paymaster helpfile
TRANSCRIPT
System Requirements: Windows 2000 or any higher version. 100 MB memory space for the setup, MS Access or any other database program, CD ROM Drive or USB port. How to install the Software: The Paymaster installation package contains the Setup file, the latest executable file, your company name and registration key.
There are two types of installation i.e. stand-alone or network based
(i) Stand-alone:- basically the software is installed on one machine and the system is run from that PC alone.
In this type of installation, the user will run the setup file which will install Paymaster and a folder will be created in the path C:\Bitplus Solutions Ltd\ This will contain several folders including Data, System, Log files, Reports and the executable file for Paymaster, a shortcut for this will automatically be created on the desktop. The user is also provided with the latest version of Paymaster in a different folder among the installation files, copy this and replace it with the one found in the above path. You will have that version number as the current executable. From the shortcut created on the desktop, run the application. On prompting for both Server IP address and Authorized subscription expired, click ok. A login window will appear requiring the username and password. By default login with username admin and blank password. When prompted to select company, click on cancel. Most of the menus will be inactive but under masters, company setup will be available. In the installation files a text file containing your company name and registration key is available, input this exactly as it appears on the file under the tab general. When done click on the tab ‘other’
and in the text box headlined registration key, copy and paste the registration key as provided in the text file.
Save this record and exit from the system. Run the application again and you are now ready to use Paymaster.
(ii) Network Based:- On completion of step one above, preferably on the server, use the same setup file provided with the installation package to run the setup on all the client machines that are to access Paymaster through the network.
How to use this help Manual: This help file highlights the function and purpose of all the items in all the menus the system in a chronological manner as they appear. This way the user can easily navigate his/her way through the system in the right sequence with an understanding of what every action will result. This makes tasking easier and straight forward. How to Use Menus Paymaster Ver11.0 M is designed to provide user friendly environment. With this in view this version contains some of major changes on the graphical user interface (GUI). The application is designed to keep the look & feel of every form consistent. Three General Toolbars are used in the Application. i. Quick Access Toolbar ii. Master’s Toolbar iii. Report’s Toolbar
Generally used options are assigned Hot Keys So that they can be available without navigating into the Menu bar or Toolbar. I). Quick Access Toolbar This Toolbar is displayed at the Top of the Application’s Main Window. It is used as a Short Cut of the Menu Items. From the extreme Left of the Quick Access Toolbar, the various icons are as follows:-
i). Expand/Collapse- This will open up or close all the vertical menus. ii). Change Company (F2) iii). Employee Detail Entry (F3) iv). Go to Month (F4) v). Regulars (Ctrl + R) vi). Casuals (Ctrl + C) vii). Import Muster Role (Ctrl + I) viii). Payment/Deductions Entry a) Brought Forward From Last Month b) Enter For Current Month (F11) ix). Auto Calculate (F8) x). Pay Slip (F10) xi). Analysis Reports (F12) xii). Close Month xiii). Close Year xiv). Help (F1) Tip: You can only pick either Regular’s or Casual’s payroll processing at any one given
time. II). Master’s Toolbar This Toolbar is used in Every Masters setup form. From Left to right of the Toolbar
i). Add (Ctrl +A) ii). Edit (Ctrl + E)
iii). Delete (Cut) (Ctrl + D ) iv). Save (Ctrl + S) v). Cancel (Ctrl + Z)
vi). Move to First record (Ctrl + F) vii). Move to Previous record (Ctrl + P)
viii). Move to Next record (Ctrl + N) ix). Move to Last record (Ctrl + L) x). Exit form (Esc) III) Reports Toolbar This Toolbar will mostly be used in reports.
i). Print (Ctrl + P) ii). Export to a file (Ctrl + E)
iii). Customize report (Ctrl + S) iv). Search (F3) v). Refresh (F5)
vi). Exit (Esc) vii). Add/Modify Fields III) Menu bar On the main window in Paymaster, the user is provided with a drop down list of the menus depending on the specifications during purchase of the software license. These menus are listed in the way you would ideally setup, process and view reports on a payroll system.
