Answer
Lightning Payroll generates pay-related reports by collecting any completed pays falling on or within the input date range. These will rely on the Pay Run End Date by default, unless the Use Processed Date option is ticked, in which case it will generate reports based on the Processed Date instead.
If you are comparing reports (from within Lightning Payroll or from other sources) and finding the amounts are not matching up, this could be due to the incorrect pay runs being included when inputting the Start Date and End Date, or due to using/not using the Use Processed Date option.
It is important to check that you are using the correct dates for the pay run/s you’re trying to run a report for, as well as checking whether you would need to use the Use Processed Date option. Please note that all Single Touch Payroll amounts and reports are gathered by processed date.
(Pay run: 26/09/2022 – 09/10/2022)
Using the example above, when trying to generate a report with the Use Processed Date option ticked, the report that will be generated will not include information for the pay run shown. Rather, it will generate a report based on pay runs with a Processed Date which falls within those specified date ranges. This is because the Processed Date falls a day after the pay run End Date, and in turn, the program will try to generate figures for pays with a Processed Date within the input dates, rather than the pay run that has an end date within that pay run, as Use Processed Date option has been enabled.
This can be easily overcome by ensuring that you’re entering the correct date parameters (making sure that your start and end dates match with the pay run/s that you’re trying to generate reports for), as well as checking whether you’re using the Processed Date or Pay Run End Date option for gathering the report data.
Using the above configuration, in this circumstance, will generate a report for the pay run with the end date of 09/10/2022, despite having the date ranges fall outside of the pay run itself. This is because the pay run ending 09/10/2022 has a Processed Date of 10/10/2022, and the Use Processed Date option has been enabled.