How to setup your Payroll

A general guide to setting up and running a company in the Solace Payroll application — company creation, reference lists, earnings/deductions, tax tables, employees, and processing a pay run.

This article covers the application generically, for any country. For the Democratic Republic of Congo-specific rates and calculations, see RDC Payroll instead — that article assumes the setup steps here are already done.

Scope. This guide follows the menus of Payroll Desktop → Control Panel as they exist in the current build (solacepay.lpr). Screen names quoted below (e.g. “Company Parameters”, “Class Earnings”) are the exact menu captions, so you can follow along inside the application.

1. Purpose and Scope

This guide walks a new user through everything that has to be configured before the first payslip can be produced, then through the routine steps of running a pay period. It is written for whoever administers the payroll — not a developer — and assumes the application is already installed and a database connection is available.

The setup order matters: reference lists (departments, pay points, employee classes) must exist before employees can be captured against them, and earnings/deductions must be configured per employee class before an employee in that class can be paid correctly.

2. Before You Start: Creating a Company

Everything in Solace Payroll — employees, earnings, deductions, pay runs — belongs to a company. The Create Company screen offers three starting points:

Method	What it does	When to use it
Create Empty Company	Sets up a new, blank company database with no employees, earnings or deductions configured.	A genuinely new payroll, e.g. a new client or a new country of operation.
Copy Current Company	Duplicates the company you currently have open, including its reference lists, employee classes, earnings and deductions.	Setting up a second branch/entity that should start from the same configuration (e.g. copying a validated setup before customising it for a new country).
Install Example Company	Loads a pre-built demo company with sample data.	Learning the application, or testing report layouts, without risking real data.

Each company is a separate database (see §9 in Adding Employees and §13 Backup, Restore and Housekeeping for how companies map to backups). Give it a clear Database Name and Display Name when prompted — the display name is what appears in the Company: field on the main desktop, so make it recognisable if you run more than one company from the same installation.

3. Company Parameters (Company Settings)

Once inside a company, go to Control Panel → Company Parameters. This is the single screen that holds the company-wide configuration, organised in tabs:

Tab	What you set here
Company Info	Company name, postal and physical address, country, telephone/fax/mobile, email and web address — these print on payslips and reports.
Registration	Business Registration number, Tax Registration number, UIF (or equivalent statutory) Registration number.
Tax Tables	Download or purchase the official tax bracket tables for your country/tax year (see §8).
System	Amount format (decimal symbol, decimal digits, grouping symbol, currency symbol), date format, and the number of decimal digits used when rounding net pay.
Currency	Home currency symbol, and whether to enable multi-currency (needed if you pay some employees in a currency other than the home currency — see the exchange-rate note in §10).

Do this first. Set the Company Info, Registration and System/Currency tabs before capturing any employees — the amount and date formats in particular affect how every screen afterwards displays and accepts numbers.

4. Control Panel Reference Lists

Before employees can be captured, the lookup lists they're assigned to must exist. These all use the same simple add/edit/list pattern (a code, a description, and an Active flag):

Menu item	Purpose	Used on the employee record as
Departments	The organisational department/section an employee belongs to.	Department
Regions	Geographic or reporting region.	Region
Paypoints	Where/how an employee's pay is collected or processed (branch, site, cashier point).	Paypoint
Posts Description	Job titles / position descriptions.	Job/Position → Title, Description
Pay Methods	How an employee is paid (e.g. bank transfer, cash, cheque).	Payment Method
Employee Classes	The pay-scale/category grouping that drives which earnings and deductions apply (see §5–6).	Pay Class

Set these up first, even with a minimal list — you can always add more later, but an employee cannot be saved without a valid class, and earnings/deductions cannot be configured without a class to attach them to.

5. Setting Up Earnings

Go to Control Panel → Earnings (also reachable as Class Earnings). Earnings are configured per Employee Class — select the class from the Employee Class selector at the top of the screen, then add or edit its earning lines.

