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| Key Word | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Historic Gratuity Accumulated Values | How do I view monthly Gratuities that are used for Accumulation ? | How do I view the monthly Gratuity or Terminal-Benefit payments that are used for Accumulation? Use the "Values-that-Accumulate" report found on the More-Reports page under the section called "Actual Values that Accumulate". You will then be able to see the Gratuities for each month for any particular employee or for all the employees. The default report shows All employees. Please type the name of a particular employee in the search box of the report and then press "Search" and you will retrieve the actual historic(monthly) gratuities that are worked out each month for a particular employee. Note that you may also select gratuities for a particular year to view all values from a specific year(Default report shows All years to date). Gratuities are worked on basic and if you need to cross check the basic pay of a particular employee for a particular month then you will need to view one of the historic reports (eg Summary Report) to view what the actual basic was for that month. NB Note: If there is for example an increase in the daily pay-rate before you pay out gratuity, then remember that the gratuity will then be calculated at the new daily pay-rate from the month during which the pay-rate was changed and onward. So you can't just take the current daily rate and multiply by 12 to manually work out a year's gratuity unless the basic remained the same throughout the year or the period of gratuity. If there was a change in daily pay rate midway or at any time during the gratuity period, then the accumulated gratuity is worked out on the old daily pay-rate as well as the time the new daily pay-rate was used. Note: The "Values-that-Accumulate" report can be used to extract monthly Leave Days, Terminal-Benefit or National Health (Medical) Historic Values. |
| Error Offline upload - expected employees wrong | Error message when trying to upload the Offline-Input Template? | Error message on Offline upload - expected number of employees is wrong. To avoid this in future: Do not employ new employees or terminate employees after you have prepared the offline pay input file in excel. In this case you will get an error message telling you have the wrong number of expected employees when you try upload your pay template. The offline template has to be according to the exact number of employed employees. To solve this: Delete the current month's payroll entries by going to Settings and then select "Delete Payroll Options" and then select the option to "Delete current month pay". Then redo from Step 1 of the "Prepare for Offline Input". Note: You may copy and paste data from your old "wrong" template to the new template, making sure you copy and paste column data for the correct employees as your "new" offline template will have a different amount of rows to the old template. The second option is simply not to use the offline template upload for the current month and then process the pay directly online by using the edit-payments option. |
| Percentage Daily pay rate or Wage increase | How do I use a percentage to increase all employee pay rates? | To do a percent increase or change of the daily rate for all Employees: There is a Percentage increase option: Go to settings and towards the bottom right there is a link called “Pay Rates”. Use this to apply a percentage increase across all your employees. Note: For any fixed-salary earners you will need to manually change the fixed salary amounts as the percentage increase option will only increase daily rates when applied across the whole company. Note: There is also the option to change the daily-rate across a department, but this would only be helpful if all those employees within the department already have the same daily-rate. The new daily-rate will then be equally applied to all within that same department when you enter the new daily-rate once. This option is done using Department settings. |
| Extra Private Pension | How do I enter a private pension that accumulates? | If your pension is based on fixed salary earners who, for example, do not get the number of days-worked entered each month then you will need to use the Terminal-Benefit option and use this as a Pension field that accumulates. This will work in much the same way as Gratuity where you can specify a percentage of basic pay, eg 10 percent for Pension. Note however that the field will be called Terminal Benefit on all reports etc but it will work as a record of a private pension that accumulates. In this case then do not use the below example for a Pension as a custom-extra based on days worked and simply use the Terminal Benefit field for your pension. All accumulated values for Terminal Benefit will be the accurate accumulation of the Private Pension. The help below is for setting up pension based on days worked and is not to be used when employees are not paid on daily rate by the number of days worked each month. You can add a customised addition called, for example, "Pension" as an "Extra Based on Days" Type of extra. Go to the settings page. Choose Edit-Company-Extras. Click on "add an Extra"(at the bottom). Give it a name eg "Pension". Specify it as an "Addition" in the "Method" field. Specify "Based on Days" in the "Type" field. Click on the "Val times by Days" to edit the default Value. eg this is the Value that is multiplied by the number of Standard (normal) days. If the daily rate is for example K50, and your pension is 10 percent then the Pension-Daily Rate needs to be K5. Note for this to work, the pension needs to have normal days entered each month on the payment capture. It will be good to make this extra apply only on a Department level and NOT Company-Wide. So do NOT tick the checkbox "Apply-to-all" in the Company unless everyone gets the private pension. Note: This particular Customized extra will NOT appear on the the second input page for each employee payment capture as "no input" is required. Note: This value will be accumulated from month to month in the current calendar year and will NOT be included in the NET pay. At the end of the accumulated period you need to actually make an extra payment to the employee for the accumulated amount. Note the Accumulated Amount will still reflect on the payslip but will be automatically cleared each January so as to make room for the next year to start accumulating again. It is helpful to go to the "More-Reports" page and click on the "Extras-Accumulative" report to print out the summary of each employee's pension accumulation into excel. On this report, remember to click on the "Select Customised Extra" drop down search box on the top right and choose the "Pension" extra before you export to Excel so that you produce the Pension Report. |
