System Settings

• The System Settings are accessed via:
  • Latest (left-hand) menu:  System Configuration > System Settings
  • Pre-2025 (top) menu: System General System Configuration System Settings

• Licence Warning: Each Ciphr HR solution is licensed for a specific number of employee records. An alert will be presented when the limit of Current Licences is being approached. For example, if your system is licensed for 400 employee records and the warning is set to 10, then you will receive a warning that you are reaching your limit when you have 390 licenses in use

• Organisational Code: This is retained for legacy purposes related to a previous version of HR is for Ciphr only
• Report Text: Text that would like to appear in the footer area on all the standard reports, eg HR Confidential
• Tax Reference: This shows your tax office reference number
• Numbering Scheme Type: This specifies which property drives how the employee number is generated. It can be driven by a default, Record Group or Payroll group
• Use Job File?: The Jobs File contains a template for each post within the organisation. The slider can be set to indicate whether the Jobs File in the system is being used. Although it is possible to use HR without the Jobs File, it is recommended that, to take full advantage of all the functionality within HR, the Jobs File is used
• Allow Duplicate Employee Number?: You can choose whether the system will allow Employee Numbers to be used more than once
• Calculate FTE?: The basis on which to calculate Full Time Equivalent (FTE)
  • Grade: Where employees have salary ranges/spine points, and the FTE is to be calculated against the associated full-time hours
  • Jobs File: Where each job role has different fixed full-time hours
  • Fixed: Where every full-time person works the same number of hours across the whole organisation, the system will calculate FTE against Normal Hours in Week field at the bottom right of this page Tab
  • Variable: If this is selected, then there will be a list presented on the relevant field in Job and Pay where you can select from the above choices on a record-by-record basis

• Default FTE Calculation Method: This will appear if you select Variable as the Calculate FTE? method above, so you can choose a Default method to appear in Job and Pay records
• Decimal Places To Display for FTE: How many decimal places FTE should be displayed
• Fixed Hours for FTE: This is the number of full-time hours used in the Fixed FTE calculation method. This can be left as 0 if you wish to have an option to record FTE as 1, regardless of the individual's Job and Pay hours
• Ciphr Payroll: If you are using a Paylink, it will be specified here
• Bradford Factor Warning Level: If the Bradford Factor is not being used, this should be set to 0. The level indicated can be used to link to a notification (configured upon request) to trigger when an employee's absence level reaches the warning level
• Normal Weeks in Year: This is usually set to 52, although sectors may differ. Some organisations use 52.143 for accuracy
• Normal Hours in Week: The most common number of full-time hours per week. This will form the default number of hours

• These are the fields that combine to form the Name field. They determine how the employee will appear in the system

• Fields for individual aspects of the employee name, eg initials, forename, surname, etc, can be selected separately for report design, for example:

• The Known As field is used to display a familiar name if someone is generally not known by their official forename, and can be selected as the Name Field 1 if preferred

• Organisational Unit 1-5 is terminology that is used within the organisation to represent levels and is controlled by the associated Code Tables, whose name is determined by the Org Unit 1 name chosen when the system was set up (e.g. Department)
• Org Unit 1 represents the smallest grouping, through to 5, which is the highest level, eg Department, Division, Group

• An example structure to illustrate the Org Units is shown below

• Org Unit 1 is an important Job and Pay Code Table (click guide link for more details)

Default entries related to fields will auto-populate when a new record is added. The fields can be changed on an individual record basis as required, but the Defaults can be left blank if preferred.

• Default Record Group: A new employee will automatically be assigned to the Default Record Group unless an alternative group is selected
• All Staff Set Description: Select the name that will represent that the All Staff set (group) filter has been selected when searching for records
• Current Staff Set Description: The descriptive name for the set of Current Staff
• Leavers Set Description: The descriptive name for the set of Leavers
• Nationality: The default nationality when creating a Personal Details record
• Default Currency: The default currency when creating a Job and Pay record
• System Home Currency: The default home currency when creating a Job and Pay currency
• Starter Reason: The default reason that is populated in the Reason field of the first Job and Pay record when a new employee is recorded
• Normal Rounding: This relates to legacy functionality from an older version of HR and can be disregarded
• Terms and Conditions: The default set of Terms and Conditions to be applied to an employee
• Default Absence Year: The Default Absence Year that will be applied to a new starter
• Default Holiday Entitlement: The default Holiday Entitlement that will be applied to a new starter

• The settings that are selected in this tab form the defaults on a system-wide basis, with dropdown field options from various code tables

• This is how the system will check if data has been entered correctly for the fields listed. They can be set to UK validation or Off (no validation)
• If UK validation is selected, then data input into these fields will be validated against normal UK 'rules': eg the bank sort code must be six digits with dashes as required: 12-34-56

• Product Name: The name that is entered here is what the system will be known as and will appear on the browser window tab at the top of the HR screen and in system emails. This can form a nice engagement activity to ask your people to suggest names when implementing your system
• Summary Maximum Records: Used in Timesheets (optional module) and Reports pages as the number of records to display in the grid/table (maximum of 20)
• Maximum Job Levels: This relates to legacy functionality from an older version of HR and can be disregarded
• CSI Account Expire Days (added to leave date): The number of days the account access is given after an employee's leave date, before it expires and removes access
• HR Email Address: The email address to which queries will be sent on selecting Company > Contact Us
• Email Verification from Address: When a verification is received, this is the email address that it will come from

• Using Email?: If this is disabled, then no verification emails will be sent from HR

This tab can be disregarded as it relates to legacy HR functionality.

• Default User Role: Newly created records will automatically be assigned to this User Role