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| Key Word | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Multiple batch uploads or imports limit of employees | How do I import a batch amount of employees after I have already used the feature 7 times? | If you need to import more than 7 different batches of employees after you have already used this feature Seven times, then you need to contact support@harvesteronline.net You are allowed 7 batch uploads on the standard version as this module requires lots of Cloud processing. After a small upgrade cost of $30 you will be allowed to do Seven further batch employee imports. To avoid an upgrade cost, especially for smaller amounts of new employee imports do the following: First add the employees using edit employees and then use the Quick-Table-Employee-Edit to put further details of the new employees in quickly using the single page edit for multiple employees. In this way you do not need to use the batch import. For the batch employee import, we recommend you use this module for importing 40 or more employees at a time. However you may use it to import any amount of employees. |
| Backup Annual History Reports | How do I make sure Harvester keeps my historic Data for previous years online? | If you use Upgrades on the Settings page, you may purchase the module to Keep-Historic-Data for 13 or more months back. This will ensure you have those months 'Live and Online'. Hence with this module, no offline backups will be needed for old monthly pay records from 13 or more months back. If you don't purchase the module then its wise that you have all the monthly Pay-details offline backups for 13 or more months back. It is very import to ensure you have all the monthly Pay-details offline backups when Harvester reminds you to do the Compulsory Backup after January payroll is completed each year. This means that if you don't purchase the module, as long as you have the monthly offline Pay-details backups you will be fine. For actual monthly pay records you will need each monthly backup of the specific months you would like to restore from. Ideally you should have 12 backups of the payroll data for the 12 months of the calendar year starting 2 years back. Example: End of Jan 2020 harvester will clear historic data from Jan 2018 through to Dec 2018. These are the months you should have backups for as they will be removed after you finish Jan 2020 payroll. (Unless you have bought the module to Keep Old historic Data online in which case no backups will be needed) Only in end of Jan 2021(in this example) Harvester will clear historic data from Jan 2019 through to Dec 2019. NB this means(in this example) that for the whole of 2020 you will still have direct access to any month in year 2019 EVEN IF you do not purchase the Keep-History module. These are the months you should have backups for as they will be removed after you finish Jan 2020 payroll. Harvester will always give you the reminder and the option to purchase the "Keep History Module" every time you move the payroll from January to February. If you do not want Harvester to delete the online history for more than 13 months back then you MUST purchase the module. Note that all the relevant accumulative values that need to be carried forward like leave etc are not deleted. Note: If you have been saving your offline payslips and summary sheets in excel then you also have a soft copy offline. The monthly “compulsory“ backups make all the raw data available offline as well. You can then be more assured that you still have the data in an offline format. Then you can avoid the charges needed for Harvester to keep that data for you online. |
| Password Reset or Forgot Password | How do I reset my password? | On the login page just below where you normally type your password is a link called, "Forgot-Password?". Use this link to reset your password if you have forgotten it or need to change it. Note that all you will need to have is: 1)Your "Company TPIN" and 2)Your usual email-login "user-name" to do this. |
| Lunch or Transport (Travel) Allowance | How do I use the Lunch Allowance and (or) the Transport Allowance? | Lunch and Transport Allowances are standard, optional extra additions. They are Kwacha extras you can input on the standard payment-capture screen for each employee payment. Only add a company wide extra if you have made a unique extra that behaves differently to the standard options. Under company settings there is no need to enter any specifics for Lunch or Transport allowances as these are simply straight Kwacha extras. You can use the standard Kwacha entry for Transport allowance and enter the Kwacha value for this standard addition. However if you want the allowance for Transport and or Lunch to be itemised(per day) then proceed as follows: You can add a customised addition called "Travel" as an Itemised Type (no of Days) entry. Go to the settings page. Choose Edit-Company-Extras. Click on add an extra(at the bottom). Give it a name eg "TravelAllow". 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 Kwacha Allowance 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. Note: Under company settings there is no need to enter any specifics for Lunch or Transport allowances as these are normally just straight Kwacha extras. 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 "Travel" addition and you will only need to enter the Number of Days. (Harvester will multiply by the rate specified above when you upload) Note: If the days are the same as the normal days worked then in excel just copy the column of the standard days you have captured in excel into the "Travel" column. |
| Absent Days for Fixed Salary earners | How do I record absent days for Fixed Salray earners so that their pay is deducted? | Normally "Fixed Salary" earners are by nature not on daily rates of pay. Hence there is no need to use the Work Days input field on the payment capture screen for Fixed Salary employees. However if you would still like to keep an employee on a "Fixed Salary" and you want to DEDUCT for absent days, then do the following: Example of a "Fixed Salary" employee with one day absent: Enter -1 (negative one) in the Work Days entry if the employee was absent one day. The payslip will show a deduction of 1 Day times the daily-rate-of-pay and this will be removed from the Basic Pay. NB this will need to be explained to the employee as it is not normal for "Fixed Salary" earners as they are differentiated from daily paid workers. |
| Export All Payslips to Excel | How do I export payslips and make sure they have all been exported? | Use Print or Export Reports to print reports. Click on the specific payslip report you want to export to excel. Click on the export-to-excel button on the top of the report. 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. So if you want to make sure you export all of the payslips, remember to press 'Clear-Search' BEFORE you press the export-to-excel button. (or simply reload the payslip report from the print page and then export afresh if you have been making prior selections) |
