Attendance & Payroll - Getting started

1What Attendance & Payroll does #

Attendance & Payroll keeps your people, counts what they worked, prices it, and pays it - and every step ends up in the books of InvoiceNET, because each employee is a ledger account and every pay bill, salary payment and expense claim is a voucher.

Pay is always worked out the same way: a quantity (days, hours, pieces, leave) multiplied by a rate (from the pay template), plus or minus the pay heads (allowances, PF, ESI, loan recoveries). The chain of records is:

Beside the main chain run three smaller ones: leave (policies, accrual, requests, approvals, balances), expense claims (a claim that posts a Journal when approved) and loans and advances (a recovery schedule that Auto Load takes off each bill by itself).

2Where to find help #

Help comes in three places, and they carry the same words.

• On every screen: press Help at the top right to open the panel beside the form, and again to hide it. It is written for that screen: an overview, your first record step by step, what every field means, the keys, why a pick-list may be empty, and the rules the screen and the server enforce - the reasons a save or a delete is refused.
• The manual: at the foot of this page, every Attendance & Payroll screen's help, one after another. Read ahead there, train a new clerk from it, or look something up without opening the screen.
• The help search box in the header: type a word - "slab", "carry over", "bank advice" - and it finds the screens and paragraphs that mention it.

3Where things are - the Attendance & Payroll menu #

Everything sits under Attendance & Payroll in the sidebar, in groups. The three approval desks sit under Approvals, and they show only to people who hold the approve right for them.

4The Payroll Dashboard - where things stand #

Attendance & Payroll > Payroll Dashboard (under *Start here*) shows the module at a glance: employees and attendance entered today; who is on leave; leave requests and claims waiting for a decision; the latest pay period's net pay and the bills still to be paid; and salary payments not yet approved.

• Every tile has a button that opens the page or report behind the figure, and every list has one at its head - the dashboard is where you start, the page is where you act.
• A figure that wants attention reads red; one that is as it should be reads green; a plain figure is just a fact.
• The figures are for the report option you signed in with (All, Branch or Group), shown at the top as *For*, up to today.
• Cancelled entries are never counted.
• The page is read when it opens and on Refresh (F3); it does not refresh by itself. Nothing is changed there.
• The right. The dashboard has a user preference of its own: *User Can View Payroll Dashboard* in User Manager > Preferences. It starts unticked for everyone; an administrator ticks it for whoever should see it. Administrators always hold it.

5First-day setup (administrator) #

Payroll is built from the bottom up: what is counted, what it is worth, who is paid, and how. Do these once per company, in this order - each step needs the one before it. Steps 1 to 3 are for whoever looks after the database and the licence; the rest are done in the application.

1. Make sure the licence includes Payroll. Without it the menu is hidden and every screen refuses.
2. In Voucher Manager, check the voucher types payroll uses: an attendance type filed under the Attendance group, a pay-bill type whose group is PAY, the salary payment posting type (group name Salary Payment), and Journal with working numbering - expense claims post through it. Tick the transaction classes each pay-bill type may use; a batch will not run without one.
3. Create the ledger accounts: an Employee-type ledger group for the employees' personal accounts, the pay-head ledgers (tick Treat this ledger as payhead on each), the bank and cash accounts salaries are paid from, and the expense accounts claims are charged to.
4. Attendance Type: the units payroll counts. The system rows Basic Salary, Days and Weeks are already there - leave them alone. Add Attendance, OverTime, each leave type (Base Type Leave), production types and trips as you need them.
5. Department, Employee Designation and Employee Group: the labels staff are grouped by. They change no pay.
6. Holiday Settings and Shift Details: the non-working days, and each shift's hours, grace, full and half day, overtime and week off.
7. Pay-Heads: every allowance, deduction and contribution, with its calculation, slabs, rounding and employer contribution.
8. Pay Template: one per grade or category of staff. Give each a Basic Salary line (unit MONTHS) with the monthly amount, plus the other types it pays for.
9. Leave Policy for each leave type that is earned over time, and Leave Approval Rules for who approves leave. A default rule - one level, the Reporting Person - is seeded, so leave works before you write any rule.
10. Payroll Settings: walk through every group - Employee Enrollment, Attendance & Shift, Salary & Payment, Leave Policy, Leave Request & Approval - and set what differs from the defaults. See Settings that change payroll below.
11. Employee Master: the people. Then give each their Pay Scheme, Leave Policies and Shift Assignments - or use Batch Assignment to do many at once.
12. Give rights in User Manager, per user and per company: a Branch Allocation first; the payroll masters on the Masters tab; the attendance, pay-bill and salary-payment voucher types on the Vouchers tab (with Approve and Voucher Posting for those who approve and post); leave approvals, employee claims and the time-management objects on the General Transactions tab. Then tick the payroll pages on the Menu Definition tab - a user who is not an Administrator sees only what is ticked there.

