Harvester Payroll Help Centre

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 Union. (note: most unions use the percentage of basic deduction and so use the standard union option under edit employee if you have the normal percentage deduction and in which case ignore the following example) 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 10 for a fixed deduction of 10% applied to all that you apply this deduction to. Click Apply-to-all in the Company if you want the option to give everyone in the Company this deduction example. (It is easier to Apply-to-all if more employees are on the Union deduction than those who are not). You may also apply the percentage deduction by department as well. Customized extras will appear on 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 calculate at the percentage of Basic on those employees to whom you have applied this extra. Note: If you want to specify INDIVIDUAL Itemised rates per employee and would like Harvester to "remember" these values from month to month, then type "Individual" in help. To further customize so that those who do NOT pay union get 0, or a different amount, then you may edit the percentage deduction so specific employees have a different percentage amount. To edit individual amounts, go to "Payroll Individual " screen on the main home page and then choose your employee who needs a different fixed deduction. Then look to the last column and click on "extras". Look for the specific custom extra deduction and then click "edit value". You will be able to give this employee a unique percentage value that will be used for all future payroll payments processed. A zero amount entered in this example will make sure that no percentage extra is taken for union 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.

Note: You do not need to Delete the employee. Do not worry if you have deleted an employee, you will be able to re employ him or her. If the employee is terminated or deleted, then the employee will not be 'current' in the payroll. You can always re employ them at a later stage if necessary. To find a terminated employee, on the edit-employee list page, use the 'Status' drop-down on the top right and search for 'Terminated'. After pressing the Search button, you will see a listing of all Terminated employees. You can then edit any specific-terminated-employee to re employ the employee should you wish to make the employee currently active again. Note: When you terminate an employee, it has the same effect as if you were to delete an employee. When you delete an employee the employee Status changes to "Terminated" and still remains on the system. However the employee will never be in the current payroll. This is important as employees should not be deleted in the current tax year. It is also helpful in that there is an online-record to make it very simple and easy to re employ someone (even if the current tax year has passed). If you would like to keep more employee "spaces" online so as to avoid having to upgrade your Harvester package to the next package size, then you may start using old terminated employees from more than a year back and simply re suing the employee number by editing the name and NRC etc of the "OLD" terminated employee. You may also email support and ask for some employees to be totally or permanently removed. An admin fee of USD 30 in Kwacha will be charged for this. Please see more help on this by typing Price in help and looking up "Price Determined by Employed and Terminated"

Go to edit employees to edit employee's specific details, like Fixed Salary for example. Note: Even if an employee is on a fixed salary: To get a payslip for any employee you still need to process the pay for each month, either by using 1) Payroll entry or 2) Payroll Entry Batch Pay or 3) Offline, excel, payroll input feature. For large amounts of employees use our customized offline payroll input which allows you to quickly enter pay data like days, hours etc in an offline excel spreadsheet that you can later upload and process all at once immediately.

For Fixed-Monthly-Salary earners who have the PAY CLASS set as FIXED, NO KWACHA VALUE will appear as actual leave pay taken in the GROSS wage. In this case just the accumulated leave days will reduce by the amount of DAYS taken. Only if an employee is on a daily pay rate, then a KWACHA LEAVE value will appear as an extra in the GROSS pay. This is because Fixed-Monthly-Salary employees do not usually cash their leave. Should you wish to pay a Kwacha value for leave on top of a Fixed salary and you do not have employees who want to both cash leave and at the same time also take some of their leave, then please make sure that the PAY CLASS is NOT marked as FIXED on edit-employee. (In this case, make sure that the PAY CLASS is marked as DAILY under edit-employee). However if you want to keep the employee Class as a Fixed-Salary type and would like to have an employee being able to take part of their leave as Cash or "Commuted" and the other part of their leave to be actual leave days, then you may do the following. Go to Settings and then "Edit Company Extras". Click on the Add extra icon to add a new custom-extra and call it "LeaveCash" for example. Make your custom-extra of the type "Straight from user input" and make sure the extra is an "Addition". Then for the actual "Cashed" or "Commuted" portion of the leave taken you may use this "LeaveCash" field to enter the Kwacha value for the leave (normally Fixed Salary divide by 26 and then times by the Days the employee wants to cash ) Note: Please still enter the Total leave days taken (for both the amount of days the employee goes on physical leave as well as the amount of days the employee wants to cash) in the Leave-Days-Taken field so that the leave record is properly kept.

