Payroll Cycle

A payroll cycle is the rhythm the client pays on, monthly for the staff and perhaps weekly for the workers, together with the list of actual dated periods inside it. Every man is attached to one cycle, and a payroll run processes one cycle at a time.

Where

Payroll › Setup › Payroll Cycle

Who uses it

The implementation consultant at setup, then the payroll officer once a year to extend the calendar

When

Before the first Employee Policy Profile and before the first payroll run

Needs first

Nothing

What it is for

The cycle is two things at once, and it helps to keep them apart. The header says how often pay happens. The lines on the Periods Lines tab are the real calendar: one line per pay period, with the day it starts, the day it ends and the day the money is paid.

The lines are what the payroll run actually works from. When the run is launched for a cycle and a period, it takes the start and end dates off that line and uses them for everything: the number of days in the period, which attendance falls inside it, which contribution rate was in force, which loan instalments are now collectable.

A man reaches a cycle through his Employee Policy Profile, which names one. The run only picks up men whose profile names the cycle being run, so a man on the weekly cycle is untouched by a monthly run. That also means a profile pointing at the wrong cycle makes a man disappear from payroll entirely, with no error.

Build the calendar with the Generate Period button rather than by hand. Tell it how many periods you want, when the first one starts and when the first payment is due, and it lays out the lines for you with the length taken from the frequency. Press it again next year and it carries on from the day after the last line, so the calendar is never left with a gap.

Every field, in plain words

Basic Data

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Pay Cycle	The code picked on a policy profile and at the top of a payroll run	MONTHLY, WEEKLY	Required
Name	How the cycle reads in a list	Monthly Staff Payroll	Required
Frequency	How long one period is. It decides the length of the lines Generate Period produces	M Monthly	Required. D Daily, W Weekly, M Monthly, Q Quarterly, Y Yearly
Block	Stops the cycle being picked	Leave it clear	Do not block a cycle that payroll has already run on

Generate Period

These three appear in a small Criteria window when you press Generate Period. They are not stored on the cycle, they only tell the screen what to lay out.

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Number of Periods	How many lines to produce	12 for a year of a monthly cycle
Date From	The day the first new period starts	01-Jul-2026	Once the cycle already has lines this is filled in for you with the day after the last one and cannot be changed, so the calendar stays continuous
Date Payment	The day the first of those periods is paid	01-Aug-2026 for a month paid in arrears	The payment day moves on by one period for each line after the first

Periods Lines

Field	What it means	What to put in it	Notes
Line #	The line number	Fills itself	Leave it
Pay Period	The code for this one period. Generate Period builds it from the start date as day, month, year	010726 for the period starting 1 July 2026	Required. A period code only has to be unique inside its own cycle
Date From	The first day of the period	01-Jul-2026	The run counts the days of the period from these two dates
Date To	The last day of the period	31-Jul-2026
Date Payment	The day the money is paid	01-Aug-2026

How to configure it

1. Create the cycle. Code MONTHLY, name Monthly Staff Payroll, frequency M Monthly.
2. Save it, then press Generate Period.
3. Number of Periods 12, Date From the first day of the client's financial year, Date Payment the day that first month is actually paid. Press Add.
4. Check the twelve lines that appear. A monthly line runs from its start date to the day before the same date next month, so a cycle starting on the 1st gives you calendar months and a cycle starting on the 26th gives you the 26th to the 25th.
5. Save.
6. Create the matching Payroll Period record, because several screens outside the payroll run look the period dates up there.
7. Name the cycle on each Employee Policy Profile.
8. Come back a year later and press Generate Period again. It starts from the day after the last line.

Scenarios

"The workers are paid weekly and the staff monthly"

Two cycles. WEEKLY with frequency W, MONTHLY with frequency M. Generate 52 weekly lines and 12 monthly ones. Put the workers on a policy profile naming the weekly cycle and the staff on one naming the monthly cycle, then run payroll twice.

"Our pay month runs from the 26th to the 25th"

Set Date From to the 26th when you generate. Every line then runs 26th to 25th, and the attendance the payroll run considers follows the same window, so overtime worked on the 27th belongs to the following pay month.

"We have run out of periods"

Press Generate Period again. Date From is already set to the day after the last existing line and cannot be edited, so you only choose how many periods and when the first of them is paid.

What it is connected to

• Named on Employee Policy Profile, which is how a man belongs to a cycle.
• Named on Payroll Period, which holds the same calendar for the screens that look a period up by name.
• The payroll run reads the start and end dates from the Periods Lines of the cycle it is launched for, and so does Payroll Attendance.
• Contribution Scheme rate lines are matched against the end date of the period, and loan instalments falling on or before it become collectable.

If something looks wrong

• "The payroll run found nobody" - the men you expected are on a policy profile that names a different cycle, or no cycle.
• "The run produced nothing for this month" - the cycle has no period line covering the month. Press Generate Period.
• "The period is one day short or one day long" - read the Date From and Date To on the line. Everything the run divides by days comes from those two dates, not from the calendar month.
• "A screen says the pay period was not found" - the Payroll Period record for this cycle has no line with that period code. The cycle and the period record each hold their own copy of the calendar.