The words PeopleNest uses
PeopleNest uses a word for a thing, the client uses a different word for the same thing, and a training session is lost to the confusion. This page is one sentence per term, so you can settle it and move on. Where a term has a screen behind it, the term links to that screen.
Use the search box if you know the word. Read it through once if you are new: it is the shortest route to understanding how the system is put together.
A
Absent - a day on which a man was expected and did not come, and did not take leave. It produces no pay for that day unless a policy says otherwise.
Accrual - leave being earned a bit at a time rather than granted all at once. A man on 18 days a year accruing monthly has 1.5 days after the first month. Set on Leave Group.
Allowance - any earning that is not basic salary. House rent, conveyance, a medical allowance, an attendance allowance. Each one is a separate Wage Type with the Debit direction.
Appraisal form - the sheet a man is scored on, built from goals and competencies with a weight on each. See Performance.
Approval chain - the ordered list of people a document must pass before it is final. A stage clears on accumulated weight, not on one person saying yes, so a stage with three approvers at 50, 30 and 20 needs at least two of them.
Attendance sheet - the month's attendance turned into countable numbers: days present, days absent, leave taken, overtime hours, late arrivals. Payroll reads this and nothing earlier. See Payroll Attendance.
B
Basic salary - the core component of the package, and the figure most contributions and many allowances are calculated from. Never confuse it with gross salary, which includes the allowances.
Basis - on any calculating screen, the figure a calculation starts from. Nearly always basic salary, gross salary, a minimum wage figure or a fixed amount. See The maths.
Businessflo - the finance and supply chain product that shares this system's shell. It sits beside PeopleNest and several setup screens, the legal entity and the units among them, are the same screens in both. Anything you set up there that HR also uses, HR already has.
C
Calendar - the company's working year: which days are weekly rest, which are public holidays, and the attendance rules that apply. One calendar can serve the whole company or several can serve different sites. Not the same thing as a roster. See Calendar.
Carry forward - unused leave moving into the next leave year, usually capped and usually with an expiry. Set on Leave Group.
Ceiling - an upper limit on the figure a contribution is calculated from. A ceiling of zero means there is no ceiling at all. See The maths.
Comp off - a day off earned by working on a rest day or a holiday, instead of being paid for it.
Competency - something a man is appraised on that is not a number: communication, teamwork, judgement. The other half of an appraisal form from goals.
Contribution - money set aside against a man's employment, usually by both sides. Provident fund, old age benefit, social security, gratuity. Set up on Contribution Scheme, calculated as described on The maths.
Cost to company - gross salary plus everything else the company spends on a man that never reaches his hand. The largest of the salary figures and the one he never sees in his account.
Credit - the wage type direction that reduces net pay. Every deduction. See Value lists.
Cycle - in Performance, the whole appraisal year with its periods inside it. In Time Management, the repeating run of days on a Shift Pattern.
D
Day offset - on a shift pattern, which day of the repeating cycle a line describes. The first day of the cycle, the second, and so on. It is a position in the pattern, not a date: the roster supplies the dates.
Debit - the wage type direction that adds to pay. Every earning. See Value lists.
Deduction - anything taken off gross pay to arrive at net pay. Income tax, a loan installment, the employee's own contribution share, a staff store bill.
Disbursement - money paid back out of a contribution fund to the man it was held for, either as an advance against the fund or as the whole balance when he leaves. Paid on Employee Additional Payment Or Deduction, on the withdrawal wage type, and limited by the disbursement policy on Contribution Scheme.
Divisor - the number a monthly figure is divided by to get one day's money. Thirty treats a month as thirty days, twenty-six excludes a weekly rest day. See The maths.
E
Effective from - the date a setting starts to apply. Rates, slabs and scales nearly all carry one, because a rate that changed in July must not rewrite June. If a calculation ignores a rate you just entered, this date is the first thing to check.
Employee - a person on the payroll, with a record under People Directory. A person who has been hired but not yet converted from an applicant is not one yet.
Encashment - leave turned into money instead of taken as days off. Either during employment or as part of a final settlement. The rate is worked out as on The maths.
Entitlement - how much leave of a given kind a man is allowed in a leave year.
F
Final settlement - everything owed in both directions when a man leaves: salary to his last day, leave encashed, gratuity, less any loan outstanding and any notice shortfall. Also called full and final.
Fiscal year - the company's financial year, which in Pakistan usually runs July to June. One of the three bases a leave year can follow.
Floor - a lower limit on the figure a contribution is calculated from. A floor of zero means there is no floor.
G
Goal - a measurable thing a man is appraised against, with a target and an achievement. The other half of an appraisal form from competencies.
Gratuity - a sum owed on leaving, based on service length. Set up as a contribution scheme like any other.
Grade - a band a position sits in, usually carrying a pay range and a set of entitlements. See People Directory.
Gross pay - what a man actually earned this period, after attendance. See The maths.
Gross salary - what a man is entitled to in a full month: basic plus every allowance. See The maths.
L
Leave group - the bundle of leave rules a set of people share: how much of each kind, how it accrues, what carries forward, how it is encashed. A man gets his leave rules from the group his policy profile points at. See Leave Group.
