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 further information about the employee and specific payroll calculations. 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:
Employee number
The Employee Number is your employee’s unique payroll identification number. This ensures that the correct pay amounts are given to the right employee.
Code
The Code identifies the action to correctly input the amount of time or money a person has earned.
Additional Regular Pay
The Additional Regular Pay column shows your company's total pay obligation to the employee. This is leave pay, less any deductions received from the state and/or private disability provider.
Now that you know what each column represents, let’s take a look at some example files:
Scenario: The pay period we are referencing is 7/01/23 - 7/15/23. This employee goes on leave in the middle of a pay period and is eligible for benefits:
The employee that’s taking a birthing parent parental leave begins in the middle of a pay period.
The Additional Regular pay column shows the amount owed for leave pay during their leave
In this example, the employer uses a semi-monthly pay schedule with dates 7/01/23 - 7/15/2023 and a pro-rated pay method of assigning 8 hours to any regular day of work. Any remaining hours for the pay period are attributed to leave pay. Therefore, the employee’s ‘Additional Regular Pay’ is the total leave pay they are owed during this pay period when taking into account employer pay and leave benefits from the state and insurance. This column includes the estimated benefits from state and insurance entities deducted, so it just shows what the company owes for leave pay in this period
Scenario: Same pay period as above. This employee goes on leave at the start of a pay period and is eligible for benefits.
The employee that’s taking a birthing parent parental leave that starts on the first day of the current pay period (7/01 - 7/15)
The Additional Regular pay column shows the amount owed for leave pay during their leave. This amount takes into account employer pay and leave benefits from the state and insurance. This column includes estimated benefits from state and insurance entities deducted, so it just shows what the company owes for leave pay in this period.
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.