Creating office policies for your small business can be difficult, as most of us are well aware. How do you handle sick time, vacation time, personal time, or a death in the family? Better yet, how do your clients and/or customers handle it when it happens to you?
I was reading a very interesting article yesterday about “Can You Require Sick Employees to Stay Home“? My first reaction was “Wow! Good question” quickly followed by “as a small business owner I should be able to”. After all, it is officially cold and flu season and already every where you go people are coughing and sneezing; do you really want them bring that to work? I know I don’t want that to happen!
Sunburst, like many other small businesses consists of my husband Ben, myself, and Cheryl {who works 2 mornings a week}. It’s a given that if I get sick so will Ben and vice versa – but what about Cheryl? Does she need to come to work and end up with “whatever” we have, take it home and “give it” to everyone that she comes into contact with? Or should she come to work and we end up getting “whatever” it is she has?
Coming to work when you are sick isn’t any fun for anyone – you, the people you work with in your office, or your clients and customers. When we’re sick we just don’t perform our job duties with our usual amount of professionalism, courtesy, or speed – as a matter of fact I know I get downright crabby when I’m sick; mainly when I can’t think as fast as usual and especially if I have to repeat things to the same person multiple times during the same conversation.
There are no federal laws which specifically address whether or not employers can require employees to say home and not come to work; however, the Americans with Disabilities Act {ADA} does prohibit employers from discriminating against the disabled, although having a cold or the flu is not considered being disabled.
Encouraging employees to take a paid sick day and stay home when they have a fever, is often a common practice for larger companies and might be something that you want to consider having in place as an “office policy”. I’m sure many of you are gasping at this point and thinking “I can’t afford that!”, but think about it – which is cheaper – paying a sick employee to stay home so that others don’t get sick OR letting them come to work and you all end up getting ill? Just a thought….
In the ever increasing 24/7 connected world we live in – expectations run high – and sometimes people overlook that fact that people are sick, are away on vacation, at a Doctor’s appointment, or have had a death in the family. When we are connected 24/7 we fall into that immediate gratification or I gotta have it now trap and when those expectations are confronted by someone being unavailable some of us become very intolerant.
When you are the chief cook and bottle washer {or there is only yourself and perhaps a part time person} for your small business, it’s certainly difficult to justify taking time off; I know it is for us. Most years we are hear every day except major holidays, occasionally we are out of town {or out of state} on business, and if we are lucky once a year we take a week in vacation.
How do you handle situations such as sick time, vacation time, personal time, or a death in the family in your business? Do you have written policies in place or do you pretty much just “wing it” and handle it the best that you can at the moment? How do your customers or clients handle your being unavailable or away?
Payroll and holiday pay can be confusing and overwhelming and here we are right at the height of the upcoming holiday season! I found these great tips from HR Matters and wanted to share them with you. These tips provide answers to common questions such as: Do you have to provide paid holidays? What about for new employees? Do you have to pay overtime to employees who have to work on a holiday?
We’re officially heading into the holiday season with Thanksgiving coming up next week and Christmas and the New Year just around the corner. If you are like most employers, you may be dealing with holiday pay issues. To help you out, the HR Matters E-Tips Editors have put together the top seven holiday questions that they answer on a regular basis. (You also can find the answers to these and many more holiday questions in the HR Matters Tools and Resource Center online, Policy Manual, Holidays, Chapter 503.)
1. Do we have to provide paid holidays?
Absent a collective bargaining agreement or other contract providing paid holidays, federal law does not require you to pay nonexempt employees for holidays that they do not work. Most organizations offer a limited number of paid holidays to create employee goodwill. According to the Society for Human Resource Management 2011 Benefits Survey, 97% of responding employers provide paid holidays to their employees.
Note, however, that if you do not provide paid days off for holidays, you should pay exempt employees for any holidays that your organization is closed. (As a reminder, the Department of Labor (DOL) regulations implementing the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) provide that the following categories of employees are exempt from the overtime and minimum wage requirements of the FLSA: (1) bona fide administrative, executive, or professional employees; (2) workers employed in outside sales; (3) highly skilled computer-related employees; and (4) certain “highly-compensated” employees.)
Although the DOL regulations implementing the FLSA do not specifically address unpaid holidays, they do provide that an employee will not be considered paid “on a salary basis” if deductions are made “for absences occasioned by the employer or by the operating requirements of the business.” Unpaid holidays generally are considered the type of absence “occasioned by the employer.” According to a DOL Wage & Hour Opinion Letter dated 5/27/99, the DOL indicated that an employee will not be considered to be paid on a salary basis if deductions from the employee’s predetermined compensation are made for absences occasioned by the employer, such as being closed on certain holidays, or the operating requirements of the business. Further, the regulations recognize only a limited number of instances when an employer may make deductions (or “dock”) for absences of a full day or more without jeopardizing the exemption and thus incurring overtime liability. But, holidays do not fall under any of those exceptions.