6Keys that work on every payroll screen #

The keys belong to the screen you are looking at, so a second tab of the same screen keeps its own. While a dialog is open its keys win: inside Change Status, F5 applies the status rather than saving the voucher behind it.

After Save the screen stays on the record in view mode; press Add (F3) for the next one. Every field has a short hint under it, and every screen has its own Help panel.

7Every month - the short version #

1. Attendance/Leave/Production Entry: record the period's days, overtime, production and any unpaid absence. Approved leave is already there - it posts itself. Make sure every entry is posted (and Approved, if your settings demand it).
2. Batch Pay Bill Preparation: pick the voucher type, the period and the transaction class, narrow who is covered, press Preview who is covered, check the projected register, then Start (F5). The Salary Register opens by itself; print or export it.
3. Correct what needs correcting. A batch's bills are read-only one by one, so a wrong month is redone: move the batch's bills to Cancelled with the batch's Change Status (F7), fix the cause, and run a new batch.
4. Salary Payment: set the date, tick the batch, Prepare lines, choose Bank Transfer or Cash and the account paid from, check the amounts, Save (F5), then Approve / Reject (F7). Approval posts the payment voucher. For a bank transfer, Bank Advice (F8) gives the bank its file.
5. Payroll Notifications: pick the batch, tick the employees and the channels, and Send.

Once a year, or as often as your policies accrue, run Leave Accrual Processing - Preview, then Post - and tick Year close after the last run of a leave year.

8The small masters - department, designation, group, holiday #

These four are labels and calendars. None of them sets anybody's pay, but reports group by them and payroll reads the holiday calendar. All four work the same way: the page opens in Add mode, Enter walks from field to field and lands on Save, and after Save the record stays on screen in View mode.

Department

Department Name is the only required field and must be unique - employees are linked by it. Department Head and No. of Employees are notes you type; neither is linked to anything or kept up to date for you. Renaming a department keeps the record, so employees stay attached. A department that employees, pay-bill batches or fixed assets still use can not be deleted - rename it instead.

Employee Designation

Designation is required and unique. Designation Category files it under a standard grouping; you may pick one or type your own. One category matters to the software: a designation filed under Sales Manager makes its holder a CRM sales manager, who sees every executive's CRM records. A designation in use can not be deleted - rename it instead.

Employee Group

Groups form a tree. A primary group is at the top and has no parent; any other group names its Under Group. Make the top group first, then the groups under it. Renaming a parent carries its children with it, a group can not sit under itself, and a group that still has children refuses to be deleted - the message says how many.

Holiday Settings

One row per day off. Holiday Date is required and can appear only once. Write the occasion in Description, and switch Repeats every year on for a fixed-date holiday; a festival that moves each year is entered each year with the switch off. Attendance processing and shift overtime rules read this list by date. Nothing stops a delete, so correct the calendar before a period is processed.

9Attendance types - what payroll counts #

An attendance type is one countable thing: a day of attendance, an hour of overtime, a leave day, a produced piece, a trip. Attendance entries record quantities of types, pay templates price them, and payroll multiplies the two.

The seeded System rows - Basic Salary, Days, Weeks - are the backbone of the salary calculation. They are not offered on the attendance entry screen and should not be changed. A type that templates, entries, policies or requests still use can not be deleted.

10Shifts and shift assignment #

Shift Details

A shift is the working day attendance is measured against. Shift Name and Short Name are both required and unique; the short name is what compact registers print.

• In Time / Out Time bound the day; Break Out / Break In is the unpaid break inside it. In Grace / Out Grace are minutes of lateness or early leaving forgiven.
• Min Full-day Hrs and Min Half-day Hrs are worked out from the times as you type, and stay editable. They decide what a day earns.
• Week Off is the weekly off day for this shift. A new shift takes it from the first day in the Week-Off Days setting while Default Week Off for new shifts is on; otherwise it starts as Sunday.
• Attendance Types Awarded: what a full day, a half day and overtime earn - typically Present, Half Day and an OT type.
• Crosses midnight for a night shift, so a 21:00 in and a 05:30 out are one night's work. The Allow overnight shifts setting can forbid it.
• OT eligible, the OT window and the conversion hours set how overtime is counted; the two max-hours fields cap week-off and holiday work.
• Is Inactive retires a shift: it leaves the pick-lists but keeps its history. A shift that assignments, rotations or work centres use can not be deleted - retire it instead.

The server checks the times on every save: Out Time can never equal In Time, the break must lie inside the shift, and the half day can not exceed the shift. Maximum shift duration caps the span; Warn on duplicate shift timings asks before saving a shift with the same times as another.

