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| Key Word | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 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. |
| Terminal Benefit Edit History | How do I Edit Terminal Benefit History? | To edit the actual "Accumulated Gratuity" or "Terminal Benefit" 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. |
| Delete Previous Offline Excel File | How do I delete a previously uploaded payroll input file? | On the home page look for: Offline Pay Input in Excel(the man on the skateboard) Click on Step 3 which is "Upload Offline Template file for processing". If you already have an existing file added (from a previous month or upload attempt), you will see the last file you uploaded. Click on the "Completed" icon which says "Click to remove file". Then you will see the Delete button. This can easily be deleted without fear of losing work. If you are not happy with your import you can simply redo the upload or you may go to any employee online and and edit any individual, current-payroll entry. |
| Extras Fixed Lunch Allowance Example | How do I set up a fixed extra addition? | You can add a customized addition(or deduction) 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 Lunch. Specify it as an Addition 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 10 for a fixed addition of 10K applied to all that you apply this extra to. Click Apply-to-all in the Company if you want the option to give everyone in the Company this extra addition example. To edit individual amounts (for those not having the usual fixed amount), go to "Payroll Individual " screen on the main home page and then choose your employee who needs a different fixed addition. Then look to the last column and click on "extras". Look for the specific custom extra addition 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. A Zero amount entered in this example will make sure that no extra addition is taken for that employee in future. 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. |
| Cash Breakdown Excel vs Browser Report | What is the difference between the Excel Cash Breakdown and the Browser Report? | There is a difference between the simple Browser Cash breakdown report and the detailed Cash breakdown report that you can export to Excel. The detailed Excel Cash breakdown report actually gives each and every cash employee's breakdown as to how many notes are required individually. The report that is generated directly from the web will only give the summary total for each department. This is usually used to send to the bank so that you know how many notes are required to order from the bank. It also saves on paper usage by only giving department totals and grand totals. |