2. Can we require employees to complete an introductory period before becoming eligible for holiday pay?
You most likely can exclude new nonexempt employees from holiday pay. If there is no collective bargaining agreement or other contract specifying that new employees are eligible for holiday pay, then it is up to your organization’s policy. Many employers exclude new employees from certain benefits granted to longer-term employees until completion of the introductory period.
However, new exempt employees should not be covered by this policy and should receive pay for holidays. As explained in # 1, above, if you do not pay exempt employees, new or old, for holidays they do not work, you may jeopardize their exempt status.
3. Can we require employees to work on holidays?
Since paid holidays are a discretionary benefit, you may require employees to work holidays according to the operating needs of the organization (and assuming no collective bargaining agreement or other contract prohibits this work). We recommend that employers’ holiday policies should include language that indicates employees may be required to work on holidays. For example, our HR Matters Tools and Resource Center, Policy Manual, includes the following provision in the model Holiday policy in Chapter 503: “The Company may schedule work on an observed holiday as it considers necessary. Normally, work on an observed holiday will be paid as if the day were a regularly scheduled work day. Employees will be given the option of receiving additional pay for the day or a “floating” holiday that may be taken, with the prior approval of their supervisor, at another time during the year.”
Note that you generally are not required to pay nonexempt employees for time and one-half for holiday work unless the employee has already worked 40 hours in the week (see # 4, below) or to provide a paid floating holiday at a later point. However, the model policy provides these extra benefits in recognition of the extra burden for employees who work on holidays.
4. Do we owe nonexempt employees overtime if they work on holidays?
The FLSA requires you to pay overtime to nonexempt employees at time and one-half their regular rate of pay for all hours actually worked over 40 in a single workweek. Accordingly, you will owe nonexempt employees who work on holidays overtime only if the employees end up working more than 40 hours because they are working on the holiday.
So, for example, if an employee has worked four 10-hour days (40 hours) and then works on a designated holiday that same week, then the employee should receive overtime for all of the holiday work hours. But, if the employee works four 8-hour days (32 hours) and then works an additional eight hours on the holiday, for a total of 40 hours worked in the week, then that employee is not entitled to overtime for the holiday work hours. (Note, however, that a limited number of states, such as Rhode Island, require payment of at least time and one-half for employees who work on certain holidays, so be sure to check state law, too.)
As an aside, if you voluntarily pay a premium of time and one-half (the equivalent of overtime) for work on a holiday, the FLSA regulations generally allow you to credit this extra compensation towards any overtime that might actually be earned in the same week.
5. If an employee works 40 hours in a week and then takes a paid holiday, do we owe the employee overtime?
No. As discussed in # 4, above, nonexempt employees must be paid overtime only for all hours actually worked over 40 in a single workweek. Thus, in calculating actual working hours for a nonexempt employee, you do not have to count any paid time off in the overtime calculation if the employee did not perform any work during the time off.
So, even if a nonexempt employee works a full 40-hour workweek and also takes a day of paid holiday and is paid for 48 hours that week, the employee is not entitled to overtime pay since he did not actually work more than 40 hours in the workweek.
6. What if an employee is on FMLA leave when a holiday occurs? Should they receive holiday pay?
The answer depends on your policy. You generally do not have to pay an employee for holidays that occur while the employee is out on unpaid FMLA leave if it is not the employer’s policy to provide this benefit during other types of unpaid leave. Similarly, if an employee’s work schedule is reduced for intermittent FMLA leave, you may reduce proportionately the employee’s benefits, such as holiday pay, if the employer’s normal practice is to base this benefit on the number of hours an employee works. However, you may not eliminate the full-time employee’s benefits because the employee is working a part-time schedule if part-time employees normally are not eligible for these benefits.
7. How do we pay nonexempt employees who work a compressed workweek, working four days a week, ten hours a day? Should these employees receive holiday pay if the holiday falls on a day that they are not scheduled to work?
Whether the nonexempt employees working compressed workweeks qualify for holiday pay depends on the terms of your holiday policy and how it has been implemented. Employers using compressed schedules (such as employees working four days/ten hours a day) generally take three basic approaches to eligibility for holiday pay.
(Download free Holidays model policy including best HR practices and legal background. Will require that you create a free account.)
Some employers pay only for holidays occurring on the employee’s regularly scheduled work day. Another more common approach is to allow compressed workweek employees to take off a day on which they would otherwise be scheduled to work. For example, if the employees normally work four days, they work only three days during weeks with holidays. Still other employers prefer to have compressed workweek employees on the job at least four days a week and pay for the holiday even if the employee is not scheduled otherwise to work that day, giving the employees an extra day of pay. This last practice, however, may lower the morale of employees who work a regular schedule and thus receive less pay for the holiday week.