Shift Assignment

Pick an employee - or press Unassigned (F4) for the employees who have no shift yet - and keep their history: one row per shift change, each with its effective date. Attendance takes the row whose date is the latest on or before the day. A move to another shift is a new row; the old one stays as the record of when it applied. Only active shifts are offered; Default shift for new assignments pre-fills new rows, and Block assigning inactive shifts makes the server refuse a retired one. The Employee Master's Shift Assignments... dialog edits the same rows.

11Pay heads #

A pay head is one component of pay - HRA, conveyance, PF, ESI, an incentive, a loan recovery. Each pay head is a ledger account, so create the ledger first with Treat this ledger as payhead ticked, or open the Pay-Heads page from that ledger's Pay Head... action.

1. On Pay-Heads, press Add (F3) and pick the ledger as the Name. Give a short Variable Name (PF, ESI, HRA) - it is how formulas refer to the head.
2. Choose the Payhead Type - Earnings/Benefits, Deductions/Losses, Statutory Deductions, Statutory Contributions, Reimbursement, Bonus or Gratuity - and the Base Type. Both are required. The type decides whether the head adds to or deducts from pay.
3. Choose the Cal. Type and what it is computed on (Compute On): Computed Value works on an aggregate - On Basic Payment, On Gross Earnings, On Gross Deductions, On Net Earnings, On Net Deductions, On Net Payment, or On Formula; On Attendance/Leave/Production works on one attendance type's amount; On Payhead Value works on another pay head; User Defined Value is simply the amount set for the employee.
4. Add slabs where the value depends on an amount band: each row a Min and Max amount (Max 0 = no upper limit), By Percentage or By Value, and the value. Min fills in from the previous slab's Max + 1. A slab may carry an expiry date.
5. Set the Rounding Method - Not Applicable, Normal, Upward or Downward Rounding - and Rounding To. Tick Show in Pay-Slip ? and give its position.
6. For PF and ESI, Calculate Employer Contribution ? adds the employer's share: the transfer account, the basis (On Value this Payhead or one of the aggregates) and the rate.
7. Save (F5). Employees then take the head in their Pay Scheme, with their own rate or amount.

How a pay head is worked out on the bill

• The heads are worked out top to bottom in the order of the employee's pay scheme, and an aggregate basis counts only the heads above the one being worked out. That is how "PF is 12% of basic" and then "ESI is a percentage of everything so far" both come out right - so the order of the pay scheme matters.
• The rate on the pay scheme row is a percentage of the basis; a rate of 0 takes the basis as it is.
• Slabs come before rounding. The first band the value falls into wins. If no band matches, the head comes out zero - visible on the bill, never a silent pass-through. Assign Computed Value ? skips the slabs.
• Rounding To is used as a step: Normal rounds to the nearest multiple of it, Upward and Downward to the next multiple up or down, and 0 counts as 1 (whole rupees). Not Applicable keeps two decimals.
• The employer contribution is worked out on its own basis and does not change what the employee is paid.

A slab's Max must be greater than its Min, and its expiry date later than its effective date. Deleting the pay head's ledger deletes the pay head and its slabs with it.

12Pay templates and who they pay #

Pay Template

A pay template is the priced side of payroll: one line per attendance type with what one unit of it pays. Typical templates are one per grade or category - Workers, Staff, Drivers.

• Name is required and unique.
• Each line names a Type; its Unit follows from the Attendance Type master. A template prices each type only once.
• Rate/Value is what one unit pays. -999 means Basic Salary divided by the days in the month; -888 means this line's Assessable Value divided by the days in the month.
• Discard In Payroll Preparation keeps a line in the template but skips it when payroll runs.
• Extra Remuneration Rate/Value appears only while the Allow Employee Extra Remuneration setting is on.

Give every template a Basic Salary line (unit MONTHS) with the monthly amount. Basic Salary is a fixed item, so it reaches every bill from the allocation even with nothing keyed on the attendance entry.

Pay Template Allocation - who, from when

This is what payroll really reads. Pick a template (or Find Template (F2)), then list the employees it pays with an Effective Date each. When a bill is prepared, each employee is priced by the allocation whose date is the latest on or before the period. An employee can hold only one allocation per date, across all templates - the message names the clashing template.

A raise or a re-grade is a new allocation from a new date; the old row stays as history. For many employees at once, Assign in Batch opens Batch Assignment already set to Pay Template.

13The employee record #

1. On Employee Master, type the Employee Name and Employee ID. The ID is yours - a badge or staff number - and must be unique. With an ID prefix set in Payroll Settings you may leave it blank and the next number is generated on save.
2. Pick the Personal Ledger Account: a ledger in an Employee-type group, one ledger per employee. Missing? + Create new ledger account at the foot of the list makes it and brings it back selected.
3. Leave Sr. No alone (it is numbered on save) and Status at Active.
4. Under Employment pick Designation, Department and Employee Group, and set Date of Joining. The Reporting Person is another employee - the one leave requests go to by default; for the very first employee pick __NotApplicable__.
5. Pick the Pay Template - this creates the allocation from the date of joining.
6. Fill what you know of the personal, contact, bank (bank name, branch, account number, IFSC, account type, payment type), passport and visa, and statutory details (PF No, ESI No, PAN, Aadhaar, TAN). The bank details feed the bank advice. Save (F5).
7. Now the actions unlock, in View mode: Pay Scheme... - the pay heads that apply, each with a rate, amount, contribution rate, effective date and optional expiry; Leave Policies... - the policies assigned, with effective dates; Shift Assignments... - the shifts, with effective dates.

