Admin Guide

Payroll Configuration

The rules every pay run calculates against: overtime thresholds, pay codes, the allowance and deduction catalogs, and what lands on the payslip.

Payroll settings (per employment level)

Overtime rules are configured per employment level, which is why your levels need to exist first. Each level defines regular-hours thresholds (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly, monthly), whether overtime is calculated against the daily threshold, the period threshold, or both, the Default Overtime Pay Code applied to excess hours, and a time-off hours threshold that keeps leave days from pushing someone into overtime artificially. Hourly rates for salaried staff are derived from the weekly threshold by default (a custom calculation script is available for unusual arrangements — talk to support before using it).

Pay codes

Every earning lands under a pay code: a Name, a Pay Rate multiplier (1.5 for time-and-a-half overtime, 2 for double-time holidays), a Category (regular, overtime, holiday…), an optional GL code for the accounting export, and per-tax switches deciding whether earnings under this code are taxable for each statutory item. Pay type policies sit on top: tenure-based rate rules ("after N days, this level earns X% on this code") for things like probationary rates.

Tax switches change real contributions The taxable toggles on pay codes, allowances, and deductions directly change statutory calculations for everyone paid under them. Set them when the item is created, with your accountant in the room — flipping them later changes contributions from that point on and invites reconciliation pain.

Pay type distribution rules

Thresholds decide when overtime starts. Distribution rules decide which pay code each hour is paid under — the layer that turns a flat set of worked hours into regular, overtime, double-time and premium lines. They live in Settings → Payroll, alongside the overtime thresholds.

Each rule reads as a sentence: a condition, over a period, becomes a pay type.

Condition	Meaning
All Hours	Every hour in the period.
First X Hours	The opening N hours.
Above Hours	Everything beyond N hours.
First X Days Worked	Hours falling on the first N days worked in the period.
Above Days Worked	Hours falling on days after the Nth day worked — the classic "seventh consecutive day is double time" rule.

The period narrows where the count is kept: For Day, For Week, For Pay Period, For User Work Day, For Non User Work Day, For Holiday, or a named day of the week. A rule can also exclude particular pay types, so hours already paid as something else are not counted twice.

So "Days worked above 6 For Week will be considered Double Time" pays the seventh day of any week at double, and "First 8 hours For Day will be considered Regular" caps the regular line at eight hours a day.

Day counts restart with the period, not the pay run A rule set For Week on a bi-weekly payroll restarts its day count each week — so somebody working six days in each half of a fortnight never reaches a "seventh day" rule, even though they worked twelve days in the period. Choose the period deliberately: For Pay Period and For Week give very different answers on anything longer than weekly.

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Pay type distribution rules

Screenshot from a demo admin account: Settings → Payroll, scrolled to the pay type distribution rules field with three or four rules configured so the sentence form is visible — ideally one hours-based rule and one days-worked rule (e.g. "Days worked above 6 For Week will be considered Double Time"). An empty rules list teaches nothing. Fabricated demo tenant only. App viewport only, 1520px wide.

Save as: admin-guide__settings__payroll-config__shot2.png

Allowance and deduction catalogs

These are the company-level definitions that employee-level assignments (see Employee Profiles) draw from. Both carry a name, category, description, and per-tax configuration including deductible rules (none, fixed amount, or percentage — per pay period or per year). Two switches matter most:

Switch	Effect
Is this a standard allowance/deduction?	Auto-assigns it to every new employee from their start date (or probation end, if on probation). This is how "everyone gets the transport allowance" happens without anyone remembering to add it.
Internal Deduction?	Funds are withheld from the employee but stay in your company account — for staff loans and canteens, versus external deductions remitted to a vendor.
Should contribute to percentage deductions?	On an allowance: "this allowance is added to the base used for percentage deductions". Off by default, so an allowance does not inflate a percentage-based deduction unless you say it should.

Decide the percentage base before the deduction is first taken A deduction set as a percentage is worked out against a base, and this switch decides whether each allowance joins that base. Turn it on for an allowance that already has a percentage deduction running against it and the amount withheld goes up from the next calculation — for a pension or union deduction that is a change the employee will notice on their payslip. Agree the treatment of each allowance with whoever owns the deduction, then set it once.

How an allowance is rated for NIB (Bahamas)

Beyond Should NIB be assessed?, a Bahamas allowance carries a NIB Rating Basis that decides how the contribution is worked out and where it lands on your filings:

Basis	Effect
Regular Insurable Wage	The allowance is treated as ordinary insurable wage and reported as wage on statutory returns.
Gratuity Rate	The allowance is rated as gratuity and reported in its own box, separate from the employee's regular contribution.

The basis changes your filings, not just the maths Rating an allowance as wage rather than gratuity moves it to a different line on the NIB return. Set it when you create the allowance, and check with your accountant before changing one that's already been paid — restating closed periods is a support job, not a toggle.

Payslip settings (per employment level)

Per level, choose whether payslips show annual salary, hourly wage, debt-to-service ratio, and current time-off balances. Common pattern: management sees everything, line staff see the essentials.

Salary scales, banks, and the accounting export

Salary scales define ranges with dollar or percentage increments, attachable to work titles for compensation guidance. Banks and branches hold the institutions and routing numbers behind employee accounts, vendors, and bank files. The accounting file configuration defines your GL export: file format, custom file naming, column mapping (including Sage-style headers), and which entries appear — it's powerful and fiddly, so set it up once with your accountant and leave it alone.

Settings / Pay Codes — the pay-code catalog with categories, rates, and status.

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Configuring overtime end to end (5 min)

Screen recording: set a level's weekly threshold to 40 hours with weekly OT calculation, create a 1.5x Overtime pay code, set it as the level's default OT code, then run a demo timesheet with 45 hours through a pay run and show 5 hours landing under overtime on the payslip.

Save as: admin-guide__settings__payroll-config__vid1.mp4

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