| Order Offline-Input by Employee Number | How do I order the Offline-Input for the excel file? | To order order the Offline-Input for the excel file by Employee Number instead of the usual "Surname" order please do the following: On Step 2, "Create offline Template file" page click on the image which is the second image right of the "Click to download" icon and which has the title: "Sort Employee No". Then export your report to Excel and in the Excel version the sorting Order will be adjusted. Note: Sort Order is always done first by Department and then by either Surname or Employee Number. |
| Employee Self Servicce Login E Paylsips | How can employees login to the system to view their own payslips? | There is a 'Employee-Self-Service' login facility which allows an employee to login to a very limited Payroll where the employee can view, export to excel or print their own payslips. Click on Settings and then Upgrade Modules. If you want to UPGRADE, all you do is click on Settings and then Upgrades and you can select the "Employee-Login" module. Once you have selected this and pressed "Submit", Harvester will automatically send you an invoice. It costs 40 dollars in ZMW per year. Now any of your employees may click on the main home page and Register without having to login to your company: To do this the employee must simply select the "Employee-Login" link on the top of the home page. https://www.harvesteronline.net Just for first time registration, the employee must simply click on the "Employee-Registration" link on the top of the Employee-Login page. All they need to know is the company TPIN, their own NRC No and have an email address as a login name. Once registered they just need to remember their login email and their password and they will only be able to access their very own payslips. |
| Sort Order of employees | How is the order of employees stored online? | Sort Order is always done first by Department and then by either Surname or Employee Number. However for data capture it is done by Department and then Surname. The default is by Department and then by Surname. If you are adding employees it is a good idea to add them before you print off time book sheets if you want the order to be the same. For offline input using the monthly template, you can make a template to sort your employees by Department and then employee Number. In this way your data-input, sort-order can be changed in terms of the input-order when you process payroll-input using the offline excel template. Some of the reports can also be changed in terms of sort order: The order of the time-book sheet reports can easily be changed by selecting the top left "Order by" drop down box and sorting by employee number before you export the time sheet to excel. Other reports can also be sorted by employee number: eg To order order a Summary report or Payslip report by Employee Number instead of the usual "Surname" order please do the following: On the report page e.g Summary Report click on the drop down box called "Options" and then look for the option "Order by Employee No". Then export your report to Excel and in the Excel version the sorting Order will be adjusted. |
| Reset or Clear all Terminal Benefits or Gratuities | How do I Reset or Clear all Terminal Benefits or Gratuities | Reset all Terminal Benefits or Gratuities to Zero Balances: Select Settings on the Home page and then select Delete-Payroll Options. In the drop down select "Reset all Terminal Benefits or Gratuities for all employees to Zero" Note: This will reset all Terminal Benefits or Gratuities to zero. In other words it is a complete reset for all employees. This can be done, for example, after you you have paid out gratuities or terminal benefits. In this way you actually just clear or reset every employee's gratuity amount to 0 with just one click. Note that if you enter the "paid out accumulated value" of the gratuities or terminal benefits in the corresponding Terminal-Benefit-Paid or Gratuity-Paid field, then you should not need to Reset all Terminal Benefits or Gratuities to Zero Balances. Gratuities will start accumulating again after you have cleared all gratuities. If you want to include the "current pay-month" for accumulated gratuities, then finish processing the current pay so that the value of the accumulated gratuities includes the "current pay-month". Then you will see the amount that you can enter into the gratuity-taken-field for each employee while you are still in the "current pay-month". Then clear all accumulated gratuities after you move the payroll to the next month, but before you start capturing the "next pay-month". If you are using the offline upload from excel and you also want to include the "current pay-month" for accumulated gratuities, then you can redo the upload with the new accumulated gratuity amounts copied into the gratuity taken field. |
| Export to Excel for Accounting packages | How do I make use of payroll data for linking with my accounting package? | Integration of Harvester with various accounting packages is very easily made possible with the use of of the export directly to excel/csv format option that appears on most of the Harvester reports. For most accounting packages it is not a direct integration but these days most packages will at least provide an import function from an excel or CSV format. All monthly summary reports can be used but the best is the "Full summary for Excel Export report" This (as well as the Summary basic report) will export all your employees with one employee per row and with the unique employee / company number and all of the additions and deductions and the net and basic and gross amounts. This is the report that can then be imported to various accounting packages or simply be used to get the summary totals for the various accounting inputs required. You also have the option of just using the Department Totals or the Company Totals for all employees paid in the current month. |
| MTN and Apple Mac Computers | How do I export to CSV and then edit the text when I do not have Notepad ? | On an Apple computer once you have the MTN file saved as an excel file (type MTN for more help if needed) 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. |