Run Payroll

OxyAccounting calculates South African payroll weekly, fortnightly or monthly, for salaried and hourly staff, posts the finalised run to the ledger, and carries it through to tax year-end. Payroll is available to company administrators and accountants.

Set up your employer details first

Go to Payroll > Payroll Settings and capture how SARS identifies you: PAYE reference (ten digits starting with 7), SDL reference (L and nine digits), UIF reference (U and nine digits), your SIC7 code and a reconciliation contact. Entering the PAYE number offers to fill the other two, because SARS issues all three with the same trailing digits.

Add an employee

Go to Payroll > Employees and select Add Employee.
Complete personal details using either a valid South African ID number or passport details.
Enter their occupation. Section 33 of the BCEA requires it on every payslip, so it is compulsory.
Choose how often they are paid — weekly, fortnightly or monthly — and whether they are paid a fixed amount each period or by the hour.
Enter employment dates, the pay itself, tax details, UIF and SDL settings, medical scheme beneficiaries and retirement information.
Add banking details and recurring pay items such as allowances, pension contributions or deductions.
Save the employee. Sensitive identity and bank account values are stored encrypted.

Taking on a whole staff list at once? Company > Import Data imports employees from a CSV, including pay frequency, hourly rates and occupations, and the whole batch can be undone if it comes in wrong.

Create the pay run

Go to Payroll > Pay Runs, select New Pay Run, choose the frequency and the period, and select Create Draft. The frequency picker only appears once you have staff on more than one.
Open the run and review every employee's earnings, PAYE, UIF, SDL, deductions and net pay.
For hourly staff, enter the hours worked: ordinary, overtime, Sunday and public holiday. Overtime pays one and a half times the rate and Sunday and public holiday work pays double, as the BCEA requires.
Add a one-off item to an individual payslip when needed. Tax recalculates for that slip.
Use Recalculate only when you want to rebuild the run from current employee data; it discards one-off adjustments.
Download draft payslips for checking. They are watermarked as drafts.
Select Finalise when the run is approved.

Somebody who starts or leaves mid-period

They are paid for the days they actually worked, counted in calendar days across the period. The payslip shows the split — days employed out of days in the period — so the smaller figure explains itself rather than looking like a mistake. Allowances follow the same days; fixed deductions such as a medical aid premium do not, and each recurring pay item carries its own setting for this.

What finalising does

Finalising freezes the payslips and year-to-date figures and posts salaries, employer contributions and payroll liabilities in one balanced journal. Pay runs must be finalised in date order within each frequency.

Send the payslips and pay the staff

On a finalised run, Email payslips sends each one to the employee it belongs to, as a PDF attachment. Nothing is ever sent automatically, and an employee can be left out by unticking the option on their record.
Payment file downloads a CSV of everyone to be paid: name, bank, branch code, account number, account type and net amount.

Prepare the EMP201

Go to Payroll > EMP201 Report and select the tax year. The report shows monthly PAYE, UIF and SDL from finalised runs, with the payment due date. Capture and submit these figures through SARS eFiling.

Reverse a finalised run

Open it and use Reverse to Draft. Reversal is blocked when a later run is already finalised or the accounting period is locked. After correction, recalculate, review and finalise again.

Advance somebody part of their wages

Somebody needs money before payday. Record it at Payroll > Pay Advances and the next pay run takes it back off their payslip, without you having to remember to do it.

Go to Payroll > Pay Advances and select New advance.
Choose the employee, the amount, and the date the money left your bank.
Choose how it comes back: all of it off the next payslip, or a fixed amount each pay period.
Confirm the employee has agreed in writing that it can be deducted from their pay.
Save. In the ledger the money moves out of your bank into an Employee Advances account, because it is still yours until it comes back.

What happens on the next pay run

An Advance recovery line appears on that employee’s payslip and their net pay drops by the amount recovered.
Their gross pay and every statutory figure stay exactly as they were.
The payslip shows the balance brought forward, what came off this period, and what is left, so your employee can see where they stand without asking.
When the balance reaches nil the advance closes itself and stops appearing on payslips.