For employees whose Pay Class is set to Fixed, Harvester does not normally add a separate Kwacha leave value to Gross Pay when leave is taken. This is because a fixed monthly employee is normally paid their full monthly salary while they are on annual leave. For normal paid leave, do not reduce the employee's Days worked. Simply enter the number of leave days in the Leave Days Taken field. This will reduce the employee's leave balance but will not add an extra leave value to Gross Pay. If you enter negative Days, Harvester will reduce Basic Pay. This should normally only be used for unpaid leave or unpaid absence. If you want to cash out leave days as an extra payment, then change the employee's Pay Class from Fixed to Daily under Edit Employee. The leave days taken will then be calculated as a Kwacha value and will appear in Gross Pay. After changing the Pay Class, remember to resubmit the payment so the new calculation is applied. Summary Fixed Pay Class: normal paid leave reduces leave balance only. No extra Kwacha leave value is added to Gross Pay. Daily Pay Class: leave days taken can be calculated and paid as a Kwacha value in Gross Pay. Negative Days: use only for unpaid absence or unpaid leave, not for normal paid annual leave. The daily leave value is based on the employee's wage divided by the company default days in a month. The usual default is 26 days, unless changed in Company Settings.

The online is designed for you to use with self help tips etc. 1) Use Company Settings to setup your company specific info. 2) Use Edit or Add Employees to add and enter employee details. 3) Use Payroll Entry by Individual to enter day and hours and extras etc. 4) Use Print or Export Reports to print reports. It is good to use the Export to excel option on each report for neat printing of payslips and for offline records. Once pay is processed, all reports like the PAYE online return and NAPSA are automatically generated.

On the main payroll capture screen for each employee there are two fields towards the bottom: Gratuity Paid and Terminal Benefit Paid. Enter the respective payments here. From year 2017, there is no tax on Gratuity. Do I use Gratuity or Terminal Benefit? It's just terminology. It works the same. I advise to use terminal benefit but only because it is a closer match in name to the "compulsory" payment people get at end of their contract or when they retire. NB The accumulating Terminal Benefit will appear on the payslips each month and NOT Gratuity. Use Terminal Benefit if you are wanting to pay the "compulsory end of contract service amounts". On the "More Reports page" use the "Gratuity or Terminal Benefit Totals" Report to see current Accumulated Totals which may easily be exported to Excel. Two months worth of payment per year: 16.7 percent One months worth of payment per year: 8.3 percent All payments attract NAPSA charge.

Terminal benefit is what normally has to be paid by law at the end of each contract. Gratuity is voluntary. Some customers effectively use Gratuity for Savings accumulation for an employee. See note below on Savings. NB The accumulating Terminal Benefit will appear on the payslips each month and NOT Gratuity. Use Terminal Benefit if you are wanting to pay the "compulsory end of contract service amounts". On the "More Reports page" use the "Gratuity or Terminal Benefit Totals" Report to see current Accumulated Totals which may easily be exported to Excel. On the main edit employee screen for each employee there are two fields under the section called 'Payment Rates' called: Gratuity Percentage and Terminal Percentage. Enter the respective percentages here. It is calculated as a percentage of Basic pay. eg Terminal Benefit at 15 percent of Basic pay which is supposed to be paid by law at the end of an employees contract. Once the percentage is entered, Harvester will automatically accumulate the gratuity or terminal benefit that is due. Then once a contract is ended, you are able to see immediately how much is due for payment to each employee on termination of the contract. This Gratuity or Terminal Benefit percentage may be applied at Department level to all employees within a particular employee with one click of the 'Submit' button under 'Settings' and then 'Department Settings'. These percentages may also be applied at a Company-wide level to all employees within the company with one click of the 'Submit' button under 'Settings' and then 'Company Settings'. NB Remember to click the check box 'Click to Apply to All' before you press the 'submit' button if you want to apply to all in a department or across the company. Note: if you have not set up gratuities or terminal benefits yet for your employees(as described above) and you want to pay any accumulated values due to date, then you need to manually enter one, grand-total, "Gratuity" or "Terminal Benefit", Kwacha amount for the whole period for each employee in the "gratuity paid" field or the "terminal benefit paid" field on the payment capture screen, towards the bottom of the screen under the section "End of Contracts". Be sure to enter the employee gratuity percentage once so that for each month, gratuity will be auto calculated so that for the next gratuity payment time, all you have to do is to pay what is due according to the Accumulated Gratuity amount.(no manual totaling of what is due will then be needed) This "gratuity paid" or "terminal benefit paid" entry will NOT be taxed and will be added to the payslip so there is a record of the payment. The accumulated amount will be automatically reduced by the amount you submit as a payment. Note: Once you have paid gratuities or terminal benefits, you may actually just clear or reset every employee's gratuity amount to 0 with just one click. Please type "clear" in help and look for help on "Reset or Clear all Terminal Benefits or Gratuities". Note: Some people use the Gratuity field to record savings values that can accumulate for the user. This is perfectly legal as long as all Terminal Benefit payments are paid separately in the Terminal Benefit paid entry field.

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.

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.