The employment record says who works here and what they are paid. Everything on this page is what turns that into money: the rules the company works by, the allowances and deductions it offers, the tax it applies, the hours people work, the time they take off, and the pay run that adds it all up. None of it is supplied with the product — an employer that offers no allowances has none, and a country with no tax table in force is not taxed rather than taxed at a number somebody guessed.

The staff level has to be on. See Management levels.

Employer Policy

Staff › Employer Policy is how this company works, set once. An employment record only says where somebody differs from it, so a blank on a record means “as the company does it”. Six tabs, and each one writes only its own settings — saving Pay periods can never blank a figure on Working week.

Working week
Hours in a working week, the hours that count as full time, and which days of the week are worked. Overtime, if this employer pays it: the weekly hours it starts after and the multiple it is paid at. Probation length, notice period, and the list of departments.
Time off rules
When the leave year starts and whether leave is counted in days or hours; how much everybody gets and whether it is granted upfront or month by month; how much may be carried over; notice needed, longest run in one go, whether closed days inside a booking count, whether time off may be taken during probation, and whether a balance may go negative.
Leave types
The kinds of absence this employer offers. Each carries whether it is paid, whether it comes out of the holiday allowance, an allowance of its own, the colour it is shown in, whether a reason must be given, and whether it is still offered.
Closed days
The days the company is shut. A date, whether it comes round every year, and optionally a single tax region it applies to.
Pay periods
How often people are paid, the pay day, and the day timesheets have to be in by. Also what a payslip carries: the year to date beside every figure, the time off balance, and the notes written on a pay run.
Self service
What staff may do for themselves in the portal: see and print their own payslips, submit their own hours, ask for time off, and keep their own address and phone number up to date.
Pay is never editable from the portal.

Whatever the Self service tab says, pay, hours and job title are administered here and nowhere else. Only the last four digits of a bank account are ever stored.

Nothing is granted until it is set. Entitlement starts at zero, overtime starts switched off, and a leave year that has never been set starts on 1 January. Saving applies from then on: anything already approved keeps the figures it was approved with.

Pay items

Staff › Pay Items holds the allowances this employer adds to pay and the deductions it takes off, defined once and then given to whoever has them. An item does nothing until an employee is enrolled in it on their own record.

Each item says what it is called — that name is what an employee reads on their payslip — whether it adds to pay or comes off it, whether it is a fixed amount or a percentage of basic pay, and what the usual amount is. An individual can be enrolled at a different figure.

Counts as pay and is taxed
An allowance that is taxed along with basic pay. Switched off, it is paid on top, after tax.
Comes off before tax
A deduction taken before income tax is worked out, so it reduces what the employee is taxed on.
And before every other tax too
Extends that relief to every tax beside the main one. This is why one payslip can legitimately show two different taxable figures.
Only once probation has ended
Read from the employee’s own probation date. Somebody with no probation date recorded does not receive the item at all, rather than receiving it early.
An item that somebody holds cannot be deleted.

Switch it off instead: it stops being offered for anything new and everybody already enrolled keeps it. Payslips freeze the label and amount of every line they carry, so editing an item never restates a payslip already issued.

Payroll tax tables

Staff › Payroll Tax holds the rates a pay run applies, per country, per region and per tax year. A table says where and when it applies — country, an optional region code matching the one on a staff record, an optional filing status, the tax year as your country writes it, and the dates it is in force — then the tax-free allowance and the bands.

Figures are written for a year, a month or a week, whichever is natural, and converted to whatever period a run pays. Bands are measured on pay after the allowance, so the first band starts at zero and the last one has no upper limit. The editor refuses a table with a gap between bands, an overlap, a rate outside 0–100, a first band that does not start at zero, or an upper limit on the last band.

Draft
Built and checked without affecting anybody. Never used by a pay run.
In force
Used by any run whose pay date falls inside its dates.
Retired
Kept so the pay runs that used it can still be recalculated.

A region-specific table beats a country-wide one, and a table naming the employee’s filing status beats one naming none. Among the tables in force, the one with the latest start date that is not in the future wins — so next year’s table can be published early and takes over on its own date. Copy for a new year duplicates a table as a draft to edit.

No table means no tax.

An employee whose country has no table in force on the pay date goes onto the run untaxed, and the run says so before you approve it. That is deliberate: a wrong tax figure is worse than a visible gap.

Timesheets

Staff › Timesheets records hours on the day they were worked. A pay run collects whatever falls inside its period and has been approved — nothing else.

One entry is one day’s work of one kind: whose time it is, the day, decimal hours (seven and a half is 7.5, not 7.30), what it was, and an optional note. A day split between ordinary hours and overtime is two entries, because they are two different things on a payslip.

