The payroll register and journal

The register is the list of everyone in a payroll run, with what each person earns, what is deducted and what they take home. The payroll journal is the same run turned into accounting entries that you can import into your accounting system.

Who can open a run's register: Owner, Payroll admin, Payroll approver.

Who can export the register and the journal: Owner, Payroll admin, Payroll approver.

Who can change the journal account codes: Owner, Payroll admin.

Read the register

Open Payroll runs, then the run. The Register tab opens first.

Each row is one person. The columns always shown are Name, Staff no., Gross, PAYE, Pension (EE) (the employee’s pension contribution), NHF, Net and Employer cost.

• Optional register columns adds Days paid, Voluntary pension, Other deductions, Employer pension and Benefits in kind. They are hidden at first so the register fits a laptop screen. Cadre remembers your choice on this device.
• Search name or staff no. narrows the list.
• The register shows up to 100 people a page at first. You can change it to 250 or 500 at the bottom.
• A warning icon next to a name means that line has a warning, for example net pay below zero, which stops the run being submitted. Hover over the icon to read the warning, or open the line. The count of lines with warnings is shown above the tabs.

Every figure comes from Cadre’s calculation. Cadre works out PAYE, pension, NHF and net pay on its server; the register only shows them.

See how a figure was calculated

Select a row to open that person’s line. It shows:

• Pay items: each earning and deduction with its amount.
• Benefits in kind, if the person has any. These are not paid: their taxable value is added to income for PAYE only, not to gross pay, pension or NHF.
• How it was calculated: each step of the calculation, the basis it used and the amount.

The register of a locked run

Once a run is locked, its register is the record of what was paid and cannot be changed. If something was wrong, correct it with an adjustment in a later run.

Export the register

The register export is on the run’s Outputs tab, which appears once the run is locked. A parallel run has an Outputs (preview) tab instead, which works once the run is calculated: everything on it is a preview for comparison, and its payslips and schedules are watermarked.

1. Open the run and select Outputs.
2. Select Reports.
3. Select Export register (.xlsx). Your browser saves the spreadsheet.

The spreadsheet has a row per person, with their staff number, name, job title, department, worksite and days paid, a column for each earning, then gross pay, PAYE, employee pension, voluntary pension, NHF, a column for each deduction, net pay, employer pension and employer cost. Benefits in kind come last, labelled as taxable and not paid, outside every pay total. A pay item a person does not have is left blank, not written as 0.00.

The run’s cost summary

The same tab shows the run’s Cost summary: what the legal employer bears for the people in the run, split by department and by worksite. You can export it with Excel or PDF. ITF is not included here, because it is annual. For costs across several pay periods, including ITF, use the payroll cost summary.

Export the payroll journal

The journal is produced only for a locked run that is not a parallel run. A parallel run pays nobody, so it never produces a journal.

1. Open the locked run and select Outputs, then Reports.
2. Select Export journal (.csv). Your browser saves the file, and the journal also appears on the screen under Payroll journal.
3. Check the totals: debits and credits are always equal.
4. Import the file into your accounting system.

Every line of the file carries the journal date (the last day of the pay period), a reference for the run, the account code and name, a description, and a debit or credit amount. The unused side is left blank.

Side	What it posts
Debit	Salary expense, one line for each earning; employer pension expense; NSITF expense
Credit	Net pay payable; PAYE payable; pension payable (employee and voluntary, and employer); NHF payable; NSITF payable; other deductions payable, one line for each deduction

Cadre refuses to export a journal that does not balance to the kobo, so you never import a lopsided entry.

Set the journal account codes

The journal posts to Cadre’s default account codes until you save your own. Set them to match your chart of accounts before you first import a journal.

1. Go to Settings, then Journal account codes. There is also a Journal account codes link next to the journal export.
2. Enter a code for each account: Salary expense, Employer pension expense, NSITF expense, Net pay payable, PAYE payable, Pension payable, NHF payable, NSITF payable and Other deductions payable. Each code can be up to 50 characters.
3. To post an earning to its own expense account, select Add an earning, choose the earning and enter its account code. Any earning not listed posts to salary expense.
4. Select Save account codes.

Payroll approvers can see the codes but not change them. The new codes apply to every journal you export from then on, including a journal exported again for a run locked earlier.

Related

• How payroll works
• Run payroll
• Payslips
• The Reports group
• Glossary