Arcoro is pleased to announce a series of Arcoro Payroll updates to enhance the Payroll experience with the General Ledger. The General Ledger feature provides a way for administrators to map individual payroll line items (e.g., hourly earnings, reimbursements, benefit deductions) to general ledger accounts and then export the data for use with financial reporting systems.

Enhancements

The General Ledger feature consists of two main components: the administrator mapping experience and the report that lets an administrator review payroll data as its been categorized by the mapping.

Admin Mapping Experience - Main

• The admin mapping experience can be found by navigating to Setup > General Ledger.
  

• The General Ledger link takes you to the General Ledger main page (shown in Figure 1).  On the main page, you will find a top section titled “Default Debit and Credit Accounts” and below that, a section to view and manage mappings.  If an admin has no mappings created, they will just see the “Add Mapping” button.

  

• There are two sections in the general ledger main page.
  • The Default Debit and Credit Accounts section can be expanded and collapsed by a user.  By default, there are no account numbers entered in these fields.  Here, an admin can enter credit and debit account numbers and save these values.  These defaults are used to map to payroll transactions that don’t have other mappings set up.   You can think of them as fallback mappings.
  • The mapping main grid, which displays below the default debit and credit section, shows an overview of all created mappings.  There are several fields shown on the main grid.
    1. Actions – A user can choose to edit or delete a mapping.  A user edits a mapping by clicking the pencil icon and deletes a mapping by clicking the trash can.

    2. Group – This represents the high-level category of the payroll transaction that has been mapped.  There are four groups.  A definition these four groups is shown in Figure 2.  The four groups are:

       • Wages and Earnings
       • Contractor Earnings
       • Deductions
       • Benefits

       

    3. Type – The Types column offers a more granular categorization of the payroll transaction.

    4. Subtypes – Subtypes offer even more granularity to map to specific accounts than type.   Examples of subtypes are shown in Figure 3 below.

       

    5. Segment – Within a given type/sub-type combination, administrators need the ability to segment their mappings by important employee dimensions.  An administrator can segment by one of five dimensions.​  By segmenting, an admin is breaking out a type by the dimension they choose.  For example, if an admin segments earnings by job, then they would set a different general ledger account number for Job A, compared to JobB, Job C, etc. 
    6. Entry Type – The entry type field defines what type of general ledger account the mapping is routed towards.  It can have three values: debit, credit & debit, and credit.
    7. Status – This field states if the mapping is active or inactive.
    8. The mapping main page is paginated and can be searched by a user by typing in the search box above the column values.  The mapping grid cannot be filtered.

Admin Mapping Experience – Add and Edit Mapping

• Once an administrator comes to the General Ledger Mapping page, the main task they will be looking to complete is to add or edit a mapping.  These workflows function the same way so I will cover both in one section.
• To begin the process of adding a mapping a user can click the “Add Mapping” button at the top of the main grid
  
• Once a user clicks the add mapping button they are taken to the mapping details page.
  
• The first step is to choose a mapping group.  The four choices are: Wages and Earnings, Deductions, Benefits, and Contractor Earnings.  Once a user has chosen a mapping group they will be shown available types within that group.  In the screenshot below, I have chosen a mapping group of wages and earnings and see the relevant types shown in the next field.
  
• The next step is to choose a subtype.  Based on the type chosen, subtypes may display.  In the screenshot below, the type is employee earnings and once this is chosen there are several options under this bucket that the administrator can choose.  For example, the admin may want to map only hourly earnings.
  
• After the user has chosen a subtype, they add their default account number.  The default account number only accepts numbers and letters.  In this example, the default account number of 75891 (shown in the screenshot below) is the account the admin is choosing to map hourly and overtime earnings for employees to.  This mapping will be shown in the general ledger report once a user runs it for a given payroll.  The account number field can be debit, credit, or debit and credit.  The field label depends on the type of transaction the admin is mapping. 
  
