A payroll calendar is a schedule that outlines the dates for processing payroll, including pay periods, pay dates, and deadlines for submitting timesheets or adjustments.
Setting up a payroll calendar is crucial for ensuring timely and accurate employee payments and for maintaining compliance with labour laws and regulations.
To do this, follow the steps below.
Set up calendar
To set up a payroll calendar, follow the steps in the relevant section below.
Portal
Click Settings then under Company Parameters, click Calendars.
From the Company drop-down menu, select the relevant company number.
Back Office
Click CorePay then click Reference.
Click Payroll Calendar.
To select the relevant company number, click the query
icon.
About payroll calendar
Every payroll company must have a payroll calendar. Each calendar will have at least 52 entries representing each week of the year. If a week 53 or 54 arises, the payroll calendar must include corresponding additional entries.
For further information on this, check when to add a week 53, 54, 56 a fortnight 27, or 13 four weekly period.
A calendar will always include at least the current year and the next year. The year-end process, which runs in payroll, generates the calendar for the current year plus two additional years. For example, in 2025, the calendar will hold details for 2025 and 2026, while the year-end process will create a calendar for 2027. Note that historical calendar data is stored indefinitely.
Each calendar week is assigned to a financial period and a 4/4/5 period. For Irish payrolls, these will align with the tax year (January to December), where January is month 01, February is month 02, and so on.
A financial period typically consists of 4 or 5 payroll weeks, meaning a quarter generally consists of 13 weeks. In the sample calendar below, weeks 1 to 5 are assigned to month 01 (January).
Description of various fields
The Payroll Calendar screen includes several fields, each with a specific description.
Below is a list of these fields and their corresponding descriptions.
Week Number: The calendar has one entry per payroll week for the current year, formatted as YYYYWW, where YYYY is the year and WW is the week number. A standard year will contain 52 entries. Should a week 53 or fortnight 27 occur, the payroll user must add these additional entries.
4/4/5 Period & Financial Period: This is the month number corresponding to which a week is assigned and will generally contain either 4 or 5 payroll weeks. A quarter comprises 13 weeks, resulting in 52 tax weeks for the standard year. Since the tax and calendar years are synchronized, both fields reflect the same value.
Weekend Date: This indicates the end date of the week for which employees are paid.
Production Week: This is no longer used in payroll but may be utilized for reporting purposes by some organizations. For example, if an organization’s financial year is from August to July, the production week could be set to 202501 for each August week.
Month Sequence: This counts the weeks in a month and ranges from 1 to 4 or 5, depending on the number of weeks assigned to each financial period. This field does not affect payroll.
Quarter Sequence: This is marked as Y to indicate the end of a quarter. This information is relevant only for quarterly pay groups and does not impact payroll.
Fortnightly Indicator: This indicates the week in which a fortnightly payroll is due and is usually set to ‘Y’ on even weeks.
4 Weekly Indicator: Used solely for 4-weekly payrolls, this identifies the week number in which a 4-weekly payroll is run, resulting in 13 payrolls run per year for a 4-weekly group.
Monthly Indicator: This identifies the last week in each month (financial period) and applies only to monthly payrolls. It indicates the week through which the monthly payroll will run. This field must be set to ‘Y’ for the last entry of each financial period. In the screenshot below, Month 01 ends on 202505, so the Month Sequence is set to Y.
Multi Run: This denotes a week in which multiple pay periods are processed in a single payroll run. It is typically used in weekly pay groups where payroll wants to pay an additional week or more in the current week. For example, during Christmas, payroll may want to run two weeks in one; in this case, you would set multi run to 1. This identifies the number of additional periods to be paid in the current run and will determine the additional tax credits, cut-offs, and PRSI credits to be applied in the current run.
Additional Screen Options: In addition to standard payroll calendar details, two options are available to allow users to build/rebuild a calendar or to amend the period end dates for a selected range of payroll periods.
Amend Dates: When a calendar is installed or configured in payroll, the period end date corresponds to the date up to which employees are paid. This date remains constant throughout the calendar. However, if a user needs to change that date, the Amend Dates option allows them to add or subtract a number of days from the current date. Users can also specify a range of periods for the changes to take effect.
Changes to calendar dates impact payroll, so caution is necessary. For monthly pay groups, salaries and permanent allowances are generated for the calendar month (i.e., the August payroll is generated from August 1st to August 31st) regardless of calendar dates. Weekly and fortnightly dates determine the payment cutoff date.