Change what comes off one payslip

On a draft run, open the employee’s payslip and use change on the advance recovery line to take a different amount this time — R500 instead of the agreed R1,000, say. It affects that payslip only: the agreement itself does not move, so the next period goes back to the instalment you set. use schedule puts the line back on the agreed amount, and remove takes nothing at all this period and leaves the whole balance owing.

Keep an eye on the balance

Payroll > Pay Advances lists everything outstanding and what is still owed in total, beside what your Employee Advances ledger account says. Those two figures should always agree.
An employee’s own record shows what they owe, so you see it before you change anything about their employment.
Reversing a finalised pay run puts the balance back, because the recovery did not happen either.

Writing an advance off

Write off balance on the advance forgives what is left and moves the cost to Salaries and Wages. Forgiving a debt is a taxable fringe benefit for the employee in the month you forgive it (SARS code 3808), and it is deliberately not added to their payslip for you — whether it should be taxed through the payroll is a decision for you and your accountant.

An advance paid out of your bank account is picked up when you reconcile, matched to the entry the advance already created. Putting the advance reference such as ADV-0001 in the payment reference makes that match certain. See reconcile your bank.

Claim the Employment Tax Incentive

The ETI reduces the PAYE you pay over for employees aged 18 to 29 earning below the monthly ceiling, for up to 24 qualifying months per employee. It is money back, not a deferral. Switch it on under Payroll > Payroll Settings.

Turn on Claim the Employment Tax Incentive in Payroll Settings. It is off by default because claiming requires you to be registered for employees' tax and tax compliant.
On each employee, answer the few questions the system cannot work out for itself: months already claimed by a previous employer, whether they are a connected person or a domestic worker, whether they work in a Special Economic Zone, and their ordinary hours per month.
Finalise pay runs as usual. Every run works out who qualifies from age at period end, ID type, pay and hours.
Review Payroll > ETI. For anyone not being claimed for, the screen gives the exact reason.

Manage leave

Payroll > Leave captures and approves leave requests. Six types are set up at Basic Conditions of Employment Act minimums: annual (15 working days a year, accruing 1.25 a month), sick (30 days per 36-month cycle), family responsibility (3 days a year), maternity, parental and unpaid.

Annual leave accrues when you finalise a pay run, in proportion to the days that run covers, so a weekly run grants roughly a quarter of what a monthly one does. Reversing a run withdraws the leave it granted; re-finalising cannot double-grant it.
Days are counted in working days, excluding weekends and South African public holidays — including the Monday gained when a holiday falls on a Sunday. Half days at either end are supported, and the count stays editable for a six-day week.
Approving a request takes the days off the balance. Approval is refused when the balance is short, unless the leave type allows going negative.
Cancelling approved leave gives the days back as a returning entry. The original booking stays on record.
Payroll > Leave > Balances & liability shows days available per employee and the leave pay provision — what you would owe if everyone left tomorrow, valuing a day at monthly salary divided by 21.67. Only leave payable on termination counts, so sick leave is not a liability.
Bringing balances over from another payroll system? Use Adjust a balance on the Balances screen.

Produce IRP5 and IT3(a) certificates

Go to Payroll > Tax Certificates, choose the tax year and the reconciliation period — interim for March to August, annual for the full March to February year.
Select Generate certificates. One is created per employee you paid: an IRP5 where employees' tax was deducted, an IT3(a) where none was.
Check the drafts. On an IT3(a), confirm the reason no tax was deducted — it defaults to earnings below the tax threshold.
Select Issue to lock them, then download the PDFs for your employees.

Generation is refused while any pay run in the period is still in draft, or while your SARS references are missing. Both would produce figures that can still move.

Reconcile the EMP501

Payroll > EMP501 sets what you declared month by month on your EMP201s against what your certificates say. Both are built from the same finalised pay runs, so PAYE, UIF and SDL should agree exactly. When they do not, the usual cause is a pay run reversed after the certificates were issued — regenerate the certificates and check again.

ETI is expected to differ. A certificate reports the incentive an employee earned; the EMP201 claim is capped at that month's PAYE, with the excess carried or forfeited.
Where you run a general ledger, the screen also shows what is still sitting in PAYE/UIF/SDL Payable.
Download the certificate CSV — one row per certificate, one column per source code — for your own records or your accountant.