Automatic payroll runs in Pitch N Hire HRMS

What payroll runs includes

How do you run payroll end to end in Pitch N Hire?

A payroll cycle in Pitch N Hire moves through named stages, and a stage cannot start until the one before it is signed off. The run opens against a pay period and a defined set of employees. Attendance and leave are pulled from attendance and leave management and locked, so a late regularisation cannot quietly change a number after computation has happened. Salary structures, variable pay and arrears load next. The engine computes earnings, deductions and net pay for every employee and produces a preview. Payroll owners review that preview, approve it, and release the run. Only after approval does Pitch N Hire generate the bank transfer file and post the accounting entries. Every stage records who acted and when, so a question about a specific figure raised later resolves to a person, a timestamp and the input that produced it, rather than to a spreadsheet nobody can reconstruct.

What has to be locked before a payroll cycle starts?

Locking is what separates a reproducible pay run from a spreadsheet, and enforcing it is much of why payroll software exists at all. Pitch N Hire freezes four input sets when a cycle opens: attendance and shift data for the period, approved leave and loss-of-pay days, reimbursement claims that cleared their approval route, and the salary structures in force on the pay date. Once locked, those inputs are read-only for that run. A regularisation or a late leave approval raised after the lock does not rewrite the period; it queues for the next cycle as an arrear or a recovery, and the payroll owner sees it listed before the next run computes. Employees on probation, in notice period or on unpaid leave are flagged separately, because their treatment differs from a standard full-month employee. Reopening a locked period needs an administrator permission and is written to the audit trail with a reason.

How does automatic payroll handle variable pay and arrears?

Variable components enter a run in three ways. Recurring items defined in the salary structure, such as allowances, fixed reimbursement heads and shift differentials, compute automatically from the structure in force. Period-specific items such as incentives, sales commission, overtime value and one-time deductions are uploaded against employee codes or entered on the run itself, and each carries the earning or deduction head it maps to. Arrears are computed rather than typed: when a revision carries an effective date earlier than the current period, Pitch N Hire recalculates the affected months on the old structure and on the new one, then carries the difference into the current run as separate arrear lines. The payslip therefore shows the correction distinctly from current earnings. The same logic runs in reverse for a backdated deduction or a recovery, which is why a mid-year revision needs no manual working.

What does the payroll preview and variance check show?

The preview is the review surface before anything is paid. It lists every employee with gross, statutory deductions, other deductions and net pay, and beside each figure the same figure from the previous cycle with the difference between them. Sorting by variance puts the exceptions at the top: a joiner on a part-month salary, an exit carrying a settlement, someone whose loss-of-pay days jumped, a structure revision that landed this month. Register-level totals sit above the employee list, covering total gross, total employer contribution, total statutory liability and total net, so a payroll owner reconciles against the funding request before approving anything. Whatever the engine could not compute is raised as a blocking exception rather than as a silent zero: a missing bank account, an employee with no structure assigned, a negative net after recoveries. The run cannot be approved while a blocking exception remains open.

How does payroll approval and the bank transfer file work?

Approval is a route, not a button. Pitch N Hire lets you define the sequence, so a payroll executive prepares, finance reviews and an authorised signatory releases, and each step is attributable to a named person. A reviewer can reject the run back to preparation with a comment, which reopens the inputs rather than editing figures in place. Once the final approval lands, the run closes and the bank transfer file generates in the layout your bank accepts, with account numbers, branch identifiers and net amounts drawn from the approved run rather than re-keyed. Payments can be split into batches, so a group paid from a different account or on a different date gets its own file. A closed run is immutable: changing anything about it requires a reversal or an off-cycle run, both of which are recorded against the original run.

How does a payroll run post to accounting?

Every earning and deduction head carries an accounting mapping, so a closed run produces journal entries without anyone re-classifying figures. Salary cost posts by cost centre, department, location and project where those dimensions are set on the employee record, which is what lets finance see payroll cost split the way the business is actually managed rather than as one lump. Employer contributions and statutory liabilities post to their own liability accounts, and the net payable posts to the bank clearing account that the transfer file draws on. The output is available as a summary journal for import or as a line-level extract for reconciliation. Because the mapping lives on the head and not on the run, adding a new allowance next quarter means setting its account once and every subsequent cycle posts it correctly. The payroll cost calculator models what a structure change does to that cost beforehand.

What happens when payroll has to be corrected after it closes?

Corrections are handled as new, traceable events rather than as edits to history. If the error is small and the period is closed, the difference is carried into the next cycle as an arrear or a recovery line, shown on the payslip with the period it relates to. If the error is large enough that the closed period is wrong on paper, such as a wrong structure applied to a whole group or a missing statutory deduction, the run is reversed instead. A reversal restates the period, produces a corrected register, and records the delta for each affected employee. Statutory filings already submitted for that period are then handled through revised returns rather than by quietly changing the original figures, which matters when a filing is later reconciled against the register. Both routes leave the original run intact and readable, so an auditor sees what was paid, what changed and why.

How do off-cycle payroll runs work?

An off-cycle run pays a defined group outside the monthly calendar without disturbing the regular cycle. Typical uses are a mid-month joiner who missed the cut-off, an annual bonus paid on its own date, a retention payout, or a settlement that cannot wait for month end. The run selects only the employees and earning heads it needs, computes statutory deductions on those earnings according to the rules configured, and produces its own register, payslips and bank file. Its figures roll into the same year-to-date totals as the regular cycle, so tax computation and annual statements stay consistent and an off-cycle bonus never becomes invisible to the tax working. Approval follows the same route as a regular run, and the payment appears in the same accounting posting structure. Payslips and settlements explains how the settlement variant of an off-cycle run is assembled.