Tip: Whenever the user sees a plus sign (+) to the left of any menu on this drop down, opening and closing of the same is done by clicking once on the plus sign.
1.0 SYSTEM
1) System Settings Overtime Calculation Setup window for OT-1 & OT-2 rates. OT-1 Rate: - this is the prescribed rate for calculation of extra pay hours during weekdays. OT-2 Rate: - extra work hours on Weekly off and Holidays will be calculated based on this rate. Both rates will be calculated against an employee’s salary per hour. Overtime Calculated on: Option to calculate overtime on Basic or Basic + Housing allowance. OT calculation hours are also set here based on a formula i.e. WEEKS OF THE YEAR * TOTAL WORKING HOURS IN AWEEK MONTHS OF THE YEAR EXAMPLE: Employees working 8hrs a day Monday to Friday and Five hours on Saturday will have the following as their Hours for OT calculation: 52 * 45 = 195 hrs 12 This setting will be global for everyone. In cases where an organization has different work hours for different employees, Paymaster ensures flexibility by allowing the user to specify this separately. Check the box next to the option ‘Consider employee specific OT Calculation hours’ to activate this. The system will override the globally set hours as above and apply the hours specifically indicated on employee masters under the payroll details tab.
Payslip Footer On this menu you can specify a global message that will appear at the bottom of every payslip. It can be a message such as Merry Xmas, Happy New year or any other message the employer might want to convery to staff at the end of the month. Payroll Settings
These are default settings majorly on statutory contributions. INSS is the Statutory Social Scheme contributed by both the employer and employee. The employee contributes 3.5% as the employer contributes 9%. Both are based on the Basic Tax free salary i.e. INSS AMOUNT = Base INSS (Basic Tax free salary + other allowances) * 3.5% INPP is a contribution made by the employer to a professional government body. INPP AMOUNT = Base INSS (Basic Tax free salary + other allowances) * 1% Leave and Absentism
As on the above screenshot, the user should specify how absenteeism is deducted either based on days or hours. Absenteeism Calculate Absenteeism on: Specify calculation of absenteeism deduction, whether based on Hours or Days. The default is Hours. If you select Days method, the system assumes a working day of 8 hours. Absenteeism Deduction based on: This setting will be used to determine the calculation mode i.e. Basic, Basic + Housing Absenteeism Calculation Days: set absenteeism calculation days or hours as selected above. This will be used to calculate the rate (Basic/No. of days or hours) at which employee absenteeism will be deducted The above being global, users can still determine this for specific employees. Suing the setting ‘Consider employee specific absent days’. The number of Days or Hours will be
specified for the employees under employee details entry. This setting will be used for those employees with different calculation hours/days. Rounding Options Setup for rounding different fields i.e. deductions and benefits given by the company.
Rounding Type There are three options to choose under rounding type UP, Down & Natural. Round To This is the precision to what you would like to round the amount to. The system allows you to round from 1 Shilling to 100 Shillings. Up method will always round-up irrespective of the initial value. EXAMPLE: 10559.99 will be rounded up to 10560.00 10550.01 will also be rounded up to 10560.00 Down method will always round-down irrespective of the initial value. EXAMPLE: 10550.01 will be rounded down to 10550.00 10559.99 will also be rounded down to 10550.00 Natural method will decide whether to round-up or round-down depending on the initial value. EXAMPLE: 10550.01 - 10554.99 will be rounded down to 10550.00 10555.00 - 10559.99 will be rounded up to 10560.00
2) Employee Settings Employee Settings for Payment / Deduction window that provides for the selection of payments and deductions preferred for an employee(s) with sorting criteria. Selected the Payments or Deductions you would want to allocate to employees. i.e. when a new employee is added into the system this utility should be used to allocate payments and deductions entitled to the particular employee.
