Online Help Support and FAQs
Browse Common Help Topics and Support Answers using Keyword Search
Simply type a keyword and select from the drop-down and press the Search button.
| Key Word | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Paye | How do I find help on PAYE? | Type 'Tax' in the search box on the Online help and you will have many options to choose from. |
| NAPSA NRC or Passport | How do I enter a Passport No for a non Zambian paying NAPSA? | How do I handle employees on work permits but without NRC numbers? On edit employees at top right hand side enter the passport number. The NAPSA return will then use the Passport Number instead of NRC number. Note: Harvester will still say that a NRC number is required to save the employee, even with a passport number entered. This is correct. You can not enter an employee without an NRC number. This is to stop ghost workers, duplicate employee entries or employees using the same NRC Number. Leave the default NRC Number even though it is officially non-real and auto generated. Only the passport number will be used for NAPSA returns so there is no need to worry about the NRC number. Harvester will ignore the auto generated NRC Number for online NAPSA submissions. |
| NRC Numbers | How do I enter an employee where there is no NRC Number? | Harvester will indicate that a NRC number is required to save an employee. This is still true even with a passport number or Social Security Number entered. This is correct as the NRC number is a unique field. You can not enter an employee without an NRC number. This is to stop ghost workers, duplicate employee entries or employees using the same NRC Number. If there is no NRC Number? By law all Zambian employees must have an NRC Number but this does not always happen. Leave the default NRC Number even though it is officially non-real and auto generated. A Zambian employee has to get an NRC number, so this is a temporary measure. A passport number may be used for NAPSA returns instead of NRC but this is allowed only for Non-Zambians. Harvester will ignore the auto generated NRC Number for online NAPSA submissions. Note: See help on NAPSA Passport Numbers. |
| Tax Settings | How do I view the tax and NAPSA government settings for the current year? | Click on Settings and then click on the View Tax and Napsa settings icon at the top right of the page. You can only view and NOT edit the settings as these are set each year for all companies in Zambia on the Harvester Database Cloud. |
| Gratuity OR Terminal Benefit OR Savings Setup | How do I setup a Gratuity or Terminal Benefit or Savings accumulation? | Terminal benefit is what normally has to be paid by law at the end of each contract. Gratuity is voluntary. Some customers effectively use Gratuity for Savings accumulation for an employee. See note below on Savings. NB The accumulating Terminal Benefit will appear on the payslips each month and NOT Gratuity. Use Terminal Benefit if you are wanting to pay the "compulsory end of contract service amounts". On the "More Reports page" use the "Gratuity or Terminal Benefit Totals" Report to see current Accumulated Totals which may easily be exported to Excel. On the main edit employee screen for each employee there are two fields under the section called 'Payment Rates' called: Gratuity Percentage and Terminal Percentage. Enter the respective percentages here. It is calculated as a percentage of Basic pay. eg Terminal Benefit at 15 percent of Basic pay which is supposed to be paid by law at the end of an employees contract. Once the percentage is entered, Harvester will automatically accumulate the gratuity or terminal benefit that is due. Then once a contract is ended, you are able to see immediately how much is due for payment to each employee on termination of the contract. This Gratuity or Terminal Benefit percentage may be applied at Department level to all employees within a particular employee with one click of the 'Submit' button under 'Settings' and then 'Department Settings'. These percentages may also be applied at a Company-wide level to all employees within the company with one click of the 'Submit' button under 'Settings' and then 'Company Settings'. NB Remember to click the check box 'Click to Apply to All' before you press the 'submit' button if you want to apply to all in a department or across the company. Note: if you have not set up gratuities or terminal benefits yet for your employees(as described above) and you want to pay any accumulated values due to date, then you need to manually enter one, grand-total, "Gratuity" or "Terminal Benefit", Kwacha amount for the whole period for each employee in the "gratuity paid" field or the "terminal benefit paid" field on the payment capture screen, towards the bottom of the screen under the section "End of Contracts". Be sure to enter the employee gratuity percentage once so that for each month, gratuity will be auto calculated so that for the next gratuity payment time, all you have to do is to pay what is due according to the Accumulated Gratuity amount.(no manual totaling of what is due will then be needed) This "gratuity paid" or "terminal benefit paid" entry will NOT be taxed and will be added to the payslip so there is a record of the payment. The accumulated amount will be automatically reduced by the amount you submit as a payment. Note: Once you have paid gratuities or terminal benefits, you may actually just clear or reset every employee's gratuity amount to 0 with just one click. Please type "clear" in help and look for help on "Reset or Clear all Terminal Benefits or Gratuities". Note: Some people use the Gratuity field to record savings values that can accumulate for the user. This is perfectly legal as long as all Terminal Benefit payments are paid separately in the Terminal Benefit paid entry field. |
