Harvester Payroll Help Centre

From the harvester offline it imports the terminal benefit percentage and the accumulated terminal benefits. It also imports any gratuities paid out but will NOT import cumulative outstanding gratuities. (You will notice there is no column heading in the excel export for accumulated Gratuity) Cumulated-Terminal-Benefit is imported and this is the Zambian statutory requirement and what is most commonly used in harvester offline. (Old versions of harvester offline called what is now the Cumulated-Terminal-Benefit the Cumulated-Gratuity)

Use you existing harvester payroll system and on the main page on the right hand side is a button that says Export-to-harvester-online. Click on this and then on the export button (on the right hand side), it will export your file to a csv file called exportharvestertemplate.csv This file will be saved in your My Documents folder on your computer. On the online system: Log in and go to the settings page. Go to the Import from Excel link on the left hand side of the settings page. You will be taken to the "Choose your Template" page. Click the top image (of the two options) to Proceed with Harvester Export File (v 17.305 or later) Then click on "Go-to-Step 1" at the bottom of the Choose-your-Template page. Then Click on "Step 1" at the top to add the upload file. Once you have added the file you can then proceed to "Step 2". If you get a message that there is a wrong amount of columns then Harvester thinks you are trying to import from your own list of employees in excel and not the harvester offline upload file. In which case check your "Import Template Choice" is correct. Click on Step 3 and the employees will be imported and updated and you will be ready for entry. Remember that any of your unique company extra additions and deductions will still need to be manually added after your conversion is done. Also remember to enter your NAPSA number and NHIS employer number in Company settings. Lastly you need to use the settings page to customize your company specific additions and deductions. These settings are not imported from the offline system.

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".

Two options are: Custom Extras or Custom Standard Extras Custom Extras are setup via the settings page and then "Custom Extras". There are a few Custom Standard Extras that can be renamed to suite your company needs. For these, go to settings page and then Compnay Settings. At the bottom of the page, look for the following addition or deduction labels that can be edited for the payslip. Other Addition Label, Itemised Addition, Other Deduction Label, Other Deduction 2 Label You may have processed a payment and somehow a custom extra is not showing on the payslip. If this happens then you need to redo the payment by using edit payments to submit your payment again. You may need to reset or delete that particular employee's current payment. To Delete a payment for an employee's pay on the most recent month's pay, you may do the following: Use payroll-entry-by-Individual and then click on the edit payment for the particular employee and then click edit on the most recent payment you would like to delete. Click the Delete button. Now you may re capture the payment from afresh. Check your payslip. If it is still not showing then possibly the employee does not have the custom extra properly assigned to them. You can check if an individual has ALL the correct custom extras assigned by going to the "Edit Pay" screen on the main home page and then choose your employee who has an extra "not appearing" on the payslip. Then look to the last column of that employee and click on "extras" to check all extras have been assigned. In this case then take note which "custom extra" has not been shown. To ensure the custom extra is properly applied to this employee you need to go to the settings page and then click on "Edit Company Extras". Click on the "Edit Extra" link for the particular custom extra which is not applied to all employees then press the "Submit button" to ensure that all employees with the missing "Company-wide" extra has the correct company-wide custom extra applied. This will make sure all employees who have been assigned the extra will have the custom extra assigned. Note: make sure you tick the check box for "Update any employees already assigned with this extra" and then click Submit. Lastly go back to the edit payment screen for the particular employee and re submit the payment or delete it and redo it. This should ensure that the custom extra is correctly assigned to the employee and it should show on the payslip.

Custom Extra not appearing or does not seem to calculate? If the custom extra does not appear when you want to edit the custom extras, then the custom extra has not been properly applied to the particular employee. (The employee may have been recently added or re employed). To ensure the custom extra is properly applied to this employee you need to go to the settings page and then click on "Edit Company Extras". Click on the "Edit Extra" link for the particular custom extra which is not applied to all employees then press the "Submit button" to ensure that all employees with the missing "Company-wide" extra has the correct company-wide custom extra applied. Note: make sure you tick the check box for "Update any employees already assigned with this extra" and then click Submit. After you have made sure that the extra has been applied to all, then you need to go and delete the current payment for the particular employee in order to redo the payment so that the custom extra is reflected. Use payroll-entry-by-Individual and then click on the edit payment for the particular employee and then click edit on the most recent payment you would like to delete. Click the Delete button. Now you may re capture the payment from afresh.

The edit payments screen only shows the standard payment options. You can change the name of the standard extras like "Other" or "Other2" or Itemized or "Other Deduction" or "Other Deduction 2 "by going to company settings. Any Custom Extras you have added using the Custom Extras under Settings for your company will only appear towards the bottom of the "payment capture page" for each employee. Note that in the event that you have only added the custom extra AFTER you have already processed the current month's payment for any employee, you will need to delete the current payment using "Edit Payments" and redo it for any payment already processed. (See below for more details). 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. To Delete a payment for an employee's pay on the most recent month's pay, you may do the following: Use payroll-entry-by-Individual and then click on the edit payment for the particular employee and then click edit on the most recent payment you would like to delete. Click the Delete button. Now you may re capture the payment from afresh. If the custom extras still do not appear when you want to edit the custom extras, then the custom extras have not been properly applied to the particular employee. (The employee may have been recently added or re employed). To ensure the custom extras are properly applied to this employee you need to go to settings and then Extras and for each particular custom extra you need to press the "Submit button" to ensure that the employee with the missing extras has the right company-wide custom extras applied. Note: make sure you tick the check box for "Update any employees already assigned with this extra" and then click Submit.

If you are using daily rates of pay, you only need to enter the days worked and not the hours. You may use a combination of both. Normally overtime is recorded in hours and so if no hourly rate is entered, then Harvesteronline will divide the daily rate by the standard hours in a day and automatically work out the hourly rate. If you have specifically entered an hourly rate, then for overtime hours the rate used will be the specific hourly rate. You may still enter the overtime in days and not in hours. Remember overtime is rate times 1.5 and double time for holidays is rate times 2. You do not need to calculate this. In fact you should simply enter for example, 1 day if it is a holiday, and then Harvesteronline will multiply this by 2 and record the value '2' in the Double time or Holiday Days. This will be itemised correctly on the payslip showing the employee what his normal and overtime values were. This makes all records clear so that there is an accurate record of this for possible later reference. Note for fixed wage earners: The "daily rate equivalent" for fixed wage earners is calculated as the basic fixed-wage divided by the no of days in a month, which is a default value of 26 days. This Default "days in a month" can be changed on Company settings but 26 is the accepted standard. This is how the Overtime value of at 1.5 times this "daily rate equivalent" for fixed wage earners is calculated. So hours and days are only for normal hours or days worked. Overtime and double time should be entered separately.

For changing the Daily rate for all employees: Go to Settings. Go to Company Settings. Edit the "Day Rate". Click on "Submit". Note: Only if you change the daily rate (or other rates) in Company-Settings, will the change be applied to all within the Company. For employees on fixed-salary and not daily-rate you need to use edit-employees to change this individually.

For changing the Daily rate for all employees within a Specific Department: Go to Settings. Go to Department Settings. Edit the "Day Rate". Click on "Submit". Note 1 : Only if you change the daily rate (or other rates) in Department-Settings, will the change be applied to all within the department. Note 2 : Do this change before processing current months payroll details so that the current month will use the new updated employee pay rate details. If you have already processed payments then use the edit payments in order to re capture the "new" rates of pay. Note 3 : This option will just change the daily rate for all employees within the department to a new rate for all employees within the same department. If after submitting the new daily rate you find that some employees in the department do not have the new rate, then first reset the daily rate to 0 for all within the department by changing the department rate to 0 and then clicking "Submit". Then go back and change the department-rate from 0 to whatever the new rate is. Remember a Department name must have no "spaces" or non-Alphanumeric values in it. eg Gen 1 or Gen-1 is not allowed. It should be Gen1 or just Gen. If you want to do a percentage change or individual changes and you do not want to do this individually then you have two options explained below: i) There is a Percentage increase option (Best option for percentage increase) for all employees in the company: 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. ii) You can use the employee upload-template to make an excel template where you can use the power of excel to make changes and then do a batch upload. Type "upload" in help and then search "Batch Upload or Import of Existing Employees from Excel". Note in the help what is needed if you have more than 200 employees to update.

If you use the drop down calendar then the date will be formatted correctly. For manual entries where you actually type in the date, just make sure you type 3 letters for the month before it will accept any dates. Make sure you actually type in dates directly into the date field if the year is many years back. This will be quicker than using the drop down calendar. What about Excel Dates for upload? eg batch import of new employees from Excel. Check that the date is not reverted by your Excel to the American Standard. It is determined by your Excel Standard-Date-Format options. Eg 22/02/2019 is 22 of February 2019 or 22/Feb/2019 Check your excel does not switch to the America Standard which would make this same date you enter change to 2/22/2019. If you highlight the Excel-Cel with the date in question and then look at the Reference in the Formula Bar it will show you what excel format you are using. Or you can check your Excel Standard-Date-Format by clicking on format cells and then checking the Date is for example English(UK). It should not be a Date Format that has the Month before the Day. (like the American version) For any import or update process that involves dates, please make sure that your computer system settings on windows are correct before you even open excel and do the download or the upload for Harvester online files. How do I set my region date format to English UK or Zambia? Go into Control Panel then Clock then Language then and Region. In the Formats tab, check that the: Format is set to English (United Kingdom). Short date format in Date and time formats is set to dd/MM/yyyy. The Zambia default also works on dd/MMM/yyyy.