NA Payroll is only one module of the HCM product suite.

The hire process is contained within the HR module and thus details on that are in those PeopleBooks. The result of hire is the creation of the Job Data records. As part of the hire process, compensation and payment processing is defined. Compensation has two major parts, salary or other rate of pay and benefits. Payment processing may be handled by Global Payroll, North American Payroll or even a third party system. Which path is defined in the Job Data records via PS_EMPLOYMENT. For North American Payroll, the payment process is centered around the creation of Paysheet data and the transactions are almost all related to creating or modifying records in this large set of tables. I am referring to PS_PAY_PAGE and all the 'descendants' of this record. Payroll process control centers around the Pay Calendar table and the closely related Balance ID tables. The cumulative results of payroll processing are recorded in the Pay Balance tables. The payroll calculation process starts with basic earnings entries in Paysheet and calculates additional earnings, benefit deductions garnishment deductions and payroll tax deductions. All three of these items may be outside of the 'Gross to Net' process since PeopleSoft provides for memo entries and employer expense items in the Paysheet structures. Gross to net refers to starting with the total earnings and subtracting employee deductions and withheld taxes to arrive at the net pay to the employee. Paychecks normally are processed in batches which are controlled by the Pay Calendar -- in conjunction with Pay Run ID. They also may be processed individually as off-cycle checks directly with the Paysheet pages or via the on-line check process. In either case they still must be tied to an open Pay Calendar as part of the overall process control. Pay checks are processed through three steps. Paysheet creation -- including batch option, manual entry, and including feeds to existing Paysheet. Next, the Gross to Net calculation -- Pay Calc. Finally, Pay Confirm finalizes the calculation and updates Pay Balance records. The calculation rules for deductions are defined in the Benefit Program tables (Base Benefits). Garnishment calculation rules are defined in the Garn ID tables. The calculation rules for payroll taxes are defined in the State and Local tax tables. Especially for taxes, but also for deductions, a good portion of the rules are defined within the COBOL programs. Many of the calculation and on-line validation rules are also dependent upon employee details which are defined in various tables that are descendants of PS_EMPLOYMENT -- Employee Tax Data, Employee Garn Data and Employee Benefit enrollment. Within these broad strokes are many setup and process choices -- knowing all of them is a major undertaking. Just learning the navigation can be a daunting task. I hope this will help guide you to a better understanding.