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Key Word Topic Description
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.
Move payroll back one month or more How do I move the payroll back one month after I accidently moved to next period? This is not a normal procedure. Only move back one payroll period if you are sure. Normal procedure is to move the payroll forward one month after you finish the current month. To move the payroll back one month: Click on Settings and then Delete and Move Payroll Options. Choose option 3 to Move the payroll BACKWARD one Period and DELETE. Remember that when you move back one month, Harvester will delete ALL payments for the particular pay period you are moving to. If you have already entered all the payments for the previous month you want to go back to redo then you will lose those entries. The other way is for Admin to move your payroll back WITHOUT DELETING. Admin can be requested to move the payroll back for you to fix or redo entries. (Kwacha equivalent of USD 25) However, if your payroll is in the last month before your renewal is due, please ask Admin by email to temporarily change the start month of the Company start date (for when you registered Harvester-online) to one month earlier. Admin will then be able to move you back one month and then Admin can change the month back to the original start date. Note: You can still edit a previous month payroll-data for a particular employee by using the edit-payments page. Then go to reports and choose the previous month and your update reports will be there. In this way, no cost is involved in moving the payroll backwards one month.
Paye edit Historic amount How do I edit Accumulated Paye Values or make a Historic correction? To edit the actual "Accumulated Gross Taxable" or "Accumulated Paye Paid" for the current tax year: Be Careful as this should not normally be done as Harvester Calculates correctly according to Government Tax rules. NB This is only for changing a tax amount for HISTORIC months. For any current month entries then use normal payroll processing and NOT this advice below. 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 eg for pay period March 2016 5) Look for "Gross Taxable(Current)" and or "PAYE Paid(Current)" You may edit these values. If you edit the PAYE paid amount, then when harvester calculates the next tax payment due for this employee it will self adjust accordingly. i.e. Harvester will use this new HISTORIC entry change when it recalculates the current month's tax values. Note: Concerning the Edit Screen, "Current" means for the particular payment month you are editing. i.e. You have to change the actual value in a particular pay period. Then the Accumulated value changes accordingly. This is like an accounting system. If you converted from Harvester Offline and you want to edit the Accumulated Paye and Gross 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 Paye and Gross Totals that were converted from the Harvester Offline version which were the Accumulated Paye values at the time you converted to Harvester Online.
Personal Levy How do I sort Personal Levy? There is a report called "Personal Levy" on the main print-reports page. Look under the Employee General Reports section on the right hand side. This will tell you how much to deduct from each person. For most employees it is a standard 15 Kwacha. If the gross annual wage amount divided by 12 (for the number of months in a year) is less than K700 then no personal levy will be charged. How to ensure each employee pays: You need to manually input the 15 K as a deduction. To do this you can add a custom Extra and call it "Levy" or you could just enter it under the standard "Pers Levy" field on the normal payroll capture form. Note if you use the latter, then you need to manually enter the amount you want the employee to pay eg K15 What is important is that you print the report of the Personal Levy for each person and keep this on record. (You may also simply export to excel and keep a soft copy as well) Note: Search Help by typing "Extras Fixed Deduction Example" to see how you can add a fixed deduction like Levy that will apply to all. The advantage for this custom extra as opposed to the standard extra is that you don't need to enter for each employee manually.
Extras Fixed Deduction Personal Levy Example How do I setup a Fixed Deduction that applies to all or many employees? You can add a customized deduction (or addition) as a "Fixed" Type extra. Go to the settings page. Choose Edit-Company-Extras. Click on add an extra(at the bottom). Give it a name eg Personal Levy. Specify it as a Deduction in the "Method" field. Specify "Fixed" in the "Type" field. Click on Edit Value (on the right hand side) to edit the default value of the Fixed Deduction. eg 15 for a fixed deduction of 15K applied to all that you apply this deduction to. ONLY Click Apply-to-all in the Company if you want the option to give everyone in the Company this deduction example. Customized extras will only appear on the "second page" of the direct payments entry screen which is the second input page for each employee payment capture. However this type of extra does not require user-input as it will automatically be deducted from those employees to whom you have applied this extra.
Department Totals How do I generate a report just showing me department totals? For summary Totals by Department, go to the Print Reports page and then choose the normal Summary basic report. It shows all the department totals and the number of employees worked in each department. On the summary reports print section, at the top left of the Summary Report is a search box called "Other options" where you can enter the option to: Include Summary Totals or Hide Summary Totals. Once you select your choice, simple click search and then export to excel to get an excel version of the report.
Summary Inclusive of custom Extras How do I print a summary Report including my custom extras? Note that if you export to Excel the "Full Summary" Report then Harvester will print all extras in one excel row per employee. The other option you have is the "Summary" report: To print or view a summary Report including custom extras: Make sure you are on home page. Click on Print Reports Icon. Click on the "Summary Detail" Report. The forth line of the report will include all the custom extras you have added (up to 3 custom extra additions and up to 5 custom extra deductions). To see the actual custom extras, you MUST export this to excel to see all your payroll detail summaries in one report.(The web version does not include the custom extras). NB Note: To print or view a report for a specific Custom Extra showing details and Totals: Use the separate Employee "Extra Additions" or "Extra Deductions" icon to print specific custom extras. These two reports are found on the second Print Reports page called "More Reports". 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 specific report will be shown with details and Totals. you may use the separate Employee "Extra Additions" or "Deductions" icon to print specific custom extras. This is found on the second Print Reports page called "More Reports". 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 specific report will be shown.

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