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| Key Word | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 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. |
| Amended PAYE and Skills Return | How do I submit an amended Paye and or Skills return? | When do I use the Amended PAYE return version? If you have already submitted a monthly return online to the ZRA website portal for a particular payment period and you want to resubmit..ie make another upload for the same month period. The PAYE amendment is done directly, online with the ZRA through their web site and not Harvester. However you should also amend your Harvester historic payroll data. To fix harvester values you need to go to edit payments for the respective employees and choose the exact month you want to edit. Click on the edit option and then you may edit any month for up to a year back. Once you press submit on the edit payment screen for the specific month that needs adjusting, then all the reports, like NAPSA, NHI and PAYE will be automatically adjusted. Then you can simply go to the reports link, but on the month(payroll-period) selection page, choose the "historic" month for which you would like to print or generate new returns. Then all reports will be ready for use with the adjusted values for you updated records. |
| 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. |
| Paye and Skills Development Return | How do I prepare the Paye and Skills Development Return? | Simply select the "PAYE Upload Return" option on the print page and then export the report to excel. To export to excel: On the Paye return page on the top left you simply click on the "export to excel" icon and this will generate the upload file. This file will then be downloaded to your standard download location on your computer. On some browsers you may open the export file directly (before downloading). In such cases, when you click "save" in excel or Google docs you can then specify where you want to save the download file. 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. |
| Batch Payment Capture | How do I use the Batch Payment Capture Option? | If you are using the Batch entry option, Harvester will first let you input the normal standard entries on the Batch payment input table. Then after you press Submit, you will be taken to a second Batch payment input table which handles the Custom Extras. When you press Submit on this second screen then all the employees and their extras will be paid. NB Use the arrow keys on the keyboard to navigate easily around the table to make it easy to quickly capture inputs like you would do on a spreadsheet. The Tab key also works to move quickly to the next input field. Remember the payments are only actually paid once you click Submit on the Second Batch payment screen for the Custom Extras. If you do not have any custom extras, still press Submit to process the employee batch payments. To make corrections for any payments already processed: Go to Payroll-Entry-by-Individual on the home screen and then find the employee and edit the payment. |
| Edit Accumulated Terminal Ben or Gratuity | How do I Edit or View Terminal Benefit Values OR Accumulated Gratuity? | To manually edit the actual "Accumulated Gratuity" or "Terminal Benefit" do the following: 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. (Type the employee name in the search box and all historic data will appear for that specific employee) 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. Note for those users who converted from Harvester offline: To make only one change you can edit the Accumulated Terminal Benefit loaded from previous OFFLINE package. On the same page, first select the option on Search for Viewing Historic Cumulative Totals uploaded from previous package. Also please note that if you enter a gratuity percent only months after you enter a contract start date, the gratuity does not automatically "backdate" to the contract start-date. Accumulated gratuity or terminal benefit does not work from the contract start date unless this is the time you set up the gratuity percentage. If you did forget to enter a gratuity percentage at the time the employee first started work then this can easily be fixed by manually editing the historic value (for the period up until the gratuity was entered) as described above. If you don't remove the gratuity percentage it will continue to run, even if the contract comes to an end. |
| Hide Accumulated Terminal Ben or Leave on Payslip | How do I hide Terminal Benefit or Leave Days on the Payslip | To hide Terminal Benefit or Accumulated Leave Days on the Payslip: (this option is only available on the Excel payslips report) On the payslips page, select this option in the top left Options-Box BEFORE you export payslips to excel. If you do this then Harvester will hide Accumulated Terminal Benefit or Accumulated Leave Days accordingly. Note for the "standard" payslip size, when exported to excel, it will not show Accumulated Leave Days. Harvester will show positive Accumulated Leave Days on the Browser payslip option. Negative Accumulated Leave Days will not be shown. However, when you export the "large" payslip format to excel it will show Accumulated leave days due, even if the Accumulated Days is negative. |