Leave type - one kind of leave: annual, casual, sick, unpaid. Whether it is paid, whether it needs a document, who is eligible. See Leave Type.
Leave year - the twelve months over which entitlement is counted and after which it resets. Can follow the calendar year, the fiscal year or each man's own joining anniversary.
Legal entity - the registered company. A group running three companies has three, each with its own payroll, its own tax position and its own statutory numbers. Nearly everything in the system belongs to one.
Loan - money advanced to a man and recovered from his pay, usually in installments. See Payroll.
M
Minimum wage - the statutory floor. In PeopleNest it is a figure you type, used as a contribution basis where the law sets the contribution on the minimum wage rather than on actual pay.
N
Net pay - what goes to the bank. Gross pay less every deduction. See The maths.
Net salary - a planning figure: gross salary less the deductions a normal month would carry.
O
Overtime - hours worked beyond the normal shift, paid at a rate the policy sets. Collected on the attendance side, paid on the payroll side.
P
Pay period - the stretch of time one payroll run covers, almost always a calendar month. A run belongs to exactly one, and a period has to exist before it can be run.
Pay structure - the list of wage types and amounts that make up one man's package.
Payroll run - the act of calculating a period's pay for a set of people. Can be run unposted as many times as you like, which is how you check your configuration. Posting is the commitment.
Policy profile - the single most important link on an employee record. It points at the leave rules, the attendance rules and the contribution scheme set that apply to him. Two men with the same salary and different policy profiles will be paid differently, and this is where to look when they are.
Position - the job, not the person. A position exists whether or not somebody is sitting in it, and it carries the grade, the reporting line and often the appraisal form.
Posting - committing a payroll run. Before posting, a run is a calculation you can throw away. After posting, it is the record.
Predefine - an internal word for the short fixed code lists the system offers in some dropdowns. You will hear the term in configuration conversation; a user never sees it. The lists that matter are on Value lists.
Prorate - to scale a figure to a part period. A man who joins on the sixteenth gets half a month's salary and half a month's leave accrual, if the settings say to prorate.
Provident fund - the commonest contribution: a percentage from the man, usually matched by the company, held in a fund. Set up on Contribution Scheme.
R
Ready to process - the system's internal name for a document having been released. You will hear it in configuration conversation and see it in a support answer, but it is not a field on any screen: the system sets it when the document is saved and its approval, if it has one, has cleared. The tick a person has to remember is Active, which is a different thing. See The maths.
Requisition - the approved request to hire, which is where recruitment starts. See Recruitment.
Roster - who works which shift on which real date. The pattern says what the cycle is, the roster hangs it on the calendar for named people. Clients confuse this with the calendar constantly: the calendar is the company's working year, the roster is this crew's next fortnight. See Shift Roster.
Rounding - what to do with the paisa. Up, down, to the nearest, or leave it alone. See Value lists.
S
Sandwich rule - treating a rest day or holiday that falls between two leave days as leave as well, so a Friday and Monday absence costs four days rather than two. On Leave Group.
Segment - on a shift pattern, which stretch of work within a day a line describes. A day worked in one go has one segment. A split day, morning and evening with a long gap between them, has two lines for the same day with different segments.
Shift pattern - the repeating cycle of working days a crew follows, and which shift each day is. Built once, then hung on dates by the roster. See Shift Pattern.
Slab - a band in a progressive scale. Most often income tax: income from here to here is taxed at this rate. Also the attendance allowance slabs on Calendar, where a band is a set of ceilings - so many lates, so many half days - and the percentage of the allowance a period that stayed inside all of them earns.
T
Taxable - a flag on a wage type saying whether it counts towards taxable income. Read together with the direction, it decides the tax base. See Value lists.
Time template - one shift as a pair of times: in at eight, out at five, with the grace, the break and the late rules. The building block a shift pattern arranges and a roster assigns. When a client says "shift" this is usually what they mean. See Time Template.
U
Unit - a place or a division inside a legal entity: the head office, the Faisalabad plant. People belong to one, and a good deal of reporting is grouped by it.
Unpaid leave - leave taken with no entitlement behind it, so the day is not paid. Also called leave without pay.
V
Vesting - the point at which the company's half of a contribution fund becomes the man's rather than the company's. Before it, his own share is his and the company's share is not available to him. Set as Employer Vesting (Years) on Contribution Scheme.
W
Wage ceiling - see Ceiling.
Wage type - one line that can appear on a payslip, and the most consequential setup screen in Payroll. Its direction decides whether it adds to pay, subtracts from pay, or is a company cost that only prints. See Wage Type and Value lists.
Weekly off - the rest day or days in a week. Set on the calendar, and relevant to the sandwich rule and to the encashment divisor.
Withdrawable - what a man may actually be paid out of a contribution fund today, as against what the fund holds for him: his own share plus the vested company share, less what he has already taken, capped by the Maximum Advance %. See The maths.
A word about words
Three pairs account for most of the confusion in a training room. Settle them early.
| They say | They often mean | The difference |
|---|---|---|
| Shift | Time template | A time template is in at eight out at five. A shift pattern is the cycle of them. A roster is who works which, when. |
| Calendar | Roster | The calendar is the company's working year. The roster is this crew's dates. |
| Salary | Pay | Salary is the agreement. Pay is what this month produced. |