| Previous Month | How do I move the payroll back one month if I have already moved the payroll forward one month too early? | You do NOT need to actually move the payroll back one month if you have already moved the payroll forward one month and you moved it forward too early. So if for example you have moved the payroll period forward one month and you still need to edit or upload a previous month's report, all you need to is to use the selection drop down box for the various months to select the previous month. 1) Go to the reports menu by clicking on the Print-Reports icon on the home page. The first page that comes up is actually the particular Pay Period Month or Year selection option. The default normally goes to the current payroll period (month) you are working in. 2) On this Select-Year-and-Month Form, choose your period you want to print the reports for. You will see a drop down box for you to select the particular historic month. 3) Then select the Main Reports icon you will be taken to the usual reports page. However this time you will notice that all the reports will be for the specific pay period you have just chosen.(According to whatever historic month you have chosen). So for example, your previous month's NAPSA upload file that you may have forgotten to upload will be ready to compile and then upload "as normal". You may then resume work in your current month without having to change or do any actual Payroll-Period movements. |
| CSV or Excel export(wrong format) eg NHIS or MTN or Apple Mac | What happens if my NAPSA CSV or other excel export files do not look in the right format? | Sometimes due to a wrong setting on your windows computer, the NAPSA csv or other excel export files do not look in the right format. If you open a CSV file you see your data is not stored neatly in each excel column then your CSV settings are wrong for your Microsoft windows settings on your computer. ie you see all your text but not in the excel columns. Microsoft Excel will open .csv files, but depending on the system's regional settings, it may expect a semicolon as a separator instead of a comma, since in some languages the comma is used as the decimal separator. You can change this via control panel of your computer as follows: To fix this: Change the separator in a CSV text file Click the Windows Start menu. Click Control Panel. Open the Regional and Language Options dialog box. Click the Regional Options Tab. Note: Make sure the region is either Zambia or United Kingdom. Do not use South Africa. Click Customize / Additional settings (Win10). Type a comma, ie the , key in the new separator in the List-separator box. Click OK twice. Then restart your internet browser and redo the export of the file (eg NHIS) from Harvester online. What about Mac users? Here you need to go to settings on your Mac computer and then look for the Language and Region Settings. Make sure the region is either Zambia or United Kingdom. Do not use a region like South Africa or your CSV file will save with semicolons and not the standard comma. If the regional setting is wrong, MAC book computers will also save the CSV file with comma instead of a decimal point for the actual values eg 170,59 instead of 170.59 This is also a sign that your Region Settings are wrong. We work with decimals and not commas for numeric values! The comma must NOT be used as the decimal separator. After the regional settings are fixed, restart your internet browser and redo the export of the file (eg NHIS) from Harvester online. On an Apple computer once you have the NHIS file saved as an excel file then do the following: Make sure you have the file you want to export open in Numbers. (This is the standard Apple version of the Excel Microsoft Excel Application) 1) Choose the File and then select "Export To", then select the format you want (which will be CSV). Note: From the Export Your Spreadsheet window, you can choose a different format or set up any additional options. ... 2) Click Next. 3) Enter a name for your file and select a folder to save it to. 4) Click Export. Sometimes you may find that you still get certain columns of data, like the Employee number on the NHIS upload report, reverting to a scientific notation format where it does not show the actual number. If you literally upload the exported CSV file(without first opening the CSV file) then the upload file should work as it is. If this does not seem to work, then open the exported CSV file in Excel and then use the Excel program to save as a CSV file type. This process will often fix such "format errors" with CSV files. Also note there could be an error that is not related to the format of your upload file: If you see an error code on MTN with Status : "Creation failed" and Reason: "Row number##,,Internal error" then there may be a problem with the actual phone number of one of your employees. An "inactive cellphone number" will prevent the whole batch from completing without errors. Contact MTN and ask for them to help you identify which is the problematic cellphone number and then delete the appropriate row in a program such as "Notepad". |
| Department Totals of Number of employees | How do I find out how many employees were paid in each department? | To find out how many employees were paid in each department: Go to the print reports page and then on the summary reports print section, you will see two different summary reports, the Detailed-Summary and the Basic-Summary Reports. Once you select your choice, simple click the export-to-excel icon to get an excel version of the report. On the left hand side you will see a field called 'Count' for the total number of employees in each department who have received a pay packet. It can be seen on both the Summary report and the Summary Detail report once you export the report to Excel. |
| Paye Detailed History Report | How do I see the Paye or tax history? | For detailed access to tax cards and history, there are detailed Paye reports that can be printed out. Go to print reports. Select the Paye-Detail Report. In the options drop down box, select the option ALL-Months and then click Search. Note: You may also export this report to Excel. Each December year end we advise to use the All-Months option and export the full year to excel the yearly summary at end of each year, especially if the Keep-History Module is not purchased. You are given the option for purchasing the Keep-History Module at the end of January each year. There is another option where the specific year can also be selected and that is to use the 'Tax-Reports' report which is found towards the bottom of the More-Reports page. In the options drop down box for 'Specific-Year', select the option for the year you would like to see all paye records for and then click Search. |