Terminating or purging employees in Client Payroll Manager

WARNING

Purging employees and/or labor history are final, non-reversible processes. Unless you have a backup of your database you can restore from, you will not be able to retrieve the purged data. There are no exceptions. Proceed with caution. 

Purging Employees

Why do you want to purge employees?

There are several reasons you may want to purge Employee Data. Some of these reasons may not actually require a purge of the employee to accomplish the agency’s goals.

Reason 1: The employee has been terminated and you want his/her name to stop appearing in employee lists, etc.

STOP

This situation does not require a purge. Terminate the employee instead. Follow Termination Instructions below.

Terminate Employee

In Employee Setup | Payroll Data, an employee can be terminated by listing the date of termination in the Terminated Date field and changing the pay status to inactive. 

Results:

• The employee’s name will no longer appear in Time Entry when the time entry date in question is after the termination date.
• Employee-based reports will not include the employee if the report’s date range is set properly.
• The employee will not count against the agency’s license limit for employees.

Reason 2: You entered a new employee who left their employment before any time was entered for them.

STOP

This situation does not require a purge. Terminate the employee instead. Follow Termination Instructions in Reason 1.

If you think the employee may return to employment at some point in the future, you should mark the employee as terminated and not purge him/her. In Employee Setup | Payroll Data, an employee can be terminated by listing the date of termination in the Terminated Date field.  

Results:

• The employee’s name will no longer appear in Time Entry when the time entry date in question is after the termination date.
• Employee-based reports will not include the employee if the report’s date range is set properly.
• The employee will not count against the agency’s license limit for employees. 

If you choose to purge the employee

• The departed employee will be completely removed from the database, with no traces remaining of his/her information in Client Payroll Manager. 

If you elect to perform a true purge, you can do so using the Purge Employees option on the Tools menu. 

Reason 3: They entered a new employee and when they did so, set them up as the wrong type of employee (Consumer, Contractor or Staff) and want to change them to the proper employee type. 

If you have already purged the employee: 

You cannot purge the employee of a certain type then reenter that same person with a different employee type.  If you have already purged the person and are attempting to reenter that person:

1. Re-add the employee under their prior employee type (consumer/contractor/staff):
   1. Open Employee Setup in Client Payroll Manager.
   2. Click the Add Employee button.
   3. Make sure the Employee type is set to Consumer, Contractor or Staff as appropriate.
   4. Find the employee in the list and click his/her name.
   5. Assign a branch, number and start date.
   6. Click OK to create the employee.  
   1. Change the SSN for the employee to a holding value.
   2. Purge the employee again.
   3. Create the employee under the proper status using the typical steps. 

If you have not purged the employee:

1. Change the employee’s social security number to a value that is not currently in use and will not be used in the future.
2. Purge the employee

3. Create the employee with the proper status using the typical steps

Reason 4: The employee has been terminated for a long period of time and they want to ‘clean out’ their employee list so that only current and recently-terminated employees are listed.

Perform the employee purge, then do Employee History Purge (detailed steps to be provided later). 

Purging Employee History

There are two levels to an employee purge:

First Level: purge an employee:

This first level deletes anything specific to the employee, such as attendance records and productivity history. All job history is retained. This is normally the only purge used. 

1. On the Tools menu, click Employee Purge. 
2. In the Employee Purge tab, select the employee(s) to be purged.
3. Click purge employees. 
4. In the Employee Purge Confirmation window, in the Type password to confirm field, type your logon password. Click ok. 
5. In the Purge Reason Note window, type a note about why the employee is being purged. Click ok. The employee is removed from Client Payroll Manager.
6. In the Employee Purge window, click close or continue to purge the employee history.
7. If you use Financial Manager Payroll, you may want to block the employee in Financial Manager. 

Second Level: purge employee history:

This second level purge deletes all of the employee’s time and earnings history. Job time and cost records will no longer reflect any work done by the purged employee. 

WARNING: If you delete the employees time and earnings history, you will change job history. Job time and cost records will no longer reflect any of the work done by the purged employee.

1. In the Employee Purge window, click the Employee Purge History tab.
2. Select the employee(s) whose history should be purged.
3. Click purge history. 
4. In the Employee Purge Confirmation window, in the Type password to confirm field, type your logon password. Click ok.
5. Click close.

Purging Labor History

Purging the labor history of the database is a much more straight-forward process than purging employees or employee history. Purging labor history deletes pay and time record transactions from the database but does not purge employees. It is intended to keep a database from growing too large with old information that is unlikely to be necessary and does not need to be retained.

Purging labor history can be useful if there are many old jobs that are no longer being performed, but cannot delete the jobs because they have associated history records. Labor history data older than 3 years can be purged, even for jobs/steps and employees that are still active. The 3 year rule is intended to ensure that pay data is maintained at least that far back at all times for auditing purposes. 

1. Log into Client Payroll Manager as SYSDBA.
   • Note here that you are NOT logging into Administrator as SYSDBA but into Client Payroll Manager.
2. On the Tools menu, point to Database Maintenance >, then select ‘Purge Labor History Records…’.
3. When you are prompted to back up the database, click OK.
4. If desired, change the back up file name and location prior to clicking the Backup button.
5. Click Backup.
6. When the backup is done (a status message will appear in the Output portion of the backup dialog box), click ‘Close’.
7. Again, use Tools | Database Maintenance> | Purge Labor History Records…  
8. Select the purge date.
   • All records prior to this date will be purged.
9. Provide the SYSDBA password.
10. Click ‘OK’.
    • If the date selected is not three years or more in the past, you will receive an error message when attempting the purge. 

Results of Purging Labor History:

• Any job for which there is no longer any history (i.e. all work performed in the job took place prior to the purge date) can be deleted from Job/Activity Setup.
• Historical reports, such as Employee Productivity History and Job/Activity History, will no longer have any data to report on prior to the purge date.