional.
You can manually set the leave balance for employees under the individual employee profile, or by using a ‘Bulk Actions’ update. Learn how to edit leave balances in this guide.
4. Export the new leave hours from Deputy
Employees and managers should follow set procedures for requesting and approving time off with these new leave rules. Use these guides to learn how to request time off and how to approve requests.
Pro Tip: Comments are required to submit a leave request and remain part of the leave request record which can be used in the future for auditing purposes related to FFCRA.
Follow the normal procedure for exporting timesheets from Deputy and importing them into your payroll provider.
Once you have exported the normal working hours and any regular paid vacation or sick time, you will need to run a separate report for the new Families First leave rules. This report will provide all Family First leave hours taken during a specified time range.
Navigate to the Reports tab. Select the 'Report Builder (BETA)' option and click the 'US FFCRA Paid Leave Report'.
Once loaded, click 'Edit Report', then 'Configuration' and 'Filters.' Change the date range filter to match your pay period and select 'Run'.
Pro Tip: You can run this report for each pay period by updating the date range filter in the report and selecting 'Run'.
5.Input the leave during the payroll process
Important Note: The 'Timesheet Cost' in this report is calculated as 100% of the employee's normal pay rate multiplied by the number of paid leave hours. The FFCRA stipulates that certain employees taking certain types of emergency paid leave are to be paid at 2/3 of their normal pay rate. Please refer to your payroll provider or the US Department of Labor website to properly calculate all employee wage costs for these emergency paid leave hours. The 'Timesheet Cost' number in this report is only a guide.
Login to your payroll account and open the current payroll cycle. In the input screen, manually enter the hours of FFCRA leave taken during the payroll cycle.
Using the US FFCRA Paid Leave report you created in the previous step, find the employee and the hours for each leave type, and then enter the hours amount into the appropriate column.
Complete this process for all employees and Family First leave types, and then save your payroll input. Proceed to process your payroll cycle as normal.
Resources
Check out our blog for more information on the 2020 Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA).