Harvester Payroll Help Centre

For changing the Hourly rate for all employees within a Specific Department: Go to Settings. Go to Department Settings. Edit the "Day Rate". Click on "Submit". Note: Only if you change the Hourly rate (or other rates) in Department-Settings, will the change be applied to all within the department.

Use the Edit Employee page and then under Rates enter the Employee Housing Percentage. When you change a percentage like Housing, it will only be reflected the next time you process pay. Whatever you enter in the housing percentage will be auto loaded when you process the pay for the next month. You will see the housing calculated amount on the right hand side of the normal payment capture screen. Should you wish the housing change to be reflected on an already processed payment, then delete the payment and re pay the employee. NB As with many settings, you may apply a particular housing allowance percentage to all employees within a Department with one single edit. In this case go to Settings and then Department settings and choose your Department. Once you click 'apply to all' then all employees within the department will have the same Housing allowance percentage. It is calculated as percentage of basic pay as per legal requirement. ie no overtime, holidays or extras are used in the calculation of the housing value. Note: "Cashing of leave" is considered above basic as the employee does not go on physical leave if they are "cashing in" on their leave without taking the days off work. If you want the employee to receive a fixed salary and to have their leave cashed as an extra then we have the option to change the employee "pay type" from "fixed" to "daily" and then the employee can still remain on a "fixed" basic pay. To change the setting on the employee from "fixed" to "daily" then on the "edit individual employee" page look for the "employee pay-type" drop down setting. (Not on department settings)

If you want to specify INDIVIDUAL Itemised or the Fixed-Extra Custom-Extras per employee and would like Harvester to "remember" these values from month to month so that no re-input is required each month then do the following to set this up BEFORE you begin processing the current month's payroll processing. Individual Itemised rates can be set to extras that are of the Type: Itemised or Fixed or Percentage-of-Basic. (The type can be set under Company Extras) To edit individual amounts, go to "Payroll Individual" screen on the main home page and then choose your employee who needs a different rate. Then look to the last column and click on "extras". Then choose any extra of the type that is "Itemised" or "Fixed" or "Percentage". Look for the specific custom extra and then click "edit value". You will be able to give this employee a unique value that will be used for all future payroll payments processed. Using this same page explained above, where you look for the last column and click on "extras", you can also click on the Add-Extras link to assign any NON company-wide extra to the specific employee. Some more notes: Another way to edit Individual Rates is use the Settings page and then click on Assign-Extras-to-Employees. Then choose any extra of the type that is "Itemised" or "Fixed" or "Percentage" and on the right hand side click on Edit-Value to edit the default itemized rate (default rate can be set under Company Extras). NB It is important to choose the Edit Value link for the individual employee on the RIGHT-HAND-SIDE of the edit Extras page. If the extra is a company-wide extra, then the input amounts can be captured via excel in the offline, excel, payroll input sheet. If the input amount each month needs to be the same value as the normal days worked (eg A Daily bonus or allowance depending on the days worked) do the following: If you are using the Offline-input Template In excel and you have specified your Custom Extra to be of the "Itemised-Type", then just copy the column of the standard days into the appropriate Item-Input Column.

For Journal Entries, we recommend you use the "Full Summary for Excel-Export" report and export this to excel to see all your payroll detail summaries in one report. This is especially useful when you export it to excel by clicking on the Export icon above the report. Note you may also click on the Summary-Basic report and export this report to excel as well. For Journal totals to enter into your accounting package, its probably best to use the "Full Summary for Excel-Export" report and use the Totals from this report which will be at the bottom of the Excel report. What you can be sure of in this report, is that ALL payroll entries including custom extras and deductions are shown and so its easy to get the totals to post through to your accounting package. Please note that Harvester can be used to export all the main reports and payroll summaries to excel or CSV which is a very standard format that other packages can use. However we have not made it link directly to Pastel or Quick Books.

