Setting up Payroll

The first time you open Payroll, the Set up payroll page takes you through three steps: Company, Settings and Pay cycle. You can change any of it later, and you can click Skip for now and come back from Setup in the sidebar.

Setting up needs the Manage employees permission. Owners and Payroll Admins have it.

If you're moving from Sage partway through a tax year, see Moving from Sage instead.

1. Your company

Payroll uses the company details and SARS registrations kept on the Company page in Manage. This step shows what it found: the company Name, PAYE reference, UIF reference and SDL reference.

Anything missing is flagged. You need them for the EMP201 and the IRP5s, but you can carry on and add them later with Open the Company page.

The SARS contact person

The Company page also has a SARS contact person: the person SARS and the Department of Labour contact about your payroll submissions. Payroll puts their name, phone and email on the EMP501 reconciliation file, and their name on the monthly UIF declaration. Nothing else in Looped uses it.

It isn't required. You can leave it blank and fill it in before your first UIF declaration or EMP501. If the phone or email is blank, the EMP501 uses the company's general contact phone and email instead.

2. Payroll settings

These are Payroll's own settings. You can change them later under Payroll settings.

Click Save and continue.

3. Your first pay cycle

A pay cycle is how often you pay. Most small companies need one monthly cycle.

1. Give it a Name (it starts as "Salaries").
2. Choose How often: Monthly, Fortnightly or Weekly.
3. Choose the first month (or first day) it pays for. Monthly periods are calendar months.
4. Choose the Pay day. For a monthly cycle, a pay day on a weekend moves to the Friday before. For weekly and fortnightly cycles, you pick a weekday in the last week of each period.
5. Click Create cycle and finish.

Payroll creates the cycle's periods for the tax year for you. To add another cycle later, open Pay cycles and click New cycle.

Adding employees

Open Employees and click Add employee. Fill in what you have; you can add the rest later from their page. The form is grouped into:

• Personal: names, Identity document (SA ID, passport, asylum seeker permit or refugee ID), date of birth, Email (where payslips are emailed), Job title (shown on the payslip), Tax number and Tax status (Employee or Director of the company), and a home address.
• Employment and pay: Pay cycle, whether they're paid a Salary per period or an Hourly rate, Pay from Track hours, hours per day and days per week, how part periods are paid, the minimum wage that applies, and Payment method.
• Tax and benefits: Medical aid members, private medical aid and a private retirement annuity they pay themselves.
• UIF, SDL, COIDA and ETI: the UIF exclusion, if one applies, and switches such as Leave out of SDL, Leave out of COIDA, Independent contractor, Domestic worker and Connected person.
• Bank account.

Click Add employee to save.

Changing an employee's details

Edit the fields on the employee's page. Nothing saves until you click Review changes, which lists each change before and after. Changes apply from the start of the current period unless you pick a later date under Applies from, which schedules the change. A change to pay needs a reason, such as "Annual increase".

Each change is kept as a new version. Earlier payslips don't change, and History on the employee's page lists every version. Scheduled changes show as Change scheduled from on the employee's page until they take effect.

Bank details change separately, with Change bank details, and need the Change bank details permission. You type the new account number twice, and the change is recorded in the audit log. Changing bank details is something only a person can do, never the assistant.

Recurring pay items

Allowances, deductions, company contributions and fringe benefits that apply every period go under Recurring pay items on the employee's page. Click Add a recurring pay item, search the catalogue, enter the Amount per period (or Rate per unit) and the date it applies From, and click Add item. Changing an amount later also needs a reason.

The catalogue under Pay items lists every item with its tax treatment and IRP5 source code. If you need one that isn't there, click New pay item and give it a Name, Kind, IRP5 source code and Tax treatment. Check the code with your accountant.

Other sections on the employee's page

Depending on your settings, an employee's page also has:

• Employment Tax Incentive: the answers ETI needs for that person. Payroll doesn't claim ETI for them until these are answered.
• Fund certificates: for a defined benefit retirement fund.
• Tax directives: directives from SARS.
• Leave on the UIF declaration: maternity, adoption or illness leave, which the UIF declaration reports.
• My pay: invite them to see their own payslips. See My pay.
• Leaving: end their employment. See When someone leaves.

Moving from Sage

If you're partway through a tax year on Sage, Move from Sage brings your payroll across instead of starting from nothing. It needs an Owner or someone with every Payroll permission. Nothing is saved until you confirm.

The wizard's steps are Cut-over, Files, Pay items, Review, Dry run and Confirm:

1. Cut-over: choose the First month in Looped and the pay cycle to use.
2. Files: upload Sage's reports. Employee Details, Employee Tax Certificate Recon, the EMP201 for each month before the cut-over, and the payslips or Pay Register for the cut-over month and every month before it are needed. The Employment Tax Incentive Detail, Medical Aid Report, OID Return of Earnings and e@syFile export are optional.
3. Pay items: check the Looped pay item suggested for each of Sage's.
4. Review: check what was read.
5. Dry run: Looped works out the cut-over month the way your first run will and compares each payslip with Sage's.
6. Confirm: click Confirm the take-on.

The months Sage paid come across as imported runs. Where you uploaded Sage's payslips, they're recreated in Looped so your employees see them in My pay. Imported months never post to Financials.

Preparing the move with the assistant

If you'd rather not export every report from Sage, you can ask the Looped assistant to key the take-on in for you from what you give it, such as a spreadsheet of employees or Sage's Employee Tax Certificate Recon. It can start the take-on with the cut-over month, add or update employees (names, ID or passport and tax numbers, start dates, pay, bank accounts, UIF and recurring pay items), set whether the company pays SDL and who's left out of it, and load each employee's year to date by IRP5 source code for the tax year of the cut-over. It reads back the take-on with anything still to fix, so it can correct a field before you look.

Everything the assistant prepares goes into the same take-on as uploaded reports, held encrypted, and none of it affects a pay run, a payslip or a filing yet. You open Move from Sage, where Review marks what came From the assistant, and you click Confirm the take-on yourself. The assistant can't confirm or discard a take-on, and it can't change the cut-over month once you've chosen one.

Preparing needs someone who can manage employees and see salaries, ID numbers and bank details, so an Owner's or Payroll Admin's assistant can do it. You can mix the two ways in; for example, the assistant adds the employees and year to date and you upload Sage's EMP201s so the months Sage paid come across as well. The assistant doesn't bring across EMP201 totals, ETI history or COIDA earnings; those still come from Sage's reports.