Payroll Overview

What this guide covers: the mental model you need before you touch any other Payroll screen. If you only read one page in this guide set, read this one — every other guide assumes you already know the terms and patterns explained here.

Two audiences, one module

"Payroll" in Agribantu actually serves two very different kinds of user, and it's worth being clear about which one you are before you go looking for a button:

• Payroll operators — the Owner, an Admin, or anyone specifically given Payroll permissions. This is the person who sets up employees, runs payroll every month, and files returns with SARS. This guide set is mostly written for this person.
• Every employee — anyone employed on the platform, regardless of role, gets a personal "My Payslips" page to see and download their own payslips. They never see the operator screens described in the rest of this guide.

Where to find Payroll

Payroll operators see a Payroll group in the left-hand navigation, with six pages inside it:

Separately, every single employee — including ones who never touch the operator screens above — gets a "My Payslips" item in their own navigation, at a personal /me/payslips page. That's the self-service view mentioned in Part A.

The Overview dashboard

Open Payroll → Overview and you'll see a grid of cards, each one a queue of things that need your attention right now. A Refresh button at the top re-pulls the latest counts. The cards are:

• Employee setup — payroll setup that's incomplete for one or more employees.
• Payroll runs — runs sitting in a queue you're authorised to act on.
• Returns — filing impacts that need a decision (see Statutory Returns & ETI).
• ETI refunds — Employment Tax Incentive refund closeouts in progress.
• Finance handoff — approved runs waiting to be posted to your books.
• Payslips — payments still waiting on attestation (see Payslips & Paying People).

Each card shows a count (highlighted if it's above zero), a status chip, and a short list of the actual blockers behind that count. If the data is more than five minutes old you'll see a small banner warning that "This overview may be stale" — just hit Refresh.

The one pattern to learn: status, blockers, actions

Payroll is not a set of ordinary edit-and-save forms. Almost every screen — an employee's readiness page, a pay run, a statutory return — is built around the same three ideas, and once you recognise them, every screen in this guide set reads the same way:

Who can do what

Payroll deliberately splits preparing work from signing it off — a "maker/checker" design common in payroll and finance systems, so no single day-to-day user can both prepare and approve their own numbers. The full scope-by-scope table lives in the Glossary — Part B; the short version:

In practice: if you're an Admin and a screen is missing an Approve, File, Attest or Reveal button you expected, that's by design — hand off to your Owner for that final step.

The order of operations

For a brand-new organisation, work through the guides in this order:

1. Getting an Employee Ready — every employee needs this before they can be paid at all.
2. Running a Pay Run — create, calculate and approve the month's pay run.
3. Payslips & Paying People — record what was actually paid, and issue payslips.
4. Statutory Returns & ETI — generate the SARS paperwork for the period.
5. Posting Payroll to Finance — get the cost onto your general ledger.

Keep Corrections & Terminations and the Glossary & Roles Cheat Sheet bookmarked for later — you won't need them on day one.

Troubleshooting & FAQ