Field	Meaning
Name / Payslip Description	Internal name and the wording that prints on the payslip.
Source	Whether the amount is entered manually, calculated (rate × units), or derived from another value.
Amount	The default rate or amount for this earning in this class (can usually be overridden per employee).
Date Start / Date End / Active	Controls when this earning line is available — useful for a temporary allowance or a rate that changes on a known date.
Tax Details → Income Type	How this earning is treated for tax purposes.
Tax Details → Basic Income	Whether this earning counts as basic/pensionable income.
Tax Details → Taxable portion	What percentage of the amount is subject to tax/statutory contributions (0% for a fully exempt allowance, 100% for fully taxable pay).
Transaction Type	Links the earning to a transaction-type code, used by the reporting and general-ledger side of the system.
Accounting → Ledger Account	The GL account this earning posts to, if the company uses the accounting integration.

The Tools menu on this screen (Copy From…, Copy To…, Import From File, Move Up/Down) lets you copy a fully configured set of earnings from one class to another instead of re-typing it, and reorder how earnings appear on the payslip.

6. Setting Up Deductions

Control Panel → Deductions works the same way — per Employee Class, with the same Tools menu — but each deduction line has more structure, because a statutory deduction usually has both an employee-paid side and an employer-paid side:

Section	Fields	Notes
Employee Contribution	Source, Amount, Tax Details (Tax Type, Amount), Maximum Limit (Apply, Amount)	What is actually deducted from the employee's pay.
Employer Contribution	Source, Amount, Tax Details (Tax Type, Amount), Maximum Limit (Apply, Amount)	An employer-only cost with no equivalent deduction on the employee's payslip — use this for a levy the employer pays but the employee never sees deducted.
Other Contribution	Contribution, Apply, Taxable Portion	A secondary contribution some statutory schemes require alongside the main employee/employer split.
Accounting	Ledger Account	The GL account this deduction posts to.

A social-security-style contribution (an employee percentage plus a different employer percentage of the same base) is configured as one deduction line with both the Employee Contribution and Employer Contribution sections filled in. A purely employer-funded levy (a training levy or an employment fund contribution, for example) is configured with only the Employer Contribution section filled in and the Employee Contribution amount left at zero, so nothing is withheld from the payslip but the cost is still recorded.

Maximum Limit. If a contribution is only payable up to a ceiling (a monthly or annual cap on a social-security contribution, for example), tick Apply under Maximum Limit and enter the ceiling amount — the system will stop deducting once the cap is reached rather than requiring you to track it by hand.

7. Tax Tables

Income-tax withholding is calculated from a bracket table (a set of income bands, each with a rate and a cumulative tax amount) plus a parameters record (rebates, age-based thresholds, and similar country-specific settings). These live behind Company Parameters → Tax Tables, with two options:

• Download Tax Tables — pulls the current official bracket table for a supported tax year/country.
• Purchase Tax Tables — for tax tables that require a separate purchase/licence.

If your country's tax mechanics aren't fully covered by an available table (a relief or a cap that the standard calculation doesn't support), the bracket table itself can still be entered so the correct rates and thresholds apply; anything the calculation genuinely can't express is a development item, not a configuration one — note it for follow-up rather than trying to force it through the data.

8. Adding Employees

Employee → Employee opens the employee list; use Add to capture a new employee, or Import From File to bring in a batch from a spreadsheet. Top-level fields are Code, Name, Surname, Region, Department, Active and Pay Class (see §4); the Details area is organised in tabs:

Tab	Captures
Personal	ID number, gender, birth date, number of dependants, marital status, spouse name.
General	Start date, end date, pay frequency, paypoint, payment method, contract details.
Address/Contact	Physical address; telephone, cell numbers, email; banking details (bank name, branch, account number).
Job/Position	Job title and description.
RS Details	Tax reference number and other tax-specific identifiers.
Slip extra	Custom messages that print on this employee's payslip.
Earnings	This employee's specific earnings, pre-populated from their Employee Class (§5) and adjustable per employee (e.g. their actual base salary).
Deductions	This employee's specific deductions, pre-populated from their Employee Class (§6) and adjustable per employee (e.g. a personal loan repayment).
Notes	Free-text notes against the employee record.