Employee Settings for: For Calculation hours, the ones indicated here will override the hours specified under System settings. These hours will determine the overtime rate for the particular employee. This utility should be used in cases where certain employees in the company have different working hours in a month compared to others. This formula should be used to obtain the calculation hours:- WEEKS OF THE YEAR * TOTAL WORKING HOURS IN AWEEK MONTHS OF THE YEAR The same formula should provide you with the hours for absenteeism calculation. User Setup
Paymaster is multi user, multi company software. With that in mind the system can be used by many people at one go. In order to ensure system security, you can create several users with specific user rights to ‘add, edit or delete’ entries. There are two main types of users in the system: a)Administrator…..Usertype: admin. This user has all privileges and rights to use the system. This user exists by default but the details can be edited to include a password and full names, designation e.t.c b)Normal user…….Usertype:user. This user can be allocated rights. Once user type is selected as user, an additional tab for selection of user rights will appear. From here you can tick the check boxes against all the menus. Whatever is ticked is what the user
Go to Month The flexibility of Paymaster allows you to work in any particular month of the current calendar year with ease. Just pick the month you want to, and click the OK button. The user will automatically be navigated to the specified month. The column headlined current will change to yes on the selected month. For closed months, they will appear in blue and only viewing of reports is allowed, no changes can be effected on closed months. To open a closed month, just click on the specified month and a command button giving you the option to open the month will appear. Only the Paymaster admin can open a closed month with specifying their password.
From this option, when the system is operating on Multi Company or has Multiple Years, the user can select which one to logon to without having to first exit from the application. Utility Back up: This menu is used for system back up. The user should first select the path preferably on a separate drive from the one hosting the Paymaster folder. Ensure that the characters on the path are less than 255. Check the box next to your company name and click on OK to back up. In effect all you previous months’ transactions to the current one will be backed up accordingly. This will be in the file extension .pbk
Restore This should only be undertaken in consultation with Bitplus Solutions Ltd. on the system crashing or any other data loss.
Tip: It is recommended that backup be taken every month especially before closing the month so that data is safe and if need be, user can revert back to the
backed-up data base to make any retrospective amendments. If the system is running on SQL based database, backup should be schedule to
take from the Db itself.
PROCESS Close Month:
This procedure is done at the end of the month when all the payroll data has been has been approved to be ok and no further payroll entries or changes are to be done. When you click on close month, you will prompted if you want to carry forward those payments and deductions that are fixed. The same amount in the current month will be carried forward e.g. if you have a Union deduction that is shs.50 for all employees and is constant all through the months, the same will be carried forward. This also applies to Loans and Savings transactions. The user will then be taken to the next payroll month. Close Year This has the same effect as close month.
2.0 MASTERS 2.0 (i) Company Setup
Your company name accompanied by the registration key will be provided by Bitplus on installation and should never be changed unless authorized. The rest of the details should be filled to facilitate complete statutory reports. 2.0(ii) Branches For companies with Branches, this menu is provided where you can enter your branch details. Fill in the details and save. Users can create as many branches as possible. (iii)Departments
Create all the departments in your company; specify the department head (just for record viewing). You can specify the maximum number of employees that can be recruited into this department. Leave this option at zero for infinity. For staff employed as casuals and paid after a specific processing period, you can indicate here the day that they are to be paid e.g. in the above screen shot, any casual in the Payroll department will only be paid on Friday. 2.0(iii) Designation
Titles of all employees are created here. You can also specify the status of a particular designation. The user has Normal, Managerial and privileged to choose form. 2.0(iv) Categories You can specify the levels or classes of employees that exist on your company. These can either be Directors, Managers, Staff, Casuals, Permanents, attaché e.t.c. 2.0 (v) Employee Detail Entry All the details for employees are entered here. There are three main tabs to work with, they are General and Payroll details. a) General In this window basic employee details are entered in their respective fields. These include Payroll Number, Employee Name, DOB, Nationality, Gender, Regular or Casual etc. The employee is also assigned the respective branch, department, category and designation that were created earlier in the setups.
