Running Payroll

Payroll is the one job in this system where a mistake reaches somebody’s bank account. It is also the most mechanical, provided the preparation is done.

What a payroll run is

A payroll run covers one pay period — normally one month. Processing it produces one payroll entry per employee (their individual calculation), and from those, their payslips.

A run moves through statuses:

Status	Means
Draft	Created, not yet calculated. Nothing has been produced
Processing	Calculating
Completed	Calculated. Entries and payslips exist
Cancelled	Abandoned

Before you process anything

Payroll reads salaries, attendance and leave as they stand at the moment you process. Anything not settled by then is not in the numbers. Work down this list first — it is the whole job, really.

1. Clear both approval queues, completely. Every pending leave request and every attendance regularization. See Approving Leave and Attendance.

   Anything left pending means the person is still marked absent for those days, and absent days reduce pay.

2. Check everyone has a salary. Go to Payroll Management → Employee Salaries.

   

   An employee with no salary record is silently skipped. They will not appear in the run, and nothing warns you. New joiners are the usual casualties.

3. Check for salary changes. Raises, promotions and new allowances must be recorded before the run, not after.

4. Sanity-check attendance for the period. Look for anyone with an implausible number of absent days — that is usually a missing regularization or a wrong shift, not a genuinely absent person.

Creating and processing the run

Go to Payroll Management → Payroll Runs.

The screenshot shows both states, which is the clearest way to understand this screen. September is a Draft: 0 employees, ₱0.00, because it has not been processed. August is Completed: 10 employees, with real gross and net totals. The tabs across the top count runs by status.

1. Click Add Payroll Run.

2. Set the pay period — the dates being paid for — and the pay date, when the money actually goes out. These are different, and the difference is why payslips are filed under the month worked.

3. Set the frequency, normally Monthly. Save. The run appears as Draft.

4. Process the run. Open it and process.

5. Wait for it to finish and the status to reach Completed.

6. Check the totals. Employee count, gross and net. Compare against last month: a large unexplained swing is worth understanding now.

7. Spot-check two or three individual entries — ideally somebody who had leave, and somebody who joined or left mid-period. That is where errors live.

Processing is the moment everything is fixed

Processing reads salaries, attendance and leave and writes the result. Changing attendance afterwards does not update a completed run.

So the order matters: approvals first, salaries second, process last. Getting that order wrong is the most common way payroll goes wrong, and it is entirely avoidable.

Only draft runs process

A run must be in Draft to be processed. A completed run cannot be reprocessed, which is deliberate — it stops a payslip silently changing after somebody has been paid against it.

What processing produces

For each employee with a salary record, the system calculates:

• Basic salary for the period
• Allowances and other earnings from their salary components
• Attendance: working days, days present, half days, paid leave, unpaid leave, absences
• Deductions, including any loss-of-pay for unpaid days
• Gross pay and net pay

Then a payslip per entry, which the employee can see under their payslips.

After processing

1. Review the entries for anything odd — a net pay far from expected, an employee count that is wrong, someone missing.

2. Pay people. The system records what is owed; it does not move money. The transfer happens in your banking system.

3. Tell people their payslips are available, if that is your practice.

If something is wrong

Somebody is missing from the run. Almost always no salary record, or their employment status excludes them. Add the salary and — since a completed run cannot be reprocessed — you will need a correcting run or a manual adjustment.

Somebody’s pay is too low. Look at the attendance section of their entry first. Unpaid absence is the usual cause, and the usual cause of that is an approval left pending.

A figure is wrong across everybody. Look at salary components rather than individual records — a component applied to all is the likely culprit.

Take corrections seriously

There is no undo. A completed run cannot be reprocessed, and payslips are produced from it.

Whatever your organization’s correction process is — an adjustment in the next run, a separate off-cycle payment — follow it, and tell the affected person before they find it themselves.

Common questions

Can I run payroll for part of the company? The run covers active employees. Narrower runs depend on your configuration — check with your administrator.

What happens to somebody who joined mid-month? Their attendance only covers the days they were employed, so the calculation reflects that. Check them specifically; mid-period joiners and leavers are where errors surface.

Can I delete a payroll run? A draft, generally yes. A completed one, no — it has produced payslips.

Why does the current month show a draft with zero? Because it has not been processed. That is the normal state until you run it, and it is what a new run looks like.