Why is January's YTD statutory summary amounts higher than it should be?

Scenario: I am currently in the post-payroll stage for January payroll processing. When checking through the payslips, I noticed that under the Statutory Summary box on the lower left side of the payslip, the accumulated Year-to-Date contribution amounts are doubled the current monthly amount. As January should be the first payroll in the year, the YTD amount should tally to the Current amount. Why does this error happen?

Possible cause: A test pay run might have been run previously and most likely it is for a payroll period further along the same year. Follow the steps below to check if this is the cause. 

Step 1

Let's take a sample year report of the said employee. On your left icon panel, click on Report > Payroll > YTD Employee Statistic. This report is a payroll summary report of one particular employee categorized by payroll elements and by month in the year of selection. 

Step 2

Select the employee under Employee Name, and then select the current year under Payroll Year. Click Generate Report.

Step 3

The report will now load, as shown in the screenshot below. As you can see highlighted in the red box, there has been a future month payroll randomly ran for August 2021 - too far ahead, as currently, it's only January 2021. This pay run could have been a test pay run randomly ran before January 2021 payroll was closed recently. As the August 2021 payroll was chronologically run first before January 2021, hence January is technically considered the second-month payroll, thus resulting in the doubled statutory contributions amount in January 2021. 

Note: If the August payroll is intended, try deleting and rerunning the August payroll only for the specific employee. Rerunning the payroll will tell the system that the August payroll comes after January payroll.