When employees are on leave, Workspace and Pay admins will receive an email notification every pay period that their pay file is ready for download in the Documents tab of their dashboard. Cocoon’s software calculates what employees are owed during their leave but employers are responsible for running payroll.
When you open Cocoon’s pay file, you’ll see some columns in yellow and some in blue. The columns in yellow give a high level overview of what makes up an employee’s leave pay amount for that pay period, and the other columns in blue provide information about how the employee leave amount was calculated. The blue columns are for reference, and you’ll just need to focus on the yellow columns to make sure your employees are paid correctly. Here’s what you need to know about the most important columns in the pay file:
CO Code (Column A)
The Company Code column indicates your company’s unique ADP code. This was gathered during your onboarding to Cocoon
Batch ID (Column B)
The Batch ID column indicates the type of pay your employee is receiving during the pay period. Cocoon will always be calculating ‘Leave’ pay.
File # (Column C)
The File # column is the employee’s unique payroll identification number. This ensures that the correct pay amounts are given to the right employee. We pull this number from the employee census that your team uploads to Cocoon.
Batch description (Column D)
This column is the description for what this line item pertains to
Employee name (Column E)
This is the employee the pay calculations apply to
Cancel automatic pay (Column F)
The Cancel Pay column cancels an employee’s normal pay calculation in ADP. The value of this field will always be Y in the pay file in order to allow an employee’s normal pay to be overridden by the Temp Rate amount while your employees are on leave.
Regular hours + regular earnings (Column G & H)
Regular hours displays the amount of hours allotted to the employee for this pay period. Our software takes the regular hours and then applies the daily rate to calculate total regular earnings which are displayed in the next column. You may see amounts here when an employee goes on leave or returns from leave in the middle of a pay period.
Leave top up pay (Column I)
Leave top up pay is leave pay minus any estimated benefits deductions that we are projecting for this pay period
To get a holistic view of what the employee is receiving during their leave you can add regular earnings + leave top up. Your system will automatically do this when you upload the file.
Other per beginning (Column J & K)
Pay period that we’re calculating for
In this example, it’s a semi-monthly schedule
Now that you know what each column represents, let’s take a look at some example files:
Scenario: An employee goes on leave in the middle of a pay period and is eligible for benefits:
Ning is an employee that’s taking a non-birthing parent parental leave and they go on leave during the middle of the current pay period (6/16/23 - 6/30/23).
Regular hours shows the amount of regular hours allotted to Ning for this pay period. Ning’s daily rate is applied to this amount to get a total for Regular earnings.
Leave top up pay shows the total leave pay Ning is owed during this pay period when taking into account employer pay and leave benefits from the state and insurance. This column has any estimated benefits from state and insurance entities deducted, so it just shows what the company owes Ning for leave pay in this period.
Other period beginning date and Other period ending dates show the start and end of the pay period we’re calculating for.
Scenario: An employee goes on leave at the start of a pay period and is eligible for benefits
Mariana is an employee that’s taking a birthing parent parental leave that starts on the first day of the current pay period (6/16 - 6/30)
Regular hours shows the amount of regular hours allotted to Mariana for this pay period. Mariana’ daily rate is applied to this amount to get a total for Regular earnings. Since they did not work any regular hours, these columns have values of $0.
Leave top up pay shows the total leave pay Mariana is owed during this pay period when taking into account employer pay and leave benefits from the state and insurance. This column has any estimated benefits from state and insurance entities deducted, so it just shows what the company owes Mariana for leave pay in this period.
Other period beginning date and Other period ending dates show the start and end of the pay period we’re calculating for.
We’re excited to help your employees take leave and in order to ensure the best pay experience possible, we need your Payroll team’s help. Make sure you’re familiar with Cocoon’s payroll method and please review our additional pay resources.