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| Key Word | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 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”. After you have paid out gratuities or terminal benefit and leave accrued, you can simply terminate an employee and know that the employee will still be on the system but not "current". The same employee can always be re employed at a later stage and their record can be retrieved by simply changing their status back 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. This high limit is only applied when you are using the Small excel payslip version. 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. Payslips exported to PDF with the logo only export to 75 payslips. 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. |
| Extras Itemised Rate Sick Allowance or Maternity Leave Example | How do I process Sick Pay or Maternity Leave? | You can use the 'standard' Kwacha entry and use this for sick Pay (or Maternity Leave) and enter the Kwacha value for this addition using the "Other Addition" field or you may use the 'standard' other option using the "Other Days" field. The "Other Days" field is found on the payment capture screen and you will notice in red text that you can set the rate for the "Sick Pay" or the "Maternity Pay" in the department before you capture the payment. The above is easiest and commonly used but you just need to make a note that you are using the other fields for sick pay as the label on the report will NOT actually show "Sick Pay" or the "Maternity Pay". However if you want the allowance to be a separate itemised (per day or per hour) report value called Sick Leave or Maternity Leave, then proceed as follows: You can add a customised addition called "SickPay" or "Maternity" as an Itemised Type (no of Days or Hours) entry. Proceed as follows: Go to the settings page. Choose Edit-Company-Extras. Click on add an extra(at the bottom). Give it a name eg "SickPay" or "Maternity". Specify it as an "Addition" in the "Method" field. Specify "Itemised" in the "Type" field. Click on Edit Value (on the right hand side) to edit the default itemized rate. eg Sick pay per Day or Maternity pay per Day. Click Apply-to-all in the Company if you want the option to give anyone in the Company this allowance example. Customized extras will appear on the direct payments entry screen which is the second input page for each employee payment capture. When using the offline payroll input option, it will be much quicker to capture these entries in excel. On the offline payroll input sheet you will see your column headings for the "SickPay" or the "Maternity" addition and you will only need to enter the Number of Days or hours. (Harvester will multiply by the rate specified above when you upload) Note: If the Sick Pay or "Maternity" rate varies per person, then you would need to specify that rate in the individual setup of each of these extras. To edit individual sick rates, 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". 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. |
| Zra online PAYE and Skills Return | How do I generate my PAYE and Skills Levy return? | Harvester produces the actual upload file in Excel. The excel file for upload is simply generated when you click the Export to Excel icon (with the ZRA sign on it) on the top left of the ZRA return report. (the ZRA return report is found using the link called "PAYE Upload Return") You need to use the SAME upload file for ZRA whether you pay Skills Levy or not. The Skills levy is done server side (by ZRA) and is NOT supposed to be on the upload. For your own data or records, Skills Levy amounts can be seen on the "PAYE Data Totals" report. The new PAYE upload is in an open Excel (.xlsx) format and will have no Skills levy amounts in it and no totals. This is correct and is what is needed for your upload. However Harvester has already prepared it so that you do not need to use the normal manual process of using their(ZRA) monthly template to copy and paste all your employee data before uploading to the ZRA portal. It is ready for direct-upload to ZRA as soon as you export it from Harvester using the ZRA Online Return. If you would like to have an excel report of the Skills Levies that are due by you as an employer, then please use the Skills Development Levy report which will itemise each employee and give the total that is paid by your company upon submission of your normal PAYE upload. It is calculated on gross. |
| Leave Report for Accumulated Values | How do I view Accumulated Leave Totals or Gratuity or Loan Repayments? | To view the actual "Outstanding Leave Value" Go to the Second Print Options Page (More Reports) and view the leave that is accumulated for any or all of your employees. There are two main options: 1) Use the "Leave Accumulated" Report from the Leave Section of the "More Reports" page. This will show all accumulated Totals in a single report that you can export to Excel for all years to date. 2) Use the "Leave" Report. This will show all the historic leave values for each month for each employee. Its a big report, so if you would just like the summary, use the first "Leave Accumulated" Report option. Note: You may select to summarize a single year's Leave values in one report. In the search box you may select: "View Leave for only a Specific Year?" Here you may enter just the year to see just the leave for a whole year period that you would like to view or print. Remember all accumulated leave totals are shown(by default)on payslips for all the outstanding cumulative leave days for each employee. This default setting can be changed for export to excel on payslips reports using the "Other Options" search box. Note: You can also go to the Settings page to view leave totals. 1)Click on Settings 2)Click on employee Settings (Left hand side of screen) 3)Click on View-Accumulated-Values (Right hand side, look for the man carrying the boxes) |
| Print a Specific Custom Extra | How do I print a specific custom extra? | To print or view a Specific Custom Extra: Make sure you are on home page. Click on Print Reports Icon. Select the More Reports Icon. Look for the Employee Extra Deductions or the Employee Extra Additions icon. Select one of these and then in the search box you may specify which particular extra or deduction you would like to print or view. Click search and your report will be shown. |
| Paye New Employee | What do I do for tax history when I start a new employee mid way through tax year? | If you have just started Harvester and you are not starting in month one(ie January) and you would like the Accumulative Tax history to reflect correctly at year-end, then please do the following for each employee on the Edit Employee page. (note these days with the required, monthly paye submission to ZRA and no Annual paye submission requirements to ZRA, it is not as essential for the Annual return) On this page look towards the bottom left for two fields called: 1) Taxable Income: Previous Employment and 2) Tax Deducted: Previous Employment Enter the Accumulated Totals for both the Gross tax and the tax paid(if any) in the respective fields above. This is also good practice if a new employee joins your company somewhere during the tax year but not in January(month One). Note: This "history" is only really needed for those employees who pay tax. In summary: When an employee starts on the online system, go to edit-employee and on the bottom of the screen look for: Taxable Income: Previous Employment - enter the gross cumulative taxable amount so far in the current tax year. Tax Deducted: Previous Employment - enter the gross cumulative actual tax paid so far in the current tax year. After saving then go and re submit to recalculate the employees payslip and then PAYE TAX will then reflect correctly. |