• At this step, the administrator can also add an optional memo with the mapping.  The memo is an informational note the user writes to let themselves or others know what the mapping is doing in plain language. 
• Once the mapping is saved it will show up in the main grid. 
  

Admin Mapping Experience – Segments

• Segments offer a way to break out a given mapping by a set of pre-defined dimensions.  The segment dimensions available are: Job, Location (Employee), Location (Work), Cost Code, and Department.   Not all segment dimensions are available for all types.  In the screenshot below, I show the dimensions available within employee earnings and listed are definitions of each segment option.

  • Job – The job associated with an employee’s earnings
  • Location (Employee) – the primary location assigned to that employee
  • Location (Work) – the location associated with an employee’s earnings
  • Cost Code – the cost code associated with an employee’s earnings
  • Department – the department that the employee is assigned to.

  

• An example helps clarify how segments are used.  Let’s say that an administrator has created a mapping to route all employee earnings to a debit account of 1234.   Within this mapping, they would like employee earnings from the construction operations department to be routed to a different account number than employee earnings from the compliance department.  In this case, the admin would choose to segment the mapping by the department dimension (shown below).  Once the admin chooses department as the segment dimension, they are shown a form to add additional account numbers.
  
  
• Now, with this set up any employee in the compliance department that has hourly or overtime earnings will have earnings associated with account number 8989 in the general ledger report.  Any employee from the construction operations department with hourly or overtime earnings will see these earnings routed to account number 1212.  All other departments will have hourly and overtime earnings routed to the default account number.

 General Ledger Report

• The General Ledger Mapping feature will include a report that allows admins to export the results of their mappings for a payroll.  The report will be accessible from the reports tab within the payroll navigation.
  
• The report will show all transactions by payroll for a given time frame.  Each of these transactions will be shown with the proper mapping information set up in the administrative mapping section.
• For example, if Patrick Allen paid $100 for his medical benefit contribution in a weekly payroll and this was mapped to account number 4545 in the admin section, the user will see the following record

• The report will map all payroll transactions for any paid payroll in a given date range.
  
• In the screenshot above, the range chosen will output all paid payrolls completed between 1/1/26 and 1/31/26. 

FAQs

1. Why would a payroll admin use the General Ledger mapping feature?
   • The feature allows a payroll administrator to correctly categorize payroll costs according to their financial reporting system rules.  This process is important for finance teams because it enables them to do things like run cost analysis reports, compare budget to actual costs, and prepare accurate financial statements.  These reports and different analysis activities are all run from an accounting system or ERP, which is where the company’s general ledger is maintained.
2. How would an admin use the General Ledger mapping feature?
   • First, an administrator sets up mappings in the payroll administrative section.  This process takes some time as they need to define what accounts and business rules to use to define these mappings.
   • Next, an administrator will validate the mapping information with a previously run payroll.  This will be done by using the general ledger report.  If they see any updates that need to be made, they can return to the administrative section and edit their mappings.
   • Finally, once the mappings are created as the administrator wants them they would pull the general ledger report for paid payrolls, which can then be input into their accounting system of record.
3. Does the General Ledger report show payrolls in a draft status?
   • No, the report will only show account mapping information for payrolls in a paid status.
4. Why are some mapping types categorized as debits and some as credits?
   • The reason for this is due to accounting best practices and guidelines.  Typically, expense accounts like gross wages, and employer payroll taxes are debits and liabilities like wages payable are credits. Typically,your organization’s accounting team should understand this before even using the feature.
5. Do all mapping types have subtypes?
   • No, not all types have subtypes.  Below are the types that have subtypes defined:
     • Employee Earnings
     • Employee Non-Hourly Earnings
     • Post-tax deductions
     • Employer-paid benefits
6. Can an administrator map a general ledger type more than once?
   • No, there are validation rules in place in the administrative UI to ensure admins cannot map the same type of payroll transaction twice.  The reason behind this rule is that if this were possible our system, and by extension a payroll administrator, would not know what account number to properly associate with a given transaction and this would create inaccurate financial records.