Payroll keeps an employee record for each person who works at the firm. Records are built from your existing staff members, so you rarely start from scratch. The person is already in the system; Payroll adds the pay details it needs.
Employees come from your team
Payroll works from your firm's staff members. Anyone set up as a team member and marked as someone the firm keeps time or pay records for shows up in the employee register. That means you add a person once, as a staff member, and Payroll picks them up rather than asking you to re-enter their name and email.
Each employee is given an employee number so payroll can refer to them consistently. Depending on how your firm is set up, this comes from your HR records or is generated for you.
Open the employee register
From the Payroll menu, open Employees. You will see a row for each person, showing their employee number, name, and department. This is the register you keep current as people join, change roles, or move between departments.
Fill in the payroll details
- Find the employee. Locate the person's row in the register. If they are new, add them as a staff member first and they will appear here.
- Add their pay and identity details. Depending on your firm's setup, this can include their job title, tax details, home address, and banking information used for pay.
- Confirm their department. The department comes from the staff record and is used throughout Payroll for filtering and reporting, so make sure it is right.
- Save the record. Your changes are stored against that employee and are ready for attendance and pay cycles.
Employee details are kept per month. This lets a change (a promotion, a new bank account) apply from the month it took effect without rewriting the person's history.
Bringing in several employees at once
If you are setting up Payroll for the first time or onboarding a group, you do not have to enter everyone by hand. Payroll can take a spreadsheet of employees. Download the sample file, fill it in following its columns, and import it to create or update several records in one pass. Match the sample's layout closely so each value lands in the right field.
Get the department and employee number right before you run a pay cycle. These two fields drive filtering, reporting, and how each person appears on their compensation record, so a few minutes here saves cleanup later.