Payroll in the books
How a payroll run posts to Financials, and how the salary payments on your bank statement clear it
When a pay run is finalised in Looped Payroll, or you record one by hand on the Payroll page in Financials, one journal is posted on the pay date:
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Salaries & Wages | gross pay | |
| Employer Contributions | employer UIF, SDL and contributions | |
| PAYE Payable | PAYE | |
| UIF Payable | employee and employer UIF | |
| SDL Payable | SDL | |
| Other Payroll Deductions | other deductions and employer contributions owed to funds | |
| Salaries Payable | net pay |
Net pay goes to Salaries Payable because on the pay date you owe it to your employees. It hasn't necessarily left your bank yet, and it might leave on a different day or in several payments.
Paying salaries from the bank statement
When you upload the bank statement that shows the salary payments, the review screen offers each one as Pays salaries (payroll). It does this when a payment falls within five days of the run's pay date and is either the whole net pay still owed, or part of it for a line you'd have posted to Salaries & Wages, like one employee's EFT.
Confirming the match posts the payment, dated the day it left the bank:
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Salaries Payable | the payment | |
| Bank | the payment |
Nothing is posted to Salaries & Wages again, so the salaries aren't counted twice. You can match several payments to one run until its net pay is fully paid. Financials refuses a payment that's more than the net pay still owed.
The Payroll page shows each run's net pay and how much of it is still to pay, and the Net pay figure at the top shows the total not yet paid. Unmatching a payment on the review screen reverses its entry, and that amount is owed again.
When a run is reversed after it was paid
If Payroll reverses a run whose salaries were already paid, the run's journal is reversed but the payments stay, because the money did leave your bank. Salaries Payable then has a debit balance for that run, and the Payroll page marks it Paid, run reversed. That's usually the moment to post the corrected run, or to recover the money.
Runs posted before September 2026
Runs posted before 27 September 2026 credited net pay straight to the bank. They keep working as they did: matching the salary payment posts it against the run's own journal, with no new entry. The EMP201 payment to SARS works the same way for every run.
Are you an AI? Visit llms.txt — these docs as plain markdown.