On the "More Reports page" use the "Leave Accumulated" Report to see current Accumulated Totals which may easily be exported to Excel. (Note you do not normally need to do this if your Leave Settings chosen are correct) To edit the actual "Accumulated Leave Days" you need to edit a particular historic month "Leave Days" value or the "Accumulated Total" uploaded from Harvester offline if you converted from Harvester-Offline. (or if you simply have just started Harvester-Online as a new client). Note that if you have just started Harvester online, then pay your employees for the first month and then after an initial payment is generated then you will be able to edit the accumulated leave total. You will be able to manually edit the "Leave days" value which will affect the Accumulated, outstanding leave days total: 1)Click on Settings 2)Click on employee Settings (Left hand side of screen) 3)Click on Historic Accumulated values(Right hand side, with blue button that says Edit) 4)Click on the particular historic payment of a specific employee you would like to edit. There are 2 values you can change: 1)Leave Days(what they earn in a month) and 2)Leave Days Taken(what they take in a month) After editing a historic month, then go back and redo the current month's payment (if you have processed it already) and you will notice on the payment capture screen (and payslip) the adjusted outstanding Leave Days. Note on the Edit Screen: "Current" means for the particular payment month you are editing. You have to change the actual value in a particular pay period. Then the Accumulated value changes accordingly. This is like an accounting system. Or you may edit the total accumulated leave days loaded from previous package by first selecting the search-option for viewing historic cumulative totals uploaded from previous package. Note: When you edit historic leave values for a particular historic month, Harvester will do nothing on the historic payslips unless you edit the "actual-payment" for that corresponding historic month. One is not really supposed to edit historic payslips as this can affect net pay, NAPSA, PAYE,NHIS etc. The reason for the ability to edit historic leave values is to make the current "Accumulated-Leave" correct. When you pay an employee in the current month and submit his or her payment as a normal payslip, then the program will take into account the historic values that you edited and the current payslip will show the correct "new" "Accumulated-Leave". If you want the actual historic payslip to change, then you can do this by selecting Edit-Payments and then go to the specific historic-month that you have just edited in terms of historic leave days and then resubmit the payment. However please note that if the Net Payslip changes as a result, then that would mean the PAYE, NHIS and NAPSA returns will also be different. Harvester is accepted and known by ZRA, NHIMA and NAPSA and so this is the reason the actual historic payslip is not changed when editing a value for accumulated leave. It will however be reflected in any subsequent month paid. If the net payslip will not be effected then your change will obviously be fine and you can go ahead and resubmit a historic payment. If you have been running harvester online and have not been checking the leave days properly and you want to fix it quickly do the following: Option 1 (Reset all Leave to Zero Accumulated Balances) Select settings on the Home page and then select Delete-Payroll Options. In the drop down select "Reset Leave for all employees to Zero" Option 2 (Edit Individual Employee Accumulated Balance) To avoid changing every months leave for each employee who is incorrect, try edit just one month's historic "leave-days" value and either add or subtract one amount so that the accumulated leave days will be correct. eg: If the current accumulated amount is 32 Leave-Days and the Accumulated-Leave-Days on the System (see payslip or accumulated leave report) is showing 12, then you will need to subtract 20 days from one of the historic months. (Don't worry if this makes the Leave-Days negative as it's a once off fix). Remember that if you have the correct Leave-Days settings applied you should NEVER have to manually change this leave as it works it all out automatically and correctly according to the days earned for leave each month (Typically 2 or 2.5 leave days per month). When you "pay out" the leave days or an employee goes on leave, you use the Leave-Days-Taken field on the normal payroll payment capture screen. The Accumulated leave days will reduce accordingly. If you converted from Harvester Offline and you want to edit the Accumulated Leave Totals, then at the top of the page, select "Historic Accumulated Totals uploaded from previous package" next to the Select-View option and press Search. You will then be able to edit the Accumulated Leave day Total that was converted from the Harvester Offline version which was the outstanding value at the time you converted to Harvester Online.

Setting the actual monthly leave days: The default is 2 Leave Days per Month for the Company. Use Department Settings to set "default leave days" to those within a specific department. For changing the Default Leave Days by Department: Go to Settings. Go to Department Settings. Edit the "Leave Days Per Month" field and next to the red writing on the right of screen make sure "click to APPLY ALL" is ticked so that all already existing employees within the Department will be adjusted. Click on "Submit". You can also edit leave days individually: Go to Edit Employee page and then look for the field called "Leave Days per month?" and edit the amount to what is required here.