The payroll switches on the record matter: Exclude from Payroll ? keeps the employee out of batch runs and Exclude from Leave Processing ? out of leave accrual (the accrual preview names them). Exclude from Salary Register ?, Exclude from Device Transfer ? and Include Basic in Extra Rem. Payment ? are stored with the record; the web salary register does not read the register switch yet. Is Foreigner opens the passport and visa block. Custom Fields... appears in the ERP edition when custom tables target the employee; Documents... appears with Document Management.

Enrollment rules

The Employee Enrollment settings are checked on every save, first on the screen and again on the server:

• Minimum / maximum age (169/170) - the birth date must put the employee inside the band at the joining date; while either is set, Date of Birth is required.
• Employee ID auto-generation prefix (179) - a blank ID becomes the prefix plus the next number.
• Default probation period (180) - fills Probation (days) on a new record left blank.
• Mandatory fields (181) - the ticked fields must be filled.
• Block duplicate Mobile (182) and National ID / Aadhaar / PAN (183) - the message names the employee already holding the number.
• Retirement age (184) - fills a blank Expected Retirement Date from the birth date.
• Document expiry alert window (185) - an orange banner lists passport, visa, national ID, health card, insurance card and driving licence dates expired or expiring inside the window.

14Batch Assignment - one change for many employees #

Batch Assignment writes the same rows the one-employee screens write, for every employee you tick.

1. Press Load Employees (F2). The list loads once; the filters then work at once, without the server.
2. Narrow with the filters - department, designation, group, status, gender, marital status - or sort, filter and group the grid itself. The header tick selects everything the grid is showing.
3. Pick the Assignment Type and the value, and the Effective Date - or tick use hire date to give each employee their own joining date.
4. Press Start (F5) and confirm.

The whole run commits in one transaction or not at all. An employee who already has that assignment on that date is skipped, never overwritten, and listed under the grid; the banner counts what was applied and what was skipped. Employees without a ledger account are not listed at all.

15Attendance / Leave / Production Entry #

This is where the quantities are recorded: days worked, overtime hours, leave days, pieces, trips and any deduction type. One voucher covers one day (or one window) with a line per employee per type.

1. Check the Voucher Type - it is fixed once saved - and set the Date. Without the ChangeDate permission only today is accepted.
2. Press Load Employees (F6): narrow by department, designation, group or reporting person, choose the type and a default value, and every match arrives as a line. The dialog counts the matches first. Inactive employees are never loaded.
3. Or press Load Shift Roster after picking a shift: everyone on it arrives with the shift's full-day type and a value of 1.
4. Or Add Line and type the employee's name, the type (the unit fills in) and the value. Enter off the last cell adds the next line.
5. Fill Time In / Time Out when the type counts its quantity from punched times; the value cell then locks.
6. Press Save (F5). Header and lines save together.

The loaders add to what is there and skip anyone already on the voucher with the same type, so running one twice can not double-count. Load Worked Hours summarises time-management hours into lines - it appears only where the database has the time-management summary function.

Rules the screen and the server enforce

• Every line needs an employee, a type and a non-zero value, and the same employee may not appear twice with the same type. Everything wrong is listed at once, with line numbers.
• Manual Amount is accepted only on types whose Rate Options is Manual, and only with Allow Rate Edit on the voucher type for your user.
• A date inside a closed transaction period is refused - making, editing and deleting alike.
• Once a posted pay bill has paid a line, the line and the whole voucher are frozen - no edit, no delete, no status change. Cancel the pay bill and the attendance is released. Paid lines carry a paid badge.
• An entry posted by an approved leave (Posted by system, lines badged leave) can not be edited or its lines removed. Undo it by cancelling the leave request.

Status, posting and what reaches payroll

A new entry starts with the voucher type's Default Status and Default Posting Status from Voucher Manager - Open and posted when nothing is set. Mark Posted / Mark Unposted flips the posting (it needs the voucher-posting right and Alter); Change Status (F7) sets Approved, Rejected, On Hold or whatever your company defines, with a remark.

Both matter to pay. A pay bill takes only attendance that is posted and not cancelled. When the setting Is Need Approval For Attendance/Leave/Production Entry to Prepare Payroll (81) is on, it also takes only entries whose status is Approved (or System, for leave postings). Saving an entry again stamps its status Altered, so set the status after the entry is final.

