Recurring Payments and Deductions
This is the single most important screen in Payroll. It holds one man's standing salary: his basic, every allowance, every standing deduction, and the dates between which that package applies. The payroll run reads this record and nothing else for his regular pay.
What it is for
Every month the payroll run has to know what each man is owed before anything else happens. That figure is not one number. It is a basic salary, a house rent allowance, a conveyance allowance, a mobile allowance, maybe a fixed deduction for the company van. Each of those is a wage type and each has an amount.
This screen is where that list lives, one record per employee. The record carries a Date From and a Date To, so the history is readable: what he was on last year, what he is on now, what he goes on to in July.
A salary revision is not an edit. It is a new record with a new Date From. When you save that new record, the screen closes the previous open record for you, at the day before the new Date From. That is why the history stays clean, and why you should never go back and overtype an old amount: overtyping rewrites what you already paid him.
Two totals at the top, Basic Salary and Gross Salary, are worked out from the lines when you save. Basic Salary is the total of the lines whose wage type sits in the basic salary category. Gross Salary is the basic plus every earning line that adds to pay. Both are read by other parts of the system, so do not try to type over them.
Gross salary here is the monthly entitlement, the figure before any attendance is taken into account. What the man actually earns in a given period, and what finally reaches his bank, are different figures with their own names. The maths sets them out, and the rest of these pages use those words exactly.
Every field, in plain words
Basic Data
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employee | The man this salary belongs to | Muhammad Asif | Required. Pick him from the list |
| Basic Salary | The total of his basic salary lines | 45,000.00 | Fills itself from the lines when you save. Leave it |
| Gross Salary | Basic plus every earning line that adds to pay | 72,500.00 | Fills itself from the lines when you save. Leave it |
| Salary Block | A marker that this man's salary is held | Leave it clear | Ticking it records the hold against the record. The payroll run does not test this tick, so it does not by itself keep him out of a run. See the scenario below |
Period
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Date From | The first day this salary package applies | 01 Jul 2025 | Required. It cannot be earlier than the employee's earliest organization assignment date, because he was not on the payroll before that |
| Date To | The last day it applies | Leave it empty | Leave it empty for the salary he is on now. The screen fills it in for you when a later record is saved |
Details
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pay Area | Which pay area he belongs to | Factory | Pick it from the Pay Area list. A payroll run can be filtered on it, so a run for the factory only picks up factory records |
| Pay Scale | Which pay scale he is on | Grade 4 | Pick it from the Pay Scale list. A payroll run can be filtered on it |
| Payment Method | How he is paid | Bank | Pick it from the list. CA Cash for a man paid over the counter, BK Bank for a transfer. This is the copy the payroll run reads |
| Bank | The bank to pay into | Habib Bank Limited | Required when Payment Method is Bank. The screen refuses to save a bank payment with no bank |
| Account | The account number at that bank | 0123-7901-4455-01 | Required when Payment Method is Bank |
The wage lines
| Field | What it means | What to put in it | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Line # | The line number | Fills itself | Leave it |
| Wage Type | Which wage this line is | BASIC | Required. Pick it from the Wage Type list |
| Name | The wage type in words | Basic Salary | Fills itself from the wage type. Leave it |
| Wage Type Unit | The unit the wage is quoted in | M | Fills itself from the wage type. Four values: M Month, Y Yearly, H Hour, Q Quantity |
| Wage Type Direction | Whether this line adds to pay or comes off it | D | Fills itself from the wage type. D Debit adds to pay. C Credit is the only one that reduces the net amount. There is a third value, shown as a star with no label beside it, which is an employer cost that prints on the payslip and is not deducted from the man. See the value lists |
| Wage Type indicator | What kind of money this is | E | Fills itself from the wage type. E Earning, B Benefit, T Tax, O Other. Only Earning lines count towards Gross Salary |
| Quantity | How many units | 1 | Defaults to 1. A line saved with a quantity of zero is refused |
| First Payment Period | The period this line is first meant to be paid in | Leave it empty | Recorded on the line. The payroll run does not read it |
| Payment Interval Unit | The unit of the interval between payments | Leave it empty | Recorded on the line. The payroll run does not read it |
| Payment Interval | How many of those units between payments | Leave it empty | Recorded on the line. The payroll run does not read it. A line on this record is picked up by every run whose period falls inside Date From and Date To |
| Rate | The amount for one unit | 45,000.00 | A line saved with a rate of zero is refused |
| Currency | The currency of the rate | PKR | Pick it from the Currency list |
| Transaction Amount | What this line is worth | 45,000.00 | Works itself out as Rate times Quantity when you save. Leave it |
How to configure it
- Make sure the wage types exist, the pay scales and pay areas exist, and the employee has an organization assignment. Without the assignment the screen will refuse your Date From.