There is a facility to display the scanned image of Passport Photo and National ID Card of the given employee. This is done by browsing to locate and attach it to this window.
Tip: There are two main employment types in Paymaster, regular or casual. The effect assigning an employee as regular is that you can specify their Basic salary unlike casuals whom you will have to specify a wage rate which can be paid daily or after a processing
period. Branch, Department, Category and Designation are compulsory fields which must be
assigned before you save the employee details.
More Personal employee details can be entered from the HR Details command button. They include Personal Email, Qualifications, Bank Account number e.t.c. The user has three navigational Tabs to choose from where further details can be entered. b) Payroll Details Only details related to payroll processing are entered under this tab in their relevant fields. You have several tabs under this to help you navigate to different entities that will
help you process your payroll. They include Basic Salary or Wage rate, House allowance, Transport Allowance, Family Allowance e.t.c Tip: To terminate an employee, the user will have to specify the date of leaving under HR
Details. This should be done before any auto calculation for the next month is done. When this is done no adding, editing or deleting of details for the particular employee
can be done. Only viewing of reports is possible. Statutory
From the payroll details tab of every employee, the user should specify which of the check boxes are applicable to the particular employee. All the statutory contributions should be well understood before applying. Tax Free Allowances According to Congolese law, there are only three allowances that do not attract taxation. Specify this accordingly as per the screenshot below!
The figures can be altered anytime incase of new regulations. Below are the formulas in the system for the three allowances:- Housing Allowance = 30% of Basic Family allowance = Rate * Present Days * No. of Chidren. Transport allowance to be input manually on the software! 2.0(vi) Banks To add a new bank on the system, form this menu the user should press F3 on their keyboard and another menu pops where you type the full bank name as below
Type and save as many as exist in your payroll, through where you pay your employees. To add branches to these banks, exit completely from this menu the click on it again, pick the main bank name form the drop down list and type in the details then save before doing the same for more branches or different banks.
2.0(vii) Wage Rates If casuals exist in your organization and they are paid wages at the end of their processing period. The different wage rates will be created from this menu. Type in the description, this being anything to remind you of the particular wage rate e.g. 5/DAY. There are two types of wage rates in this software, one that is paid for the full day worked and the other for every hour worked hence the Per: Day or Per: Hour options. If for example if a casual employee is paid $5 for working 8hrs (or different depending on your daily work hours) then his hourly rate will be 5 = 0.60 8hrs
But if the same employee is paid Per: Day then his rate will remain at $5 and will be paid in full at the end of the day and this multiplied by the number of days that make up the processing period. 2.0(viii) Loan Setup
Setup all the Loans that are deducted from employees. Specify the interest charged on the particular loan and if this is lower than the prescribed interest, indicate if fringe benefit will be paid by the company on the same loan. Reports tracking the principle amount, the deduction of the month, the interest deducted, the closing balance, the fringe benefit amount e.t.c for every employee will be kept. 2.0(ix) Savings For employees contributing shares to Saccos, these different types of savings should be created in this menu and a track of the same will be kept including the cumulative amount, deduction this month e.t.c 2.0(x) Payments and Deduction Setup From this menu, different types of earnings and deductions (pay/ded) should be created. On installation of PayMaster, the first three payments (OT1, OT2 and Absent Amount) are defaults. Salary Advance deduction is also a default. You can add as many payments and deductions as they exist in your organization.