Documents (F8) attaches files (Document Management licence). Print (Ctrl+P) prints the entry with the company name and report head on every sheet; Print Format (F9) prints a saved voucher design. Notify appears when Voucher Manager has an e-mail or SMS option for the voucher type.

16Pay Bill Preparation - one employee #

A pay bill pays one employee for one period. Use it for a single employee - a joiner, a leaver, a correction. For the whole staff use the batch.

1. Press Add (F3). Check the Voucher Type (a type in group PAY) and pick the Employee - both are fixed once saved.
2. Set Period From and Period To, and the Voucher Date (the bill's own date).
3. Press Auto Load (F6). The attendance summary and the pay heads arrive, calculated. Read the notes - they say what could not be worked out, and why.
4. Check the summary strip - attendance value, earnings, deductions, net payment. Type over a calculated amount to override it on this bill only.
5. Press Save (F5) and confirm. Ctrl+P prints it as a payslip.

What Auto Load does

• Attendance is summed per type over the period, priced by the employee's template allocation. Attendance a previous bill already paid is left out, so re-loading never pays a day twice.
• The pay heads come from the employee's pay scheme as it stands on the period's end date; a head not yet effective or already expired is not brought in.
• The heads are worked out in scheme order, slabs before rounding - see Pay heads above.
• Loan and advance instalments are added last - see Loans, advances and scheduled items below.
• Unposted and cancelled attendance lines in the period are counted in a note, so an empty load explains itself.

Net payment is the attendance value plus earnings minus deductions; the employer's contribution is not part of it.

Saving, status and posting

• The period must run forwards; the bill needs at least one attendance line or pay head; a type or pay head may appear only once.
• A zero-valued bill is refused unless the company settings allow zero-valued vouchers, and the voucher type's amount limit is enforced.
• Posting is what claims the attendance. The attendance a bill paid is locked only while the bill is posted. Mark Unposted releases it, so it can be paid on another bill - the confirmation says so.
• Change Status (F7) marks the bill Approved, Rejected, On Hold... with a remark (Approve right). A status posts nothing.
• A bill made by a batch, a settlement or a leave run is read-only here, and its status and posting can not be changed here either: "This pay bill was created by another module".

Numbering, the net-pay arithmetic, the posting to accounts and the voucher e-mail are done by the database in the same save the desktop uses. If Voucher Manager has an e-mail option on the voucher type, the notification goes out with the save; there is no Notify button on this screen.

17Batch Pay Bill Preparation - the whole month #

1. Pick the Voucher Type and set the Voucher Date (stamped on every bill) and the Period From / To.
2. Pick the Transaction Class - required. New fills in the first class ticked for the voucher type.
3. Narrow who is covered: Department, Designation, Employee Group, Reporting Person ([ALL] means no restriction), One employee only, or Only employees with attendance to skip anyone with nothing recorded.
4. Add any Additional pay head entries: a one-off bonus, deduction or correction for a named employee.
5. Press Preview who is covered. Every employee is worked out through the same Auto Load, and the projected Salary Register opens, stamped PROJECTED. It prints and exports; nothing is written.
6. Press Start (F5) and confirm. A progress bar follows the run; each employee gets a line in the run log. The real Salary Register opens when it finishes.

Rules of the run

• A joiner is paid from their joining date when it falls inside the period; the log says so.
• Employees marked Exclude from Payroll, inactive accounts and accounts outside your branches are never included.
• A zero-valued bill is skipped and logged as "Zero Voucher Value. Update Cancelled !" - usually no attendance and no allocation effective for the period.
• Each bill is written with its own transaction, so one failure is logged and the rest carry on. Re-run that person with One employee only.
• You are warned before the run if a batch already exists for the same period and the same department, designation or group - preparing another would pay those people twice.
• A batch runs once. After it has run, the form locks and Preview and Start switch off; the screen becomes a viewer of the log, the bills, the register and the status.

Additional pay head entries

Each line names one employee and one pay head, and an amount under (+) or (-) - never both, and always keyed positive; the column decides the sign. Contribution is the employer's share. The same pay head twice for one employee is refused - merge them. The lines are added after the pay-head calculation, so a formula head can not see them.

The Salary Register

Salary Register (F8) shows one row per employee and one column per pay head, in payslip order, deductions negative so each row adds across to its net. Print (F5) repeats the company name and report head on every sheet; Excel, CSV and HTML are written by the server from the register on screen. For a PDF, print and choose Save as PDF. Print Format (Ctrl+P) prints the batch through a saved voucher format.

Status, posting and redoing a batch

To redo a month, cancel the batch's bills through its Change Status, correct the cause, and run a New (F3) batch - a cancelled bill releases its attendance. Deleting a batch removes only the batch record, and a batch that still has live bills refuses to be deleted.

