1. Select the option to automatically reduce a court fine

1. Go to the Payroll menu and choose Pay items. The Pay items page appears.
2. In the Deductions section, find the court fine, click the ellipsis and choose Edit. The Edit deduction window appears.

3. Select the option Reducing balance deduction. Once saved, you won't be able to deselect this option.

4. Click Save.

5. Repeat from step 2 for any other court fine deductions.

 2. Enter the balance owed on the fine

1. Go to the Payroll menu and choose Employees. The Employees page appears.
2. Click the name of an employee who has the court fine deduction you updated in '1. Select the option to automatically reduce a court fine', above.
3. Click the Pay items – earnings & deductions tab.
4. Enter the current amount owed on the court fine in the Balance owed ($) field.
   
5. Click Save.
6. Repeat from step 2 for any other employees you need to update.

What happens to the deducted money?

Money deducted from employee pays needs to be paid to the applicable third party. For example, court fines are paid to the Ministry of Justice. Check with the third party regarding their accepted payment methods.

You can make a record of these payments in MYOB Essentials using a Spend money transaction (Banking menu > Spend money).

Here's an example spend money transaction for a court fines payment. Note the following:

• In the Pay from account we've chosen the MYOB Essentials bank account the payment is coming from.
• In the To field we've chosen who the payment went to (we set up a supplier record for this purpose).
• In the Allocate to field we've chosen the MYOB Payroll Deductions account.

Do reducing balance deductions affect reporting?

Reducing balance deductions don't affect reporting in any way. The only places the balances are shown are:

• the Employee details page
• the Pay run page
• the employee's pay slip

So reducing balance deductions are reported the same way as any other deduction.

What happens when the balance owed reaches zero?

Deductions automatically stop at $0. The final deduction will reduce to ensure it doesn't exceed the balance owed.

For example, the balance remaining is $50 but the deduction amount is $100, the deduction amount will reduce to $50 so that the balance will reach $0.

The only way the balance can go into negative is by someone processing a manual deduction.

For example:

• Sam has a $100 deduction per pay and the balance is $400.
• After 4 pay runs, the balance reaches $0.
• At the 5th pay run, in spite of the balance being $0, I decide to deduct a further $100 and I enter this manually on the pay run.
• After this pay run, the balance becomes -$100 and the balance on the employee details page will show -$100.
• When I do the 6th pay run, the deduction on the pay run will again show $0 (because there is nothing to be deducted) and the employee details page still shows -$100 because that is the balance.

Can I change the account my deductions are allocated to?

Deductions withheld from pays are allocated to a liability account in MYOB Essentials called Payroll deductions. This is a system account which cannot be changed.

You can find this account by clicking your business name and choosing Accounts list, then scrolling down to Liability > Current Liabilities.

What if the deduction amount varies between employees?

You can set a different deduction amount for each employee when assigning their the court fine deduction pay item. See Assign the pay item to an employee above for details.