What is a paygroup?
A paygroup is essentially just a pay period. You will want to make a different paygroup for any employees who get paid at different times or have different pay periods.
Paygroups are also where approvals of payroll occur, therefore you may want to create a different paygroup for each manager that has employees under him/her and approves payroll for those employees.
Each group will have a frequency: weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly. Upon the creation of these paygroups, you will only specify the start date of the pay period, as it will calculate the ending date of the pay period based on the pay frequency selected. The ‘1st Pay Check Date’ field is to specify what date employees receive their paycheck. All pay periods data will be tracked in the pay group.
You will attach employees and managers to each paygroup you create:
Employees: Each employee can only be assigned to one pay group, as they only have one pay period
Managers: Managers assigned to the Pay group have access to employee info in that pay group and can approve and export payroll. A manager can have different permissions/access to these things which can be controlled in the user settings.