18Loans, advances and scheduled items #

A loan or an advance is paid out through an ordinary payment voucher, and recovered through payroll by itself.

1. On the employee's ledger (or the ledger the advance is booked to), switch on Recover scheduled items through payroll ? in the Ledger Account Master.
2. Enter the payment voucher. After it saves, the Scheduled Earnings & Deductions window opens for every line on such a ledger.
3. Set how it comes back: One Time (taken once), On Every Payroll (every period until the schedule expires) or Installment (the amount each period, never more than the ledger still owes).
4. From then on Auto Load adds the instalment to the employee's pay bill as a pay head.

• A recovery is capped at what is left to pay the employee after everything else; the notes say when it was reduced or skipped.
• An instalment loan stops itself the period it is repaid; the last instalment is whatever is left.
• An unposted pay bill has recovered nothing: unposting a bill makes its instalment fall due again.
• The same works for a scheduled earning.

19Salary Payment #

The pay bills say what each employee is owed; this screen pays it. It works from batches: a bill made one at a time on Pay Bill Preparation is not offered here.

1. Set the Voucher Date - employee balances are read on it.
2. Tick one or more batches in Prepare from batch(es). The list shows how many bills each still has unpaid.
3. Press Prepare lines. One line per unpaid bill appears with the employee's Net Payment, their Ledger Closing Balance on the date (payable-positive, so advances net off), and a suggested Paying Amount.
4. Choose the Payment mode - Bank Transfer or Cash - then Paid from: Bank Transfer lists the bank accounts, Cash the Cash-In-Hand accounts. A missing account is created from the list's footer.
5. Alter any Paying Amount. A zero line pays nothing.
6. Press Save (F5). The entry is a draft - nothing is posted.
7. Press Approve / Reject (F7) and Approve & Post. Approval posts one voucher of the salary payment posting type: every employee debited, the paying account credited. It is final.
8. For a Bank Transfer entry, Bank Advice (F8) gives the bank an Excel file - employee, account number, IFSC and amount; Advice CSV gives the same as CSV. It exists only after approval.

The rules

• One bill, one payment. Each line remembers the bill it pays. A bill on a live line is not offered again, and is refused if it reaches a save. Cancelling the line (the bin) or the whole entry (Cancel Entry) releases it.
• One line per employee per entry. An employee with two unpaid bills is paid one per entry; Prepare holds the second back and names it.
• The suggestion follows Salary payment basis (209): the bill's net payment, or the employee ledger's closing balance.
• Approving, rejecting and reversing need the Approve right on the posting voucher type named by Salary payment posting voucher (210). That type's group name must be Salary Payment - that is how the payroll reports know an amount is paid.
• An approved entry can not be edited, and Cancel Entry turns into Reverse: it cancels the entry and its posted voucher together and releases every bill. The reports simply stop counting the cancelled voucher.

20Payroll Notifications - telling the employees #

1. Pick the Pay bill or batch. Its employees appear, all ticked; untick anyone who should not be told.
2. Tick the Channels - e-mail, SMS, WhatsApp. An E-mail profile and an SMS / WhatsApp template can be named; blank lets the settings choose.
3. Adjust the Subject and Message. {Employee}, {EmpID}, {Period}, {Net} and {VoucherNo} are filled in for each person.
4. Press Send and confirm. The report below lists every attempt: sent, failed with the gateway's own words, or skipped for want of an address.

Addresses come from the Employee Master's Email and Mobile. A blank one can be filled right on this page - the value is saved to the Employee Master itself. A wrong one is corrected on the Employee Master. Every attempt is written to the Notification Log (Admin), where a failed message can be corrected and sent again. Sending needs the gateways configured - an e-mail profile for e-mail, the SMS gateway for SMS and WhatsApp.

21Leave - policies, accrual and balances #

A leave balance is never stored. It is worked out every time from a ledger of leave movements, so two screens always show the same figure:

Available = Opening + Carry-over + Accrued - Utilized - Lapsed +/- Adjustments, over the employee's current leave year. The leave year runs from each employee's joining-date anniversary to the next.

Leave Policy

1. Make sure the leave type exists as an attendance type with Base Type Leave.
2. On Leave Policy, type the Policy Name (unique) and pick the Leave Type.
3. Switch Is Accrued on and pick Accrued Every - Day up to Year. This is the step the accrual walks the year by.
4. Decide Carry Over To Next Year: on, the leftover balance opens the next year, capped by the band's Max Carry Over; off, nothing carries.
5. Add Service Eligibility Bands: From and To service (in months or years; To 0 = no limit), Value Accrued per period, Max Carry Over (-1 = the whole balance) and Max Accrued (-1 = no cap). Each band's To must differ. Bands of 3-6, 6-12 and 12-99 months step the entitlement up as people stay.
6. Save (F5). Then assign the policy - Employee Master > Leave Policies..., or Batch Assignment. No assignment, no leave earned.