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We hope you’ve found these answers to 7 holiday pay questions to be helpful; if so please take a moment to leave a comment or share this with others on your favorite social networking sites.
An “audit trail” for Accounts Receivable in QuickBooks is only one of the many complexities faced by government construction contractors. Running any sort of construction business can be difficult – but the amount of paperwork, the level of detail, and the additional requirements for a government contractor can cause 2 and sometimes 3 times the amount for a bookkeeper. Below is a question submitted by a reader named Shirley.
We are a Construction Company and do government contracting. Is it possible to use the Accounts Receivable Summary to track each Project and the invoices when received and when paid. It has been several years since I have used QuickBooks and have never used the Construction Version. We have QuickBooks 2011 Premier Construction.
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First, let me say that the Contractor version doesn’t work any differently than the Pro – it just has some built-in construction specific reports and other features that aren’t available in other versions. So your learning curve shouldn’t be difficult at all! That’s the good news 
As for using the Accounts Receivable Summary Report as an audit trail, personally I don’t think I would use that because it wouldn’t give me the detail that I would want – OR – that I “think” you are looking for. The A/R Summary report only shows you how much {total} money is overdue in 30, 60, and 90 day increments. This information may meet your needs if you just need to know how much money is how many days overdue by job.
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My own personal preference, would be to know which invoices were how many days past due; therefore, I would rather run the Accounts Receivable Aging Detail to determine exactly which invoices where outstanding.
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Both of these reports would provide me with information about just a specific job – each could be modified and filtered for a specific job or jobs.
Another very good report, especially if you are concerned about a specific job, is the Customer Open Balance Report {available from the actual QuickBooks job record and choosing Open Balance}.
Another alternative to obtain this information easily, without running and printing reports – would be to customize how job record information is displayed in QuickBook, that way anyone who has access to this type of information can easily see it without having to run, print, and then distribute reports. Remember, it’s all about efficiency and streamlining the workload/work flow. Customizing how information is displayed in the job record let’s you quickly see how much total money is outstanding for a specific job, when invoices were created {dated}, the date you anticipate receiving the money, how many days outstanding the money is, what the invoice was issued for and the open balance.
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For tracking Vendor costs you could run a Job Cost by Job and Vendor Detail, click the Modify Report button and customize it like the screenshot below:
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QuickBooks can do many things, including provide you with an “audit trail” for Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable. You just have to get in there an poke around and see what works for you.
While the information provided about may not answer the original question to the 100% satisfaction of the person asking it, based on the information provided it should at least provide you with things to look at and modify to best meet your needs.
If you found this tip to be helpful, please take a moment to leave a comment or share it on your favorite social network.
Dealing with special customer invoicing requirements can be a royal pain! Sometimes it feel like each customer you deal with says “if you don’t invoice me like THIS you aren’t going to get paid”. While QuickBooks is a very flexible software program, sometimes it’s very difficult to meet the requirements of specific customers or clients. Below is a perfect example, submitted by a reader of just how difficult billing requirements can be.
I use QuickBooks Contractor version as a self-employed contractor with a hospital. The problem is I get the job on a P.O. from the hospital, say it’s for $80,000. As I do different stages of the job I bill the hospital for that stage and they send me a check. When I do the next stage the hospital wants the invoice to reflect the original P.O. and the money they have already paid. How do I do that on this software? Jean
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Jean, I’m pretty certain that you can meet these requirements – it will cause some extra work on your part each time you are ready to bill the hospital for the next stage; but I don’t think it will be a lot of work.
Go ahead and create your invoice as usual – I’m making a BIG assumption here that you take the PO from the hospital and set that up as a QuickBooks Estimate and generate Progress Invoices from your Estimate {but even if you don’t that’s ok}.
Once you are viewing that Invoice in QuickBooks, click the Letters icon at the top and choose Prepare an Invoice Letter
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When the Choose a Letter Template window appears, select Invoice Letter with Details and then click the Next button
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This now sends your Invoice into Microsoft Word and by default provides information about the invoice that you can then modify to meet the invoicing requirements of the hospital.
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For example, I would change the heading called Invoice Amount $720.00 to read Original PO Amount $80,000.00, Invoice Balance $720.00 to read Previous Payments Received $XXX.XX, and add a line that reads Current Payment Due $720.00.
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NOTE: You can edit this letter template and include the changes to the wording – that way all you have to do is enter the amounts for Original PO and Previous Payments. To Edit a letter template go to the Company menu -> choose Prepare Letters with Envelopes -> Customize Letter Templates -> View or Edit Existing Letter Templates -> choose Invoice Templates -> Invoice Letter with Detail.
QuickBooks has a lot of built-in functionality – the problem is finding it! We hope you found this QuickBooks tip for dealing with special invoicing requirements to be helpful. If so please take a moment to leave a comment or share it on your favorite social network.
