Acronyms & terms
PAYE
Pay-As-You-Earn — the income tax deducted from an employee's pay every period and paid over to SARS on their behalf. Shown on every payslip and in the run's per-employee detail.
UIF
Unemployment Insurance Fund. Both the employee and the employer contribute — the employee's share is deducted and shown on their payslip; the employer's share is a separate cost that posts to Finance and feeds EMP201/EMP501.
SDL
Skills Development Levy — an employer-only cost. It's never deducted from an employee's pay, so it correctly never appears on a payslip, but it does appear in Finance postings and in EMP201/EMP501.
ETI
Employment Tax Incentive — a SARS incentive that reduces your PAYE liability for qualifying employees (commonly younger or lower-paid workers). See Statutory Returns & ETI — Part C.
EMP201
The monthly declaration to SARS of PAYE, UIF, SDL and ETI. Gets a Payment Reference Number (PRN) once generated. See Statutory Returns & ETI — Part B.
EMP501 / EMP601
EMP501 is the interim or annual reconciliation across a period's EMP201 declarations. EMP601 is the certificate-cancellation flow, reachable from a certificate's detail page. See Statutory Returns & ETI — Part E.
IRP5 / IT3(a)
The annual (or interim) employee tax certificate — proof to SARS and the employee of what they earned and what tax was deducted over the tax year. See Statutory Returns & ETI — Part D.
IRP3(a) / (b) / (c) — Tax directive
A SARS ruling that overrides the normal PAYE calculation for a specific payment — most commonly used for lump sums like severance pay. Referred to throughout Payroll simply as a "directive." See Corrections & Terminations — Part E.
Nature of person
A SARS filing-identity code (A/B/M/N/R) captured per employee for IRP5 purposes — A covers a standard South African individual. See Getting an Employee Ready — Part H.
NMW
National Minimum Wage — tracked per employee as an applicability status, or an exemption reason where one legally applies.
SD13 / BCEA — legal regime
za_sd13_farm_worker is Sectoral Determination 13, the specific wage rules for the farm worker sector; za_bcea_general is the general Basic Conditions of Employment Act regime. Every employee is assigned one during statutory classification, and it changes what rules their payslip follows.
GN 691
A statutory apportionment method used for valuing certain benefits in kind (e.g. housing supplied to a farm worker) — an advanced, situational setup step.
Pay Group
A set of employees paid together on the same cycle and currency — required to create a pay run. See Running a Pay Run — Part A.
Pay Period
The specific date range a pay run covers, e.g. 1–30 September 2026.
Attestation
The act of confirming "this amount was actually paid, on this date, by this method" — the step that turns a payslip preview into a real, permanent payslip record. See Payslips & Paying People — Part B.
Statutory reporting period
The SARS-defined window a return is generated against — monthly for EMP201, interim/annual for EMP501/IRP5, or a six-month cycle for ETI.
Roles & permissions
Payroll is built around a "maker/checker" split: preparation work and final sign-off are deliberately given to different roles, so no single day-to-day user both prepares and approves their own numbers.
| Role | Can do | Cannot do |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | Everything in Payroll, including every action listed as restricted below. | — |
| Admin | Create/edit engagements, compensation and non-sensitive profile fields; calculate a run; prepare and preview returns; post (not reverse) Finance journals. | Approve a run, approve or file a return, view or attest real payslip amounts, reveal sensitive profile/filing data (tax numbers, bank accounts, ID numbers), reverse a Finance posting. |
| Manager | Team payslip visibility where configured, and their own payslips. | Any operator-level Payroll access. |
| Employee | Their own payslips, via "My Payslips." | Everything else in Payroll. |
Troubleshooting & FAQ
I've read this whole guide set and I'm still stuck.
Re-read Payroll Overview — most confusion traces back to either a role restriction (Part B above) or an unread blocker message on the screen you're stuck on.
Is there a live connection to SARS anywhere in Payroll?
No. Agribantu calculates and formats every statutory figure and document correctly, but submitting to SARS eFiling is always a manual, human step — see Statutory Returns & ETI — Part A.