AWRA Help Center

Basic salary always comes from the employee’s active contract; it is never repeated in the package. The package adds everything else. An employee with no contract salary cannot be put through payroll at all, package or not.

Step 1: Set Up Pay Components

A pay component is a reusable type, such as Transport Allowance or Sacco Contribution. Open Human Resources → Payroll Runs → Pay Components (needs Manage Pay Components) and create one:

• Type — Allowance, Benefit or Deduction.
• Calculation — Fixed amount or Percentage of basic salary.
• Taxable — adds the amount to the base income tax is worked out on.
• Pensionable — adds it to the base pension contributions are worked out on.
• Cash — it is paid out, so it counts toward gross and net pay.
• Active — only active components can be added to a package.

Statutory deductions such as income tax and social security are not pay components. They come from the statutory rules for the employee’s country.

Step 2: Build An Employee’s Package

1. Open the employee in Human Resources → Employees. On the Compensation card, click Manage.
2. Under Add a Pay Component, choose the component.
3. Enter the Amount for a fixed component or the Percentage for a percentage one, add a note if useful, and click Add Component.
4. Repeat for each item. Remove one with its delete button.

The page heading shows the package currency, taken from the contract, and the date it took effect. Changing a package needs Edit Employees; viewing it needs View Employees.

Effective Dates

• Each employee has one current package. It takes effect on the day it is first created, and you add and remove items on it from then on.
• A payroll run uses the package in effect on the last day of the run’s period. A package first created on 3 November is not used for an October run, even one calculated in November.
• Changing the package never rewrites a past payslip. Each payslip keeps the figures it was calculated with. A draft run picks up your change when it is recalculated.

How It Reaches The Payslip

1. Basic pay is prorated for unpaid days. A percentage item is a percentage of that prorated basic.
2. Cash allowances and benefits are added to gross pay, each as its own line, and to the taxable and pensionable bases where those boxes are ticked.
3. Statutory deductions are applied.
4. Deductions from the package come off after that, each as its own line. A voluntary pension top-up set up this way reduces net pay, not taxable pay.

A benefit with Cash unticked is recorded on the package but does not appear on the payslip: it is not paid, and payroll does not add it to the taxable or pensionable base. Taxing the value of non-cash benefits through payroll is something we can add to your workspace.