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Before you hand over

Each of these is a support call that will otherwise arrive in the client's first month, usually on a payroll day. All six can be done in an afternoon.

Work through them with the client's HR officer rather than alone. The point is not only to find the gap, it is for the person who will run the system to know where to look when the same symptom appears next year.

1. A pay period exists for the whole year​

Open Payroll Period and confirm there is a period covering every month of the year the client is going live in, and that each one has its dates and its payment date. Then confirm the next year's periods are either generated or on the client's own calendar as a January job.

If it was missed: the payroll run cannot find the month and will not start. The client reports it as the payroll being broken. It happens in the first week of January, which is the worst week of the year for it to happen in.

2. Every employee has an organization assignment and a policy profile​

Every single person. Not most of them.

Check that each employee has an Employee Organization Assignment whose dates cover the period about to be run, that it names an Employee Policy Profile, and that the profile names the payroll cycle the client will actually run.

If it was missed: the person is invisible. He is in no payroll run, on no attendance sheet, in no appraisal population and on no report, and nothing reports an error, because from the system's point of view there is nobody there to leave out. One person missing from a payslip list, with everybody else correct, is almost always this, and most often the cycle on the policy profile rather than the assignment itself.

3. Every wage type a salary structure uses exists and is live​

Go through each Salary Structure line by line. Every wage type it names must exist on Wage Type, must be released, and must carry the right direction and indicator. While you are there, check the structure's accounting grid has a debit and a credit account for every wage type on it.

Do the same for the contribution schemes: each one needs its employee share and employer share wage types, and the scheme itself has to be ticked Active.

If it was missed: three different symptoms, which is why this check is worth the time. A missing wage type means a payslip line that never appears. A wrong direction means a deduction that prints and increases the net. An empty accounting grid means the posting fails at the end of the month, after everybody has been paid.

4. A calendar covers every working day of the year​

Open Calendar and confirm the working time lines cover every date of the year, for every calendar the client uses. Then confirm the year's Public Holiday list is on each of them, and that every employee's policy profile names one of them.

If it was missed: the uncovered dates are not working days, so everybody is absent for them. A month with no calendar lines produces a sheet of full deductions, and if that reaches the payroll run the client pays nobody properly.

5. Approvals are configured for the request screens​

Go through the screens employees and managers actually use and confirm each has an approval route, and that the route names real people who are still with the company: Employee Request Leave, Employee Attendance Request, Overtime Request, On Duty Request, Shift Change Request, Comp Off Request, Employee Loan Request, Request For Expense Reimbursement, Profile Change Request.

Raise one of each as a test user and watch it reach an approver's inbox and come back.

If it was missed: two opposite symptoms, and both are bad. With no route configured a request goes live the moment it is released, so a leave nobody approved has already moved the balance. With a route configured badly, the request sits in nobody's inbox and nothing ever happens, and the work a request causes happens at approval. See how a screen works.

6. The leave allocation has been run​

Open Leave Allocation Run and confirm a run has been done for the current leave year, that its Employees Processed figure matches the headcount, and that the opening balances the client brought over are visible on Employee Leave Entitlement.

Pick three people on different leave groups and check their balances against what the client's own records say they hold.

If it was missed: nobody has any leave balance. Every leave request is refused or goes negative, and the client's first conclusion is that the leave policy was set up wrong rather than that it was never run.

The one thing that is not a check​

Reconcile a payslip with a calculator.

Pick three people on different salary structures and different policy profiles, and add up each payslip by hand: the gross against the structure, the deduction days against Payroll Attendance, each contribution against its scheme, the tax against the slab, and the net as the sum of all of it.

A configuration that has never been reconciled by a person is a configuration nobody knows is right. Everything else on this page finds a gap. This finds a mistake.

If something looks wrong​

  • "Everything is set up and the run produced nothing" - no pay period, no wage types, or no salary structure with lines.
  • "One person is missing and everybody else is fine" - check 2, and start with the payroll cycle on his policy profile.
  • "The whole company shows absent" - check 4.
  • "Nobody has any leave" - check 6.
  • "A request was approved and nothing happened" - a later stage of the route is still waiting.
  • "It worked in testing and not at the client" - the records were released in the test database and left as drafts in the live one. Check for drafts before anything else.