Leave Accrual Processing

1. Leave the As-of date at today, or set a past date for a catch-up. Periods ending on or before it are due.
2. Narrow to one Policy or one Employee, or leave both blank for everyone.
3. Press Preview (F2). Each row says Due, Already posted or Projected (the running period - shown, never written). The notes list employees skipped entirely - no joining date, or excluded from leave processing.
4. Tick Year close only when leave years have ended - it posts the CARRYOVER (always, even zero - it marks the year closed) and, with setting 172 on, the LAPSE.
5. Press Post (F5) and confirm. Everything writes in one transaction; the banner counts what was posted and skipped.

Nothing is ever posted twice: one accrual per employee, policy and period end. A mid-year assignment accrues only from its effective date. The Max Accrued cap counts opening balances inside the year. Leave Accrual Posting Mode (171) Manual means this page is the only writer; the Automatic mode is a later phase and the page warns when it is set.

Manual Leave Posting

Pick the employee, Add Row (F3), and choose OPENING (a starting balance, never negative) or ADJUSTMENT (plus adds, minus reduces), the date it takes effect, the leave policy, the value and a Reason - required, and shown on the balance drill-down. Save (F5) writes the batch in one transaction. Only these two kinds can be entered, edited or removed here; the engine's rows are corrected with a counter-adjustment.

Leave Balance

Pick the employee: one card per policy for the current leave year - opening, carry-over, accrued, utilized, lapsed, adjustments, available - with the entitlement band the employee is in now, and below it every movement, all years, newest first. Refresh (F2) after posting elsewhere. All zero usually means the accrual has not been run.

22Leave requests and approvals #

Entering a request

1. On Leave Request, pick the Employee. The balance panel shows what they have, per policy.
2. Pick a Leave Type, or flip the switch and pick the Leave Policy they are assigned.
3. Set From and To. The days count both ends; adjust for half days. Days must be positive.
4. Write the Reason for Leave (required) and any contact details while away. Date of Previous Leave and Previous Re-join fill themselves from the employee's last approved leave of the same type; type over them if the history is incomplete.
5. Save Draft keeps it private as Open, or Submit (F5) sends it for approval.
6. Follow it in My Requests; click a row for its trail.

At submit the server checks: the balance (174 - Off, Warn or Block; only where a policy tracks the type), advance notice (176), past dates (177), and overlap - another live request of the same employee covering any of the same days is refused, naming it.

Statuses

Open (draft) -> Submitted -> Recommended (level 1 of a two-level rule done) -> Approved, Rejected or Cancelled. Only a draft can be edited. The requester may cancel until final approval; cancelling an approved leave reverses the approval (see below).

Who approves - Leave Approval Rules

A rule says how many levels a request needs (one, or recommend-then-approve) and who acts at each: the Reporting Person, a Named user, or Any approver (anyone with the Approve right on Leave Approvals). Simple rules match on leave type and a days band (Max 0 = open-ended); Complex rules match on a Yes/No condition about the request and the employee - for example more than five days AND in Production. Complex rules are tried first by Priority, then Simple ones; with no match the built-in default applies: one level, Reporting Person. The rule matched at submit is stamped on the request.

Test... tries a condition on sample values; Save refuses a condition that does not read, naming the position. A condition that still fails during a submit is skipped with a warning - a request is never blocked by a broken rule. With Re-check approval rules when an approver changes the request (192) on, an approver who changes the type, policy, dates or days re-matches the rules, and a request that now needs another level is escalated instead of approved.

Deciding - Leave Approvals

1. Open Leave Approvals (under Approvals). Click a pending row: the employee's request on the left, the editable approval values on the right, and the balance panel.
2. Trim the dates or change the type if needed - the trail records what you set, and the checks run again on your values.
3. Press Approve (F5) - or Recommend (to level 2) at level 1 of a two-level rule - or Reject, with remarks (required while setting 178 is on).

Approval writes, in one transaction: the approval voucher with your final values; the attendance entry for the leave, posted automatically when Auto-Post Leave Approval Entry to Payroll (121) is on; and the UTILIZATION in the leave ledger, where a policy tracks the type. A leave with no assigned policy consumes nothing.

To reverse, load the approved request by its number and press Cancel Approval (reverse). It removes the approval and the utilization and cancels the request - but it is refused while the auto-posted attendance entry is live, and the message names that entry. Cancel the attendance entry first.

Notifications

Leave can announce itself by e-mail, SMS and WhatsApp. It stays silent until Leave notification channels (193) names a channel. 194 picks the events (Submitted, Recommended, Approved, Rejected, Cancelled, Escalated), 195 and 196 the e-mail profile and the SMS/WhatsApp gateway, 197 a standing list that receives every event, and 198 sends in the background. A waiting request tells every approver who can act at its level; a decided one tells the employee, whoever entered it and everyone who acted on it. At most 50 people are told per event, and a failed message never blocks the action. Send Notification on an opened request, and Send in My Requests, do it by hand.