Worked
Ordinary hours. Paid by the hour.
Overtime
Paid by the hour, at the multiple Employer Policy sets.
Holiday
Recorded, counted in the total, not paid at an hourly rate.
Sick leave
The same: recorded here, not priced here.

The period opens on the current week, using the employer’s own week start, and is set to whatever a pay run is about to cover. Entries can be approved one at a time, in a ticked batch, or for the whole period at once — and when a person filter is set, the whole-period button says so and honours it.

An entry a run has paid is locked.

Once an approved run has claimed it, the entry cannot be edited or deleted. Record a correction on the next period instead. Reopening the run releases its entries again.

Time off

Staff › Time Off is who has asked for what, and what was decided. A balance is worked out from those decisions rather than typed onto a record. Three views: To decide, Everything, and Who’s off.

Reviewing a request shows what was asked for, the reason given, and what it costs — the whole balance for the leave year the request falls in, broken into entitlement, what a full year would be when the entitlement is prorated, what has been earned so far when leave accrues monthly, what was carried in, what was taken, what is still waiting on a decision, and what is left. It also lists anybody else off at the same time. Approving or declining is recorded with whatever you write alongside it, and the person can see it.

Waiting
Asked for, not yet decided. Counted against the balance as pending.
Approved
Decided. The balance has moved with it and payroll knows about it.
Declined
Decided. Nothing came off the balance.
Withdrawn
Taken back. It stays on the record so the balance still explains itself.

Book time off enters an absence on somebody’s behalf, approved as it is saved rather than joining a queue of one. Only working days are counted and the company’s closed days are skipped, so a week containing a public holiday costs four days rather than five. The length is worked out and stored when it is booked, so changing the closed days later never rewrites a booking that was already agreed.

Carry-over looks back one year and no further.

A figure nobody can check by hand is a figure nobody should be paid on. Anything taken before WBAMS was counting is entered on the record as an opening figure for the current leave year.

Pay runs

Staff › Pay Runs works out what everyone on the payroll is owed for one period. Nothing is fixed until you approve it.

A run is set up with what it pays — weekly, fortnightly or monthly, a salary being converted to that period whatever period the staff record states it in — the pay date, and the period it covers. All three are suggested from Employer Policy and the last complete period. Saving brings everyone on the payroll onto the run: every active member of staff and everybody on leave who has a pay rate set.

For each person the run works out the hours, the gross, the tax and the deductions. Hours come from the timesheet wherever any are recorded for the period and have been approved, and are typed in on the run otherwise; a figure that came from a timesheet is shown as a link back to it rather than as an editable box. Overtime is worked out week by week, and only from timesheet hours — a typed figure never earns overtime. Approved leave inside the period is fed in too: paid leave adds to an hourly or daily person’s pay, and unpaid leave is docked from a salary using the working days in the period as the divisor.

Before it can be approved, a run says what is wrong with it: who has no pay rate and was left off, whose recorded time has not been approved, whose staff record names no tax country, who has no tax table in force on the pay date, and any figure that came out negative. Approve stays genuinely unavailable until those are resolved.

Draft
Figures recalculate, hours are editable, the run can be deleted.
Approved
Figures are frozen, payslips can be printed and downloaded, and the timesheet entries that paid it are locked.
Paid
Recorded as paid. It cannot be reopened, and it stays on the list so its payslips can be reprinted.

An approved run can be reopened as a draft, which releases the time entries it claimed. A paid one cannot. Reference numbers run PR-2026-0001 and never change.

Payslips

Each payslip shows the figures as they were worked out on that run — basic pay, overtime, paid and unpaid time off, gross, the tax-free allowance, taxable pay, tax, other deductions and net — and, beside them, how the tax was worked out, band by band, naming the table in force.

A payslip keeps its own copy of everything.

The name, staff number, pay basis, rate, hours, the tax table and its bands, and every pay line applied are all stored on the payslip itself. Reprinting one from two years ago reproduces the figures of two years ago, whatever has changed since.

Printing and downloading are offered once a run is approved and not before: a draft is a calculation, not a statement of what an employee is owed. Downloads are recorded in the activity log. What the document carries — the year to date, the leave balance, the run notes — follows the Pay periods tab of Employer Policy.

Permissions

Manage Payroll Runs, Manage Timesheets, Manage Time Off, Configure Employer Policy and Configure Payroll Tax Tables are separate administrator permissions, so the person who approves hours need not be the person who approves the run. A role without them does not see the menu. See Team, roles, and access.