Batch Pay Bill Preparation

1What this screen is #

Everything it produces is an ordinary pay bill . Correcting one, printing it, changing its status or cancelling it all happen on the Pay Bill screen in the usual way — and you do not have to go there to do it: the open button on any row of Pay bills in this batch brings that employee's bill up right here, in a window over the batch, with its own toolbar and its own shortcut keys. Close it and the batch is refreshed, so any change you made is already showing.

2Your first batch, step by step #

1. Pick the Voucher Type — which pay-bill book these belong to.
2. Set the Period From and Period To . Attendance is read between these dates and each employee's pay scheme is taken as it stands on the end date.
3. Narrow who gets a bill . Every filter defaults to [ALL] , and each list offers only values employees actually have.
4. Press Preview who is covered . It computes every employee through the same Auto Load the run uses and opens the projected Salary Register — the amounts the run would produce, clearly stamped PROJECTED. It can be printed and exported (the files are marked PROJECTED too), and nothing is written.
5. Press Start (F5) and confirm. A progress bar tracks each employee as the run works through them. Every employee gets a line in the run log, and the projected register converts to the actual Salary Register , which opens by itself with print and export enabled. This is the point of no return for the form — once it has run, the filters lock and preparing again means a new batch.
6. Press Salary Register (F8) to see and print the whole batch on one sheet. This is the real register; the projected one from Preview disappears once the batch has run.

3Field details #

• Voucher Type — the pay-bill book. Fixed once the batch has run, because its bills already carry it.
• Voucher Date — the date stamped on every prepared bill. It is not the period.
• Period From / To — what the bills pay for.
• Transaction Class — required. A reporting grouping copied onto every bill; it changes no amount. New fills it with the first offered class, and a batch cannot be prepared without one.
• Narration — a note carried onto every bill in the run.
• Department / Designation / Employee Group / Reporting Person — narrow who is covered. [ALL] means no restriction.
• One employee only — prepare a single bill through the same machinery, useful for a re-run after a correction.
• Only employees with attendance — skips anyone with nothing recorded in the period instead of working out a zero bill for them.

4Additional pay head entries #

A one-off earning or deduction for a named employee , on top of whatever their pay scheme already gives them — a festival bonus, an advance recovered this month, a correction agreed after the scheme was set.

• Each line names one employee and one pay head . The run adds it to that employee's bill as it reaches them; employees with no line here are untouched.
• (+) or (-), never both. The column decides whether the amount is earned or deducted, so amounts are always keyed as positive numbers. Picking a deduction pay head moves an amount you already typed across for you.
• Contribution is the employer's share, where the head has one. It does not change what the employee is paid.
• These amounts count towards the bill's value , so an employee whose only pay this run is a bonus still gets a bill rather than being skipped as zero-valued.
• The same pay head twice for the same employee is refused — it would post twice. Merge them into one line.
• The lines belong to the batch , not to a bill. They are saved with it and are visible when the batch is reopened.
• Tab or Enter off the last cell adds the next row and puts the caret in it, so a run of entries is keyed without reaching for the mouse. It does not add one while the last row is still empty.
• Both pick-lists can create what they are missing. The foot of the Employee list opens the Employee master, and the foot of the Pay Head list opens the Pay Head master. What you save is selected into the row you opened it from — not into whichever row happens to look empty afterwards.

One difference from the desktop, worth knowing. There, the extra lines are added before the pay-head calculation runs, so a formula pay head could in principle refer to one. Here the calculation runs first and the extras are appended after. For a fixed bonus or deduction — what this grid is for — the two behave identically; a formula that must see an ad-hoc amount has to be keyed on the bill itself.

5Rules and integrity #

• A joiner is paid from their joining date. If an employee's Date of Joining falls after the period start, their bill starts on the DOJ instead, and the log says so.
• Zero-valued bills are skipped, never saved — the log shows "Zero Voucher Value. Update Cancelled !" against them.
• Three groups of people are never included : employees marked Exclude From Payroll , inactive ledger accounts, and accounts outside your registered branches.
• One failure does not abandon the run. Each bill is written by the database's own pay-bill procedure with its own transaction, so an employee who fails is logged and the rest continue. Re-run just that person with One employee only .
• A batch is prepared once. The moment it has run, the whole form locks and Preview and Start switch off — running it twice would pay everyone twice. From then on the screen is a viewer: the run log, the bills, the register and the status.
• To redo a run , cancel the bills you want to redo on the Pay Bill screen (a cancelled bill releases its attendance), then press New (F3) and prepare a fresh batch. Each batch number stays tied to the one set of bills it made, which is what keeps the audit trail readable.
• Deleting a batch removes only the batch record. The pay bills it made are ordinary vouchers with their own posting and financial entries, so they are left alone — and a batch that still has live bills refuses to be deleted at all.
• If a batch already exists for the same period and the same department, designation or group, you are told before the run — preparing another would pay those employees twice.

