Calculated Pay Items
Five ways an item's amount can be worked out — fixed, a percentage of another item, a rate by attribute, a tax rule, or per-person amounts from a file.
Most pay items are a number you type. Some are not: a pension that is a percentage of basic salary, a site allowance that differs by location, a tax with bands. Add pay item in the pay run editor opens with a Calculation choice, and everything below it changes to match.
The five modes
| Mode | Amount comes from | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed amount | A number you type, times a count. | A flat allowance, a one-off bonus. |
| Percentage of another item | A percentage of each person's own amount of a chosen item. | Pension at a percentage of basic salary. |
| Rate by department, location, position or grade | A table of values for one attribute, plus a default. | A site allowance that differs by location; a grade-based allowance. |
| Tax law (progressive or flat) | A rate or a set of bands, applied to the items you mark as taxable. | Income tax, a statutory levy. |
| Per-person amounts from CSV | A file that names an amount for each person. | Commission, overtime, anything genuinely different per person. |
A calculated item does not store one number. It stores the rule, and the rule is resolved for each employee against that employee's own pay items. Two people on the same 8%-of-basic pension carry different figures because their basic salaries differ — you set the rule once.
Fixed amount
Type, name, amount, period, count, and the taxable and deductible flags. The item resolves to amount × count for everyone it is added to. This is the same shape as a pay item on an employee record — see Pay items.
Percentage of another item
The list offers the items already on the run. "Basic salary" is the usual answer.
As a percentage.
For each person the item resolves to their own amount of the reference item × their count of it × the percentage.
The percentage is of a specific item on a specific person. If someone on the run does not carry that item, there is nothing to take a percentage of and the item resolves to zero for them — which the preview shows before you add it. Check it, rather than discovering it in Review as a No pay badge.
Rate by department, location, position or grade
Pick the attribute, then add one row per value — the value, and the amount for it. Anyone whose attribute matches a row gets that row's amount.
Default amount covers anyone matching none of the rows. Set it deliberately: leaving it at zero means an employee in a location you forgot to list is paid nothing for this item.
A rate row matches the value on the employee record exactly. If half your people are in "London" and half in "London Office", they are two values and need two rows — or the record needs tidying first.
Tax law
For a deduction that is a rule rather than a rate, with two shapes:
| Shape | You supply | Resolves to |
|---|---|---|
| Flat rate | One percentage. | That percentage of the taxable base. |
| Custom bands | A list of bands — a limit and a rate each — and whether to annualise. | The band calculation over the taxable base, divided back to the period if annualised. |
The taxable base is something you declare, not something the product guesses. You tick which of the run's items count as taxable, and the base is the sum of those items for each person. A band with a limit of zero is the top band and takes everything remaining.
Bands are usually written as annual thresholds. Tick Annualise and the person's periodic taxable base is multiplied up, run through the bands, and divided back down to the period — so annual thresholds behave as annual thresholds. Leave it off to apply the bands to the period figure directly.
There is no jurisdiction built into this. You supply the rate or the bands, and you declare what they apply to. That is deliberate: it is the only way one product can run payroll in every country. Get the numbers from your own tax authority or adviser.
Per-person amounts from CSV
For an item where every person's figure is genuinely different. Upload a file of employee numbers and amounts, and the item resolves to the row that matches each person.
Rows are matched on employee number, and the parse is previewed before anything is added. Anyone the file does not name resolves to zero, so a file that misses somebody shows up as a zero in the preview rather than a surprise on a payslip.
Adding an item from a CSV and updating one from a CSV are two different actions. Use this mode to bring a new item onto the run from a file; use Update from CSV on the pay items step to change amounts on an item the run already carries.
Read the preview every time
Whatever the mode, the dialog resolves the item for the people it is about to be added to and shows the result before you commit — and it does it with the same resolver the saved run uses, so what you preview is what gets saved.
A rule that is subtly wrong — the wrong reference item, a band limit missing a zero, a default of zero — produces figures that look plausible in a run total. Reading the per-person preview at the moment you write the rule is far cheaper than finding it after posting, which cannot be undone.
Where calculated items show up afterwards
On the pay items step, a calculated item names how it is worked out beside its name, so a later reader can see at a glance that a figure was derived rather than typed. Its per-person figures appear in the item sheet like any other item, and it lands on payslips as an ordinary line.