Week in arrears

babyemily

I know its probably a stupid question but if an employee is paid a week in arrears, when they leave that employment are they owed one weeks wages or two?

Thank you

SueC_2

A week in arrears just means that you get paid a week later than the week during which the hours were worked. So, for example (assuming a Monday to Friday working week):

If your first week of work commenced on Monday 2nd June, you would receive your first pay packet on Friday 13th June. This pay would relate to the hours worked between the 2nd and 6th June.

The hours worked during 9th-13th June would be paid on Friday 20th June, and so on.

When your employment terminated, you would receive your final pay one week after leaving, and this pay would relate to your final week's work.

Just to confuse the issue slightly, working "a week in hand" isn't the same as being paid a week in arrears. If you work a week in hand, then your first week's pay is set aside and not paid to you until your employment terminates. In this case, yes, your final pay would be for two weeks - the first and last week of your employment.

As far as I know, working a week in hand is incredibly rare these days. Being paid in arrears is pretty much the norm though - it allows a period of time for the payroll to be processed and for bank transfers etc to go through.

HTH.



Edited to add:

Just to confuse things a bit more, when paid MONTHLY in arrears, you are typically paid at the end of the month worked, not at the end of the following month (which would mean effectively a two month period without pay at the beginning of employment).

I imagine this is because weekly paid employees tend to see some variance in the number of hours worked and therefore the amount paid, whereas monthly paid employees tend to be salaried and therefore their pay isn't dependent on the submission of timesheets etc. A huge generalisation obviously, but that's always been my assumption.

getmore4less

SueC wrote: »

Edited to add:

Just to confuse things a bit more, when paid MONTHLY in arrears, you are typically paid at the end of the month worked, not at the end of the following month (which would mean effectively a two month period without pay at the beginning of employment).

I imagine this is because weekly paid employees tend to see some variance in the number of hours worked and therefore the amount paid, whereas monthly paid employees tend to be salaried and therefore their pay isn't dependent on the submission of timesheets etc. A huge generalisation obviously, but that's always been my assumption.

With monthly you also get the pay period not in sync with the calendar

So you have the pay period and the pay day

the pay period may be calendar month or 16th-15th or some other date.

the pay date might be last thurs/friday or a set day say 28th

The key being if the pay day falls on a non banking day unless the contract specifies otherwise it should be an earlier working day.


and to confuse even further most companies also have a cutoff date for thing like overtime enhanced rates and expences that are paid through payroll which can be a differnt date to the above.