Your pay schedule sets how often you pay your team and which day is payday.
If you already ran payroll with another provider this year, you won't see this task. Freedom sets your schedule from your pay history, shown on Pay Schedules.
Before you start
Decide how often you pay, your first payday, and when your first pay period ends. See Understand your start date and your first payday.
Set your pay schedule
Freedom fills in "Pay frequency" and "First payday" from your earlier answers and names the schedule "Regular".
Go to Onboarding and select the "Set your pay schedule" task.
Check "Pay frequency". Change it if needed: "Weekly", "Every two weeks", "Twice a month", "Monthly", "Quarterly", or "Annually".
Check "First payday". Change it if needed.
In "First pay period end", pick the period's last day.
For "Twice a month", you can set the month's other payday in "Second payday (optional)".
In "Pay schedule name", keep "Regular" or enter another name.
Click "Confirm and save".
Which dates you can pick
First payday: the calendar grays out weekends, bank holidays, and dates before your start date. Freedom recommends your start date from your team size and how much payroll data has to move (see How Freedom recommends your start date and who adds your data). With "Twice a month", the 15th and the last day of the month are never grayed out.
"Twice a month": Freedom fills in the next 15th or month end. With "Second payday (optional)" blank, you pay on the 15th and the last day of each month, so your first payday must be one of them. With a second payday, the first can be any date the calendar allows, and the second must be after it and less than a month later. A payday on a weekend or holiday moves to the business day before.
First pay period end: it matches your first payday until you change it, and can be up to 30 days earlier. For "Monthly", it can be as late as the month end, so a payday on the 25th can cover the whole month. For "Quarterly" and "Annually", Freedom sets it to the last day of the quarter or year your first payday falls in.
If you see an error
"Cannot create the pay schedule." followed by a reason: fix the problem it describes and click "Confirm and save" again.
"An error occurred while creating this record.", or "Failed to create pay schedule. Please try again." more than once: your pay schedule wasn't saved. Email [email protected] with that message.
After you save
On "Task complete", click the "Next" button, which names your next onboarding task, or "Back to onboarding" if none is left.
Your first pay schedule becomes the default for new workers, marked "Default payroll". Existing assignments don't change.