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CadreCadre Help Centre

Set up your organisation

Work through this list after Cadre has set up your organisation and you have signed in as its owner. The order matters: each step uses what the one before it set up. Your people and your first payroll run come last.

Who can work through this checklist: Owner, HR admin, Payroll admin, Payroll approver.

Most steps need the owner or an HR admin. The pay steps need the owner or a payroll admin. The owner can do all of them.

Before you start

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  • Have your company’s certificates to hand: the CAC certificate, and your tax, pension, NHF, NSITF and ITF registrations.
  • Decide who else needs a login, and which roles each person needs. See Roles.
  • Your organisation starts on a 30-day free trial with every feature, so nothing needs paying before you begin. See Subscription and billing.

The checklist

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  1. Check your organisation’s details and add your branding. Confirm the name, add the registered address, and upload your logo and accent colour so payslips carry them. See Organisation details and branding.

  2. Enter your statutory registrations. Your TIN, CAC number, PAYE state and tax ID, pension employer code, and NHF, NSITF and ITF numbers. They are printed on every statutory schedule. See Statutory registrations.

  3. Build your structure. Add departments, locations (the worksites where people are based), grades and job roles. See Departments, locations, grades and job roles. If people clock in at a site, set that up in Work locations.

  4. Set up leave. Review the leave types and policies and the public holidays. See Leave types and policies and Public holidays.

  5. Set up pay components. Add the standard components (basic salary, housing and transport) and any others you pay. See Pay components and journal accounts.

  6. Invite the people who will run Cadre with you. Give your HR and payroll colleagues their logins and roles. Make sure at least one person can prepare payroll and a different person can approve it. See Members and roles.

  7. Add your employees. Add them one at a time or import them from a spreadsheet. See Add an employee and Import employees in bulk.

  8. Set up each employee’s pay. Record salaries and the components each person receives. See Setting up pay.

  9. Choose your notifications. Decide which informational emails and bell notifications Cadre sends your people, and preview them. See Notifications.

  10. Connect your tools, if you use them. Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365 or your own system through a webhook, for onboarding workflows. See Integrations.

  11. Match the journal to your accounts. Set the account codes the payroll journal posts to, so it imports cleanly into your accounting system. See Pay components and journal accounts.

  12. Run a parallel payroll. Run Cadre alongside your current payroll and compare the results before you rely on it. See Parallel run and Running payroll.

If you are an agency

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After step 3, also:

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