Payments or Deductions can be in three different types. Fixed; these pay/ded are those that are the same throughout unless changed. The same amount posted once will always be carried forward at the closure of a month. Variable; these pay/ded changes every month with different values at every end month. Calculated; these require a formula to be specified. The user will double click on the column titled formula to pick the values for your formula. Once the user has created all the pay/ded in their organization, for these to appear on employee payslips when figures are input, the same must be designed under payslips menu. You will give the name as you would want to appear on the payslip. Refer payslips under 3.0 (v) for procedures on how to do this. 3.0 REGULARS At every month-end, the user will find this the most essential menu to process the payroll. The menus are listed in the order of which logically you can process your payroll and finally end up with reports and payslips. 3.0 (i) Payments and Deductions; a) Brought Forward This utility will be important for the user in instances that a payroll month is not ready to be closed but the next month’s data is ready to be posted. On clicking this menu, the user will find all the fixed pay/ded and all loans and savings created under masters. These are the specific postings that are the same all throughout the months unless any changes mid-way, the same figures would be brought forward to your working payroll month. Always ensure that this procedure is carried out when the user has already moved to the next month e.g. if my last payroll month was May, and the user wants to work on June but May is not closed (closing a month would automatically do this process for you), they would go to month and select June as current month the click on brought forward where all the same amounts deducted in May for the fixed pay/ded, loans and savings would effected in June.
3.0 b) Enter New All your new transactions for the month will be posted on this menu. There are two ways of posting transactions on this menu. Employee wise: the user will have a list all the employees on the left, double clicking on an employee name or payroll number would open all the pay/ded entitled to the employee. Payments will be in white colour and deductions in Orange. The user is able to post all pay/ded in one go for one employee at a particular time.
The second option is to post transactions using Standard pay/ded. This tab allows the user to control which pay/ded to work with at one particular time. First select the pay/ded you want to post, click on refresh grid. The user will now have a list of all employees and the selected pay/ded to post amounts.
Tip: Incase a particular user defined payment/deduction does not appear in the above window and there fore not possible to post the amount, what do I do?
Go to System →Employee Settings →Select the particular Employee on your left and pick the pay/ded on your right then click on apply and Ok.
3.0 (ii) Loans After the user sets up loans under masters, defined if interest accrues on them and whether fringe benefit tax should be charged on the employer, the user can now post the loan details on this form. You would need to have the opening balance of the loan, the deduction month and if any more loan is take, what the additional amount is. 3.0 (iii) Savings
Similarly, all types of savings (SACCO) created under savings setup will be posted on this form. The user has to have the opening balance and the amount contributed on the payroll month. 3.0 (iv) Auto Calculate This particular menu enables the user to do all the payroll ‘mathematics’! With a click on the command button- Start Auto Calculate, all the figures keyed into the system for purpose of payroll calculation will be added up, subtracted, multiplied or divided by where applicable to produce payslips and payroll reports. By default all employees will appear here with check marks against their names but the user has the ability to sort or filter these and narrow the auto calculation even to a single person.
Tip: Incase an employee has left employment as at the previous payroll month, the user should not auto calculate the current month until a date of leaving has been input under
HR Details in Employee Detail entry.
3.0 (v) Payslip When the user has done auto calculation and is satisfied that all payroll figure have entered correctly and payroll reports have been certified, they can now view and print payslips on this menu. The user can sort either by name or payroll number. The user can define the settings under which the payslips can be viewed and printed. This has been made easy for the user and can be accessed for the ‘design’ button. On this button, the user can determine how the pay/ded created will appear on the payslip.
Click on the ‘add new item’ icon to take the focus on the first tab named column and pick the pay/ded that doesn’t already exist on the list, type the name as you would want to appear on the payslip under the column description, define whether it is an Earning, Deduction, PAYE Calculation or Other. This will be achieved by double clicking on the column named group.
The user can also determine other settings under the payslip print settings. These are self explanatory, either check or uncheck the options accordingly. The command button next to the new item entry icon allows the user to pick other details that will appear on the payslip alongside the employee’s name.
When done click on update for these settings to apply.
4.0 CASUALS Payroll processing for casuals is also done exactly as for regulars. Since casuals are paid their wages at the end of a processing period (certain number of days) the major difference in the processing casuals’ payroll is that you have to create the start and end date of these periods. As in the caption below, you can create these for the whole month in one go or even do it just before you process your payroll for that particular period. This is done under casuals’ setup.