6Status and posting, for the whole batch #

The batch carries a status of its own, and moving it moves every pay bill the batch prepared. That is the point of it: approving a month's payroll is one decision, not two hundred.

• Change Status (F7) sets the batch status. Only the statuses you may set on this voucher type are offered — Voucher Manager narrows the list per voucher type, and your administrator grants them per user, so the list is never a fixed six words.
• Mark Posted / Mark Unposted is a separate action because it is a separate permission: the status needs the Approve right, posting needs the Voucher Posting right. Having one does not give you the other.
• Unposting is the consequential direction. An unposted pay bill claims no attendance, so the days those bills paid for become free to be paid again on another bill.

Some bills will not move, and you are told which before you confirm. A bill that is Cancelled, or Completed or Approved, or sitting inside a running approval workflow, is refused by the database outright — and one refusal would undo the whole change. Those bills are listed by name in the dialog and left exactly as they are; change them one at a time on the Pay Bill screen.

The cascade itself is a database trigger, not a loop on this screen. A batch moved from the desktop behaves identically, and the permission check is the database's own — a user without the Approve right cannot move the bills by moving the batch.

7The Employee Salary Register #

One row per employee and one column per pay head that appears anywhere in the batch, in the order the pay scheme puts them — the order a payslip reads in. Deductions show as negative, so every row adds across to its net payment.

Print (F5) repeats the company name and the report head on every sheet, which a register spanning several pages needs. Opening the register is what marks the batch as printed. Print Format (Ctrl+P) beside it prints the batch through a format saved for its voucher type — the same picker every other voucher screen uses.

Taking it away with you. Three export buttons sit beside Print, and every one is written by the server from the register you are looking at — an exported file can never disagree with what was on screen.

• Excel — a real workbook. Every amount is a number , not text that looks like one, so a column can be summed or pivoted the moment it opens. The heading row is frozen and the totals line is carried through.
• CSV — plain comma-separated text for feeding another system, a bank upload or an audit tool. Amounts go in unformatted, so no importer splits 1,800.00 into two columns.
• HTML — a self-contained page. It opens anywhere without Excel and is easy to attach to an e-mail.
• For a PDF, use Print and choose “Save as PDF” in the print dialog. There is no separate PDF button because there would be nothing behind it — the report engine only renders saved voucher formats, not an ad-hoc register.

8Why is a pick-list empty? #

• Voucher Type — no voucher type is filed under group PAY in Voucher Manager.
• Department / Designation / Group / Reporting Person — these list the values employees actually carry, so an empty list means no active, payroll-included employee has one set. Fix it on the Employee master.
• Transaction Class — required; a batch cannot be prepared while it is blank. A reporting grouping copied onto every bill; it changes no amount. Only the classes ticked for this voucher type in Voucher Manager are offered, and New fills the field with the first of them automatically.
• Anything missing can be created here. The Voucher Type, Transaction Class and Employee pick-lists each carry a create button at the foot of the list, and what you save is selected straight into the field. A transaction class created this way is also ticked for this voucher type, so it stays in the list afterwards.
• The run found nobody — the filters matched no one, or everyone they matched is excluded from payroll, inactive, or outside your branches.
• Everyone was skipped as zero-valued — usually no attendance in the period, or no pay-template allocation effective for it. That allocation, not the attendance alone, is what drives the calculation.

9Shortcut keys #

• F2 Find a previous batch · F3 New · F5 Start · F7 Change Status · F8 Salary Register · Ctrl+P Print Format · Esc Reset the form.
• New (F3) puts the caret on Period From — the voucher type is already defaulted, and the period is what is keyed on every run.
• While a dialog is open the keys belong to it: F5 confirms the status, Esc closes the dialog rather than clearing the screen behind it.
• Keys belong to the tab you can see, so another screen open behind this one never steals them.

10If something does not work #