Note, with newer laws in Zambia, even a casual employee should be getting 2 days leave if the employee works a month or longer. As Harvester follows the Employment Act of Zambia, the default setting is that there are two days for each employee. However if you want to remove the leave days from casual employees, then proceed as follows: To remove leave days for a certain group of employees, eg Casual Employees: Go to department settings and edit the department where your casuals are and on left hand side change leave days per month to 0. Default is 2 Days. Click apply all. And then click Submit. However if the "Leave Days Per Month" setting is already 0 in Department Settings, then when you press Submit to "apply to all" then no one gets adjusted. (Harvester assumes the department rate has already been applied if "Leave Days Per Month" is already 0) So to rectify this simply put a value of say 2 and then Submit. All employees will then get the standard 2 days in the department. Then go straight back and enter 0 to reset all the employees to 0. This time Harvester WILL apply to all as it sees you want to change from 2 to 0 days. Note: You can also individually edit the employee "Leave Days Per Month" on Edit Employees.

Make sure the Hourly Kwacha rate is set for your employees. On the payment capture screen enter the normal hours eg 45 by 4 weeks = 180 hours. If they worked overtime enter the actual overtime hours in the overtime hours field. Leave-day Calculation values are calculated according to the number of hours in a standard day. The default is 8 hours. To change this: Go to Company Settings and look for the field "Hours in Day(Default)". Example: Change 8 to 9 if you work on 9 hours per day.

For leave taken you should enter the days in the Leave-Days-Taken field on the Payment capture screen. The Leave-Days-Taken field is found just above 'Additions' on the payment capture screen. Note: This does not reduce the basic leave days worked. It does not affect the "housing allowance" either. The leave values for the current month and the accumulated values will be included as long as you have entered a wage or an amount of days worked for the current month. Once an employee is paid for the current month you will then be able to see the accumulated values that include the current month. This means that if you would like to pay out the accumulated leave (inclusive of the current month) and not in the following month, then simply edit the current months payment and enter the accumulated value in the "leave days taken" field. "Leave days taken" is to record when a person goes on paid leave so the record is there and shown on the payslip. Eg. for a 26 day normal month and an employee takes 10 leave days. Enter 10 in the "leave days taken" field. (This will add 10 days multiplied by the daily rate to give a Kwacha payment) You should enter 16 in the normal "days" worked field. (total of 26 days worth of pay on payslip) When an employee does not go on leave and wants to cash his leave? If the employee did work the whole month and wants to cash his leave as extra, you should enter 26 in the normal "days" worked field AND 10 in the "leave days taken" field. (total of 36 days worth of pay on payslip) NB. For Fixed-Monthly-Salary earners who have the PAY CLASS set as FIXED, NO KWACHA VALUE will appear as actual leave pay taken in the GROSS wage. In this case just the accumulated leave days will reduce by the amount of DAYS taken. Only if an employee is on a daily pay rate, then a KWACHA LEAVE value will appear as an extra in the GROSS pay. This is because Fixed-Monthly-Salary employees do not usually cash their leave. So if you do NOT want an employee to have his leave days cashed, then you need to make the PAY CLASS as "Fixed" and not "Daily" and then Harvester will not add the leave in Kwacha value to the gross."(In this case, make sure that the PAY CLASS is marked as FIXED under edit-employee) Should you wish to pay a Kwacha value for leave on top of a Fixed salary, then please make sure that the PAY CLASS is NOT marked as FIXED on edit-employee. (In this case, make sure that the PAY CLASS is marked as DAILY under edit-employee) Use the leave reports (that can be exported to excel) to have a report of all outstanding leave so that it's easy to process the leave days taken. Extra note: Please make sure that the Leave Days Per Month field on Edit-Employees is NOT set to 0 for an employee if you want to ensure that the employee cashes their leave when you enter days in the "leave days taken" field. It should normally be set to the default of 2. Note that from mid 2019, Leave-Pay-Taken has to be based on the daily equivalent of the Gross-Pay and NOT the Basic-Pay of the particular month that the leave is cashed. There is still an option on Company Settings where you can make leave pay use the basic pay rate. This option is only if you have a valid "collective wage agreement" that says it's worked on basic. According to the in the new Employment Act (JULY-2019): The only extra that is NOT included for the Daily Rate equivalent for "cashing of Leave" is the Bonus or Gratuity or Terminal Benefit End-of-Contract payments. If you enter any value in the Bonus field then the leave Daily-Payout-Rate won't increase for leave pay out. All other extras are used to increase the basic daily pay rate when an employee cashes their leave. To work out how its calculated in a typical scenario after you have processed the payslip: Take the gross wage on the payslip and then subtract the Leave-Pay and then subtract the Bonus amount(if any) and divide the result by 26 to get the leave Daily-Payout-Rate.