After creating the processing period, you have to specify the current one you are working on, this is done under set processing period in Casual’s Setup.
Tip: If the user is not certain of the actual day of the week that you will pay the casuals, DO NOT specify the process day. If done, this has to tally with the day indicated when
creating departments under Masters. After this is done, the user can comfortably run the payroll in the same way as for permanent employees 5.0 STATUTORY There is a monthly statutory table from which all regular employees are taxed on. Users should understand how to manually calculate the taxes based on this.
For Chemaf SPRL, we have changed the tax table to dollars to accommodate the usage of dollars in the software. This has to be manually altered EVERY MONTH in order to
reflect the current dollar rate! 6.0 REPORTS The strength of Paymaster can be measured by the many endearing reports it produces. This being the major part of any payroll program, indeed Paymaster does not disappoint. The user will find it very easy navigating through this reporting structure. 6.0 (i) Master Reports These are reports of most of the fields created under menu 2.0 (Masters). The user picks the required report and clicks on the green icon for refresh to see the contents on the report. 6.0 (ii) Analysis Reports These are reports commonly used during the payroll month-end to verify and print payroll figures. Under this menu, three different reporting modes can be accessed:-
Regulars Analysis: these are reports produced after processing the payroll. They are mostly used for data verification, printing and filling for posterity. To access this reports, the user clicks on Reports -> Analysis Reports and a drop down list with self-explanatory report names will appear.
Pick the report you want to see. The user can now use the criteria indicated to sort, filter or group by depending on the preference. Click on preview to see the report on screen before printing.
Statutory Reports These are legally approved reports generated form the system in their latest formats. The user can preview these reports on screen before submitting to the required statutory bodies. This reports include Cotisation INPP Pour Les Expatries, Impots Professionnel ET Exceptional Sur Les Remunerations, Institut National DE Preparation Professionnelle(INPP) e.t.c
Customized Reports The reporting structure in Paymaster is based on crystal reports but users are allowed to customize their own type of reports if what the system has is not satisfactory. This is a very important tool that is flexible and easy to use. There are five main tables as below from which all the reporting fields can be picked. The fields picked by the user will then become columns on the report.
a) Employee Details: - has all the fields that are keyed in under masters. These include all the employee details, all the fields in masters e.t.c
b) Payslip Details:- This table contains all the payroll fields that come from auto calculating your monthly payroll.
c) Payment Deduction: - This table contains all pay/ded that were created under pay/ded set up in masters.
d) Loan: - All loans created by the user and the repayment details will be found in this table.
e) Savings: - Similarly all the savings transactions will be found in this table.
Most of the reports in Paymaster are self-revealing but incase the user requires other detailed reports; this Customized report menu would be very helpful. For instance, if you want to have a report that shows you the break down of your staffs’ payroll number, Name, basic pay, department, gross earning, benefits and their net pay, these are the steps to follow to create this and or any other report. Firstly, under customized reports, click on create report then new, a menu will pop up where you will type the report name and title. At the bottom of this same menu, there’s a command button for query builder. Click on this and the tables as in the above screen shot will appear. Now, depending on the fields you require which will ultimately appear as columns in your report, the user will pick details for the respective tables as we described them above. For the purposes of our example, for the payroll number and name these will be picked from the employee details table. Then click on add and a screen will pop up where you can now search for the field name: - Payroll number, click Ok, then Employee name, click Ok, to pick the basic change the table name to Payslip Details and look for field title Basic, again change table name to employee details and look for departmentname, again change tables to Payslip Details to get field titles Gross, Benefits and finally net pay. After picking the last field, click Ok and save the report. This report (TEST REPORT) will appear on the pane on the left on the screen, pick it amongst the list of reports pane on the left and then click on show employees. Now that you can use the reports toolbar, customized your report further.
