Run payroll and manage compensation

Payroll lives under HR & Payroll → Payroll & Compensation. The flow is: define salary grades once, raise a payroll period, let the system calculate each person's pay, review it, then approve the deduction.

1. Salary grades

Open HR & Payroll → Payroll & Compensation → Salary Grades. A grade defines the pay spine:

• Name and base salary
• Housing, transport and duty allowances
• Overtime eligible
• Custom allowances — a repeater with a name, type (percentage or amount) and value
• Custom deductions — the same shape for recurring deductions

Assign a grade to each employee on the Employees form. Grades are what payroll uses to work out pay.

2. Create a payroll period

1. Open HR & Payroll → Payroll & Compensation → Payroll Periods.
2. Click New Payroll Period.
3. Give it a name (for example "March 2026"), set the start and end dates, and choose the bank account the salaries will be deducted from.
4. Save.

The period starts empty, with a status you can see at a glance in the table.

3. Calculate and populate salaries

On the period's row, click Calculate & Populate Salaries. You can narrow the run by salary grade, department, employment type, designation and gender — useful when you pay different staff groups on different dates. The system creates a payroll line for each matching employee using their grade, allowances and deductions.

4. Review before approving

Click View Ledger & Breakdown to inspect the calculated lines. Check for missing employees, wrong grades and unexpected deductions before money moves.

5. Approve and deduct

When the figures are right, click Approve & Deduct Salaries and confirm the bank account to deduct from. The totals post to your accounts and the period is marked approved.

If you approved something by mistake, Undo reverses the period's posting (subject to your permissions) so you can correct it and re-run.

Run payroll only after attendance and leave are up to date — deductions and absence handling use the records already in the system.

Staff loans

Open HR & Payroll → Payroll & Compensation → Staff Loans to track salary advances and loans. A loan records:

• the employee and loan type (Salary Advance, Emergency Loan, Device Loan, Other)
• the bank account it is paid from
• the principal amount, repayment method, interest rate and interest type
• the total repayable, balance remaining and the monthly deduction (fixed amount or percentage of the total)

Payroll deducts the loan instalment from the employee's pay until the balance clears, so keep the remaining balance accurate when you receive ad-hoc repayments.