People and payroll

The establishment register covers everyone the assembly engages, whether the government pays them or the assembly does. Payroll here covers only the ones the assembly pays.

The establishment

Each employee record holds the staff number, grade, department, job title and engagement type. Engagement matters: mechanised staff are on the government payroll and are recorded here for establishment purposes only. IGF, contract and casual staff are paid by the assembly and are the ones the payroll run picks up.

Leave

A request goes from the employee to the head of department, who recommends it, and then to the approving officer. The leave page shows everything awaiting a decision. Approving reduces the employee's entitlement for the year.

Staff identity cards

Open a staff record and press Issue a staff card. The card prints at 85.6 × 54 mm, the size of a bank card — choose “actual size” or 100% in the print dialogue, not “fit to page”, or it comes out wrong. Print on card stock, cut to the outline and laminate.

Only one card is valid at a time. Issuing a replacement retires the old one automatically, so a card that has been lost stops working the moment a new one is made.

Add a photograph to the staff record first. A card printed without one has an empty frame and is worth very little at a market gate. The card also carries blood group and next of kin, which is the first thing anybody reaches for when a member of staff is hurt on duty.

Allowances and deductions

Set up each allowance and deduction once, under Administration, as a salary component — a fixed amount or a percentage of basic. Then attach the ones that apply to each member of staff. Changing the responsibility allowance changes it for everyone who has it, once.

Mark a component not taxable where it is a genuine reimbursement of expenses rather than income. That is not decoration: the payroll leaves it out of taxable pay, so the PAYE is lower.

Running the payroll

1. Create the period for the month.
2. Check the establishment: anyone engaged or separated during the month should be right before you process, because processing takes a snapshot.
3. Press Process. Payslips are built for every active employee the assembly pays.
4. Review the totals, then print the payroll for signature.

How the deductions are worked out

• SSNIT is 5.5% from the employee and 13% from the assembly, calculated on basic salary.
• PAYE follows the Ghana monthly graduated bands, applied to gross pay less the employee's SSNIT contribution.

Both rates live in one place in the system's settings, so when the law changes they are changed once rather than hunted through the code.

What to produce afterwards

Three lists have to leave the assembly before anybody is actually paid, and each is one button on the payroll page:

• Bank payment schedule — names, account numbers and net amounts, for the bank.
• SSNIT contribution schedule — the 5.5% from each member and the 13% from the assembly, by SSNIT number.
• PAYE remittance schedule — tax by taxpayer, by TIN, for the Ghana Revenue Authority.

Each schedule checks itself as it prints: anyone missing the reference that schedule needs — no bank account, no SSNIT number, no TIN — is named at the top so you can fill it in before filing rather than after being sent it back.

Individual payslips print from the payroll page or from the staff record, and carry the year-to-date figures people ask for when applying for a loan.