Because Earnings and Deductions are pre-populated from the employee's class, getting §5/§6 right for each class first means most employees need only their individual amounts (base salary, personal allowances) entered when they're added — not the whole earning/deduction structure retyped from scratch.

9. Running a Pay Run

Running payroll for a period is a two-step process:

9.1 Create the pay run

New Payrun (reached from the process-payslips area) asks for:

Field	Meaning
Payroll Type	Weekly, Fortnightly or Monthly — must match how the employees in this run are set up to be paid.
Payroll Date	The date this run is processed/paid.
Description	A free-text label for the run (e.g. “PAYRUN 05-2026”).
Exchange Rate	Only relevant if the company uses multi-currency (§3, Currency tab) — the rate used to convert amounts for tax/statutory calculation purposes for this run. Leave at 1 if the company operates in a single currency.

9.2 Process Payslips

Open Process Payslips for the run to review and finalise each employee's pay. The screen is organised as:

• Earnings / Deductions / Leaves / Messages tabs — edit individual lines for the selected employee before finalising.
• Summary panels: Earnings (Primary, Secondary, Fringe Benefit, Bonus), Deductions (Employee, Contributions, Externals, Loan), plus running totals for Net Paid and Total Taxable.
• A Process action that finalises the calculation for the employee/run.

Review the summary totals against expectations before finalising — this is the point to catch a missing earning line, a wrong class assignment, or an unconfigured deduction, before payslips are printed.

10. Payslips and Reports

Once a run is processed, use Pay Slip to print or export individual payslips, and the Reports menu for period and company-wide reporting (earnings and deductions detail, and other configured report types). Period Summary gives a consolidated view of a completed period, useful for reconciling totals before filing any statutory returns.

11. Backup, Restore and Housekeeping

Menu item	What it does
Backup Company	Creates a backup of the current company's database. Run this before any bulk change (a new tax year, a mass import, a structural change to employee classes) as well as on a routine schedule.
Restore Company	Restores a company from a previous backup.
Clear Reset Company	Resets company data — use with care, and only after taking a backup; this is a destructive operation.

12. First-Time Setup Checklist

1. Create the company (§2) — Empty, Copy, or Example.
2. Complete Company Parameters: Company Info, Registration, System, Currency (§3).
3. Download/configure the tax table for your country and tax year (§7).
4. Build the reference lists: Departments, Regions, Paypoints, Posts Description, Pay Methods, Employee Classes (§4).
5. Configure Earnings per Employee Class (§5).
6. Configure Deductions per Employee Class, including employer-only contributions and any maximum limits (§6).
7. Capture employees, either individually or via Import From File (§8).
8. Take a backup (§11).
9. Create the first Pay Run and process it (§9).
10. Check the summary totals, then print payslips and run reports (§10).

13. Glossary

Term	Meaning
Employee Class	The category (pay scale/grade) an employee belongs to; drives which earnings and deductions apply by default.
Source (on an earning/deduction)	Where the amount comes from — entered manually, a rate calculation, or derived from another value.
Taxable Portion	The percentage of an earning that counts toward tax/statutory contribution calculations.
Maximum Limit	An optional cap on a deduction/contribution, after which no further amount is withheld or accrued.
Transaction Type	A code linking a payslip line to the reporting/general-ledger side of the system.
Payrun	One processed pay period (a specific week, fortnight or month) for a group of employees.
Exchange Rate (on a payrun)	The rate applied for that run when the company operates in more than one currency.
Period Summary	A consolidated report of a completed pay period.

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