Hi and welcome @Leigh Janse Van Rensburg!

For payroll set-up, I would recommend creating one single work item under the client for the one single instance of payroll (whether that is a weekly or bi-weekly payroll). This way you can set up the correct work start and due dates, adjust the name to accurately reflect the naming structure you desire. Then you would want to create recurring work from this singular instance. 

Here’s how our payroll is set up in these instances:
Work Start Date (date we would like the work to appear as “ready to start” in Karbon
Work Due Date (date our team member has to complete the payroll)
^ keep the name generic for now (ie: “Payroll”)

Then after creating the above instance of payroll, we create recurring work, adjusting the work to repeat every 1 or 2 weeks (depending on weekly or bi-weekly frequency). Then we adjust the naming structure as follows:

Recurring Naming Structure:
Payroll “Work Start Date +/- # of days to get name to reflect Check Start Date - (dash) Work Due Date +/- # of days to get name to reflect Check End Date”
^This is a bit nuanced and is more customer, so we check key dates in Gusto/ADP to ensure we have the specific check dates correct for the customer when creating their payroll work items.

Below is how this is reflected under the Client’s work tab:
 

This gives our team one single payroll work item per pay period to track any applicable communications and have better oversight of the deliverable.”

Does this help?

Thanks very much, @Kim Clemmer This is helpful. 
One thing I am unsure about: in our current system, the monthly employee tax return is included in the payroll work. We would not want another separate work item for this, but I suppose this is inevitable?

For Monthly Payroll, this works nicely, since it is simply another task, but for weekly, it would only need to be a task at the end of the month. 

@Leigh Janse Van Rensburg if there’s a separate schedule/timing, especially for compliance, then it’s best to set that up with it’s own work and repeating series - it will make it much clearer to track, and avoid things like “if it’s the last payroll of the month do this, if not, cancel this task”.

You could set up separate work types (e.g. Payroll - recurring; Payroll - compliance or something) to help with filtering as well.

When you set up repeats, pay attention to how far in advance the work creates - if you choose too long a time range, you will end up with a lot of future work items that will be noise when looking at dashboards! For weekly work, creating 2 weeks or 1 month in advance is what I usually go with.

@Leigh Janse Van Rensburg For work items like this where there is one (1) week which will have an additional process (i.e. monthly employee tax return) we add a separate section to the repeating work and in the Section Name identify it as Monthly Only.

Each week which does not involve this section we just check it off as completed. This way it does show up for the occurrence it is needed in and can be worked on. Keeps from having to have a separate work item for just this.

As an example, we have quarterly employer tax returns we file for a client. The work item has a section called Year-End filing containing the procedures performed at year-end only (ie. W2/3 and 940).The section shows up each quarter, however it is only used at year-end. Due dates for these are the same as for the quarterlies so it does not create any issues doing it this way. Your mileage may vary depending on the due dates and how the work is set up.

Great, thanks so much for this.