- Open the screen and pick the employee.
- Set Date From to the first day of the salary package. For a new joiner that is his joining date. For a revision it is the first day of the month the new salary starts.
- Leave Date To empty.
- Set Pay Area and Pay Scale, so that a payroll run filtered to the factory or to a grade picks him up.
- Set Payment Method. If it is Bank, fill the Bank and the Account - the screen will not save a bank payment without them.
- Add one line per wage type. Pick the wage type, leave the name, unit, direction and indicator to fill themselves, leave Quantity at 1 and type the monthly amount in Rate.
- Add the deduction lines the same way. Their wage type already carries the Credit direction, so they come off the net by themselves.
- Save. Check that Basic Salary and Gross Salary at the top now read what you expect. If Gross Salary is short, a line you meant as an allowance is not marked as an Earning on its wage type.
If the client has a Salary Structure set up for the grade, use the template upload instead of typing the lines. It builds the lines from the structure, taking either a percentage of gross or a fixed value per wage type, and carries forward any old wage the structure does not mention. It will stop and tell you if the employee has no salary structure, if the structure has no lines, or if you left an empty line in the grid.
Scenarios
A man gets a raise from the first of July
Do not touch his existing record. Create a new one with Date From of 01 July and the new amounts. On save, the old record is closed at 30 June for you. The June payroll keeps paying the old figure and the July payroll pays the new one, and both are defensible a year later.
A man's salary should be held while an inquiry runs
Tick Salary Block on his record so that everyone looking at the screen can see it, and raise a Request for Salary Hold so the request itself is on record with a reason.
Be clear about what that does and does not do. Neither the tick nor the request keeps him out of a payroll run: the run picks up every active employee with an open recurring record for the period. To actually hold the money you have to keep him out of the run, by running the payroll filtered to a pay area or pay scale he is not in, or by removing his line from the payroll before you save it. Tell the client this plainly at implementation, because the tick looks like it does more than it does.
A bonus is paid once, in December only
Do not put it on this record. The three interval fields are not read by the payroll run, so a bonus line here is paid every single month. Raise it as an Employee Additional Payment Or Deduction for the December period only.
A man leaves on the fifteenth
Set Date To on his record to his last working day. The payroll run only picks up a man whose resignation date is empty or later than the end of the period, so a man who left on the fifteenth is not in that month's run at all. His final month is paid through Final Settlement, which reads this record as it stood on his last working day.
We pay basic as a percentage of gross, the same way for every grade
Set that up once on the Salary Structure for the grade, then use the template upload on this screen for each employee. Typing the same split five hundred times is how a split ends up different for twelve people.
What it is connected to
- Needs Wage Type, Pay Scale, Pay Area and the employee's organization assignment.
- Salary Structure can build the lines for you.
- Payroll reads this record for the employee's regular pay, and takes the paying bank, account and payment method from it.
- Final Settlement reads the gross and basic as they stood on the last working day, for the salary to the last day and for the gratuity basis.
- Employee Loan Request reads the earning lines on this record to work out the loan limit when the loan type sets the limit as a percentage of salary.
- Tax Adjustment will not accept a transaction date earlier than the employee's earliest record here.
- A record cannot be deleted once the employee has been picked up by a payroll.
If something looks wrong
- "It will not let me save, it says the date is too early" - the Date From is before the employee's earliest organization assignment. He was not on the payroll then.
- "It refuses the line" - a line with a quantity of zero or a rate of zero is refused. Put 1 in the quantity and the amount in the rate.
- "Gross Salary is lower than the lines add up to" - only lines whose wage type is marked as an Earning and adds to pay count towards gross. Check the indicator on the wage type.
- "It will not let me delete the record" - the employee has already been picked up by a payroll. Close the record with a Date To instead.
- "Payroll paid him his old salary" - the revision was typed over the old record instead of being saved as a new record with a new Date From.