| Terminal Benefit | How do I setup a Terminal Benefit Cumulation? | See help on 'Gratuity and Terminal Benefit' by typing Gratuity in the Help search box. |
| NAPSA over 55 years | What do I do for employees who are over 55 years? | For those employees older than 55, its best to remove the tick box 'NAPSA?' on edit employees. It says 'Do not remove' but in the case of an employee over 55 it is perfectly legal. In this case no NAPSA will be deducted off the employee and the same for the Employer. I do know that the employer can voluntarily pay the employer's portion of an over 55 year old employee for NAPSA, but this is not compulsory. |
| Terminate or end employment of an employee | How do I terminate an employee but still keep on record? | Click on 'edit employees' on the home page and then click on the edit employee link for the specific employee to bring up the employee details. Look for the 'Employed?' field and then simply click on Terminated in the drop down box (Look under the Personal Details section). Click Submit to apply. NB Only terminate and employee once you have completed the current month and moved the payroll to the next month. If you terminate in the current month then the employee payroll data may not appear in the current month's payroll reports. If the terminated employee is "missing" from an upload report, eg Napsa, then simply re employ the employee and redo the export report. If you want an employee to to be terminated and not to appear on any current payslip report, then you need to re employ the employee and delete the fixed salary or days or any payroll input for that employee. Then terminate the employee and then on the payslip or summary reports there will be no recorded payment for that terminated employee for the current month. Note: You do not need to Delete the employee. If the employee is terminated or deleted, then the employee will not be 'current' in the payroll. You can always re employ them at a later stage if necessary. To find a terminated employee, on the edit-employee list page, use the 'Status' drop-down on the top right and search for 'Terminated'. After pressing the Search button, you will see a listing of all Terminated employees. You can then edit any specific-terminated-employee to re employ the employee should you wish to make the employee currently active again. Then click “edit” on the individual employee and look for the status field to change from “terminated” to “employed”. Note: You can also do this for multiple employees at a time on the 'Employee Table' page which is accessed from the Home page. Look for the column that is titled "Employed". |
| Department Add or Delete and Costings | Add or Delete a Department? | To add a department, simply go to settings and then click on Departments. Then click "add" for adding a new Department. Tip: Try keep department names short eg Gen for General. this makes things look better on reports and payslips. On the edit employee page is the option to allocate or change the department to which each employee belongs. Make sure you have first added the departments you would like (as described above). Most reports are sorted by department and then the employee name or employee number. Reports will have department totals which can be used to allocate Labour costs according to your custom departments. If no employee is left in a department then you can delete the department. Only then will the 'Delete' button become visible so that you can delete the department(Click on Settings and then Department-Settings). So a way to delete a department where you still want to keep the employees on record is to terminate the employees and then put them in a department called for example, 'Historic'(using Edit-employees). Then you can delete the Department they were from as you would have changed their Department setting to 'Historic' using Edit-employees. Note: If any employee is terminated then you will have none of them visible or active when you search etc on department or process the payroll. In order to actually remove or delete a department, you need to go back into the terminated employees and look for any within the department and move them to employed and change the department. Then when no employee is left within the department, you will be able to delete the department. |
| Payroll Input Missing Employee Payslip | Why does my employee who is on the system not appear with a payslip? | First check to see if the employee is terminated. This can be done on Edit-Employees. Look for the field 'Employed?' under the 'Personal Section' of the 'Edit-employee' page. Click on payroll-entry-by-Individual on the home page and then click the link Pay-Me next to the name of the employee who has not yet been paid. If you have more than 700 employees, only the first 700 employee will be exported to the excel format. Check to ensure that the missing payslip is not in a department that was not exported. If you export payslips with the company logo, then only the first 250 payslips will only be exported. The export to excel has many options for exporting individual payslips or just payslips within a department. However, if 'Clear-Search' is not pressed BEFORE you press the export-to-excel button, then the export will remember your last selection. It is good to use the export "by department" function when you have more than 700 employees to export. |