23Expense claims #

1. Claim Types: the claim name (unique), the Head of account it is charged to - an expense ledger, never an employee account - and an optional Unit rate (say 3.00 a km). A non-zero rate fixes the line rate for everyone but SYSADMIN.
2. Employee Claim Request: the date, the employee, a narration, and one line per expense - claim type, quantity, rate, and the requested amount (quantity x rate). Save (F5): the claim is Open.
3. Attach receipts with Documents (F8) (Document Management licence) and print with Ctrl+P.
4. The approver opens it - from Employee Claim Approvals (Load (F2), select, F7) or on the claim with Change Status (F7) - ticks the lines, lowers an approved amount where only part is allowed, picks Approved and presses Approve & Post (F5).

Approval makes the database post a Journal at once: each line's claim-type account debited, the employee's account credited with the approved total. The Journal's number shows on the claim. Approved is final - the claim can not be edited, re-statused or deleted; reverse the Journal in accounts if it must be undone. Rejected and On Hold send it back: the employee alters and saves it, and it returns as Altered. Cancelled closes it.

• An approved amount can not exceed the requested one; at least one line must be approved for Approved - otherwise Reject.
• Remarks are required for every status except Approved.
• A login tied to an employee account claims, finds and opens its own claims only (SYSADMIN excepted).
• A back-dated claim needs the Change-Date permission; a date in a closed period is refused.
• Approval needs the Approve right on employee claims (and Alter). If the Journal voucher type's numbering can not produce a number, the approval is refused and nothing changes - fix the numbering in Voucher Manager.
• In the ERP edition with the rejected-vouchers-can-be-modified setting on, only a Rejected claim may be altered.
• Outside the ERP edition the status list offers Cancelled only.

24Who sees what #

Leave approval follows the rule: holders of the Approve right see and may act on every pending request; a Named user in a rule may act on the requests naming them even without the right. The Reporting Person is shown as who the request waits on, but acting still needs the Approve right, because logins are not linked to employee records. With setting 175 off, the Reporting Person kind is treated as any approver.

25Settings that change payroll #

Payroll Settings shows each setting as a card with its number, in groups. Change what you need and press Save (F5) - all changes save together or none. Reload (F2) re-reads; Esc puts the cards back. A screen already open keeps the values it loaded with until it is opened again. The page is open to whoever has it in their menu, so keep it off ordinary users' menus.

Settings outside Payroll Settings that matter here: in Voucher Manager, each voucher type's Default Status, Default Posting Status, numbering, amount limit, transaction classes and e-mail/SMS options; in User Manager, Allow Rate Edit per voucher type; on the Ledger Account Master, Treat this ledger as payhead and Recover scheduled items through payroll.

26Reports and printed outputs #

Every pay bill, claim Journal and salary payment is also an ordinary voucher, so it appears in the voucher and day-book reports. Statutory PF and ESI returns and attendance, leave and claim registers are not in the report viewer yet.

27Moving from the desktop #

The web screens work on the same tables as the desktop, so both can be used side by side: a pay bill, a batch, an attendance entry or an attachment made in one is found in the other. What differs:

• Pay bills are saved by the same database routine the desktop uses - numbering, net pay, accounts posting and e-mail are identical. Auto Load does not yet work out On Formula heads or the Incentives From ... kinds; they are named in its notes.
• Batch extras are added after the pay-head calculation on the web; on the desktop they came first. For a fixed bonus or deduction the result is the same.
• Leave accrual never rewrites history. The desktop deleted and re-posted the whole window on every run, wrote Projected rows into the ledger and credited part-periods; the web posts only completed periods, once each. A first-day joiner matches a zero-based service band, and an employee with no joining date is skipped with a note rather than accrued from year 0900.
• Manual leave is narrowed to OPENING and ADJUSTMENT; the engine's movements can not be typed.
• Leave requests now have approval rules, two levels, recommend, escalation and notifications; the desktop form had a manual SMS and e-mail button only.
• Employee claims gain an approvals inbox; the desktop approved from the claim's Change Status, which the web keeps too.
• Salary Payment on the web is a draft-then-approve flow that posts through a trigger. Desktop entries keep their own authorization path and are not opened by the web flow.
• Attendance printing: the desktop printed a fixed report; the web prints the entry itself or a saved Print Format.
• Shift Assignment: the desktop's F11 Unassigned list is F4 here.
• Overtime Assignment with setting 89 on (finger-print) can only be saved from the desktop.
• Not on the web yet: the Sponsor and villa/apartment masters (kept in the desktop; Batch Assignment reads the villa list), the work-site master, leave encashment and automatic accrual posting.

28If something does not work #

Every screen's Help panel lists the rest, under Rules and integrity and Why is a pick-list empty?.