Introduction
Plane's Unified Payroll experience enables customers to run payroll for US (W-2) employees, international employees, and contractors worldwide, all on the same platform. If you currently use recurring contractor payments, you will find many advantages to switching to Unified Payroll. This article covers the steps and the specific benefits of making this transition.
💡 Tip: Before continuing with this article, please review How to use Unified Payroll.
Switching to Unified Payroll
All customers will be scheduled for the switch through early 2024. You'll be notified with an in-app banner and an email. The email will contain the exact date of your scheduled transition.
Once you switch to Unified Payroll, all draft and processing payments will continue to be processed like before, but all new and future payroll items will be managed in the new experience. A short transition period may require you to concurrently manage payroll using the original and new experience.
Before you transition, we recommend reviewing your current pay schedule configuration to ensure it reflects your needs.
ℹ️ Important Information: Vendors cannot be added to payroll
The Unified Payroll experience does not support vendors on payroll. If you want vendors to continue receiving recurring payments, you can convert them to contractors. You can do this before or after your scheduled migration date. If you wait to convert vendors to contractors, vendors will be automatically removed from payroll when your organization is migrated.
Please see Deciding when to add a contractor vs. a vendor to learn about the differences in product functionality between contractors and vendors.
Benefits
In addition to supporting W-2 employees, Unified Payroll offers many benefits over the original experience for contractor payroll.
Original experience | New Unified Payroll experience |
Draft payroll items are automatically created ten business days before the pay date. Before then, items are not accessible for preview or modification. | The current pay period is always available for preview and can be modified until the approval deadline. |
The exact time of day for processing payroll is not visible. | The approval deadline for any given payroll item or group of items is highly visible and displayed in your local time zone. |
The pay date does not account for bank holidays in different countries which may affect the payment turnaround time. | With the new experience, the pay date accounts for bank holidays in different countries. The pay date for those specific countries will be adjusted to avoid delays related to the holidays. |
If you change draft payroll items, you are required to reauthorize the payment. You can lose work if you navigate away and don’t authorize the payment. | The new experience enables you to make changes and return later to finish your work. |
When you change draft payroll items and re-authorize the payment, the charge to fund payroll is made within one business day. This may result in a charge for a pay date that is weeks in the future. | Payroll charges for contractors are always made four business days before the pay date, which makes cash flow more predictable. |
Once you’ve re-authorized payroll changes, you can’t change them again for that period. (Cancellations are still possible, but not changes to amounts). | You can continue to make changes up until the approval deadline. |
When managing multiple pay schedules, you must visit each one to see all scheduled payments. | Payroll items can be viewed collectively with different grouping options: pay period, pay date, and country. |
Questions? We’re here to help! You can find more of our guides here, reach out to us at support@plane.com, or use Plane's in-app chat.