HR & Payroll

HR & Payroll — User Guide

The whole HR month, end to end: leave, clocking in and out, how each day is worked out, correcting what is wrong, the muster, closing the month, the attendance register, and how payroll takes its day count from all of it. Plus the two decisions in an employee's life the platform now records properly — confirmation after probation, and resignation. On-screen buttons and menus are shown as highlighted chips so you know exactly what to click.

Who decides leave

HR and management decide leave requests. A person's own leave is always decided by someone else.

Every decision is recorded. Who decided, when, and what — kept with the request.
Nobody approves their own request. If you raised it, someone else decides it, even if you are normally an approver.
Two people can't both decide. If a colleague decides a moment before you, you are told it is already decided, and nothing is applied twice.

Your approvals inbox

Every approval lives in the Approvals app. Waiting on you holds everything that needs your decision, grouped by urgency — overdue, due within a day, waiting three or more working days, and routine — and its home page shows what is waiting, what you raised and what you decided lately.

  1. 1

    Open a request

    Click a row. The panel shows everything needed to decide — details, balance after approval, who else is away, the requester's reason, and the full history — plus any warning, such as not enough leave balance or no fee terms.

  2. 2

    Approve or reject

    Press Approve. To reject, press Reject: it first says what rejecting will do, lets you add a reason, and then asks you to Confirm — not approved.

  3. 3

    Or ask first

    Press Ask, type your question and Send question. The person who raised the request is told and answers from their own Approvals page; you are told when they reply. The request stays with you, so you can still decide it while you wait.

  4. 4

    Approve several at once

    Choose one kind of request at the top, tick the ones you want, and press Approve on the bar at the bottom. A request with a warning shows a lock instead of a tick box — decide it on its own.

  5. 5

    Follow what you raised

    Your requests shows each request you raised (or that was raised about you), where it stands, who it is waiting on, and its history. When an approver has asked you something, open the request, type Your answer and press Send answer.

  6. 6

    Look back at your decisions

    Decided by you keeps every decision you made and every question you asked, newest first, with where each request stands now.

Waiting time is counted in working days, so weekends and holidays don't make a request look older than it is.

How to request leave

Employees request leave from My HRMy Leave.

  1. 1

    Open your leave page

    Go to My HRMy Leave and find Request leave.

  2. 2

    Fill in the request

    Choose the Leave type, the From and To dates, and tick Half day for a single half day (then pick Which half). A Reason is optional.

  3. 3

    Send it

    Press Request. Working days are counted from the company calendar, so week-offs and holidays are not charged.

  4. 4

    Follow it

    The request shows under My requests as Pending. When it is decided you get an email and an in-app notification with the dates.

To withdraw a request that is still Pending, press Withdraw next to it under My requests. Once decided, speak to HR instead.

How to approve or reject leave (HR and management)

Requests waiting for a decision are under Pending leave at Human ResourcesAttendance & Leave.

  1. 1

    Open the queue

    Use your inbox at HomeApprovals, or go to Human ResourcesAttendance & Leave and find Pending leave.

  2. 2

    Decide

    Press Approve or Reject on a request — or tick several and use Approve or Reject on the selection bar.

  3. 3

    Check the result

    An approved request is written to the employee's attendance as paid or unpaid leave, and the employee is told.

If a request comes back with…It means
This request is not waiting on you.It is your own leave. Another HR person or management must decide it.
This application has already been decided.A colleague decided it a moment before you. Refresh to see the outcome.
… is finalized (locked).The month has been closed for attendance and must be unlocked before leave in it can be approved.

How leave is counted, earned and lost

Each leave type carries its own rules, set by HR at Human ResourcesLeave types. They decide how much a request costs you and how much you have.

Whether a weekend inside your leave is charged. Three choices per type, set separately for weekly offs and for holidays: never charged, charged only when leave sits on both sides of them (the common Indian "sandwich" rule), or always charged. My Leave shows the rule above the form, so a charge is never a surprise.
Applying separately does not dodge it. Under a sandwich rule, asking for Friday and Monday as two requests charges the weekend exactly as asking for both at once does.
How you ask. A type can require a reason, allow or forbid half days, set the smallest and largest request, how much notice is needed in working days, and how far back you may apply.
Leave you earn month by month. A type can accrue monthly, quarterly or yearly instead of being granted in one lump on 1 January. A September joiner has what they have earned by December, not a full year.
Carried leave is used first. When you take leave, the oldest days are spent first. That is what stops last year's carried days quietly lapsing while newer days sit unused.
Statutory leave is set up from the Act. HR creates maternity, adoption, commissioning-mother, miscarriage, tubectomy and related types from Leave typesStatutory leave. Each carries its section number, and each charges weekends and holidays — the Act states these in calendar weeks.

My Leave shows "N earned so far" whenever that is less than your year's balance, and "N lapsed unused" if any expired.

Seeing who else is away before you approve

A leave request is easy to judge one at a time and hard to judge together — four reasonable requests for the same Thursday leave a team with nobody in it. Human ResourcesLeave calendar shows the month as a grid, a row per person.

Requested as well as granted. Granted leave is drawn filled, requested leave outlined — because the point is to see the problem before approving, not after.
Coverage strip. Each working day shows how many of the people listed are away, and shades the day when more than a third of them are.
Filter by team. Pick a month and a team at the top. Weekends and holidays are shaded and never counted as thin cover — nobody is away from a day the company is closed.

Clocking in and out

Employees clock from My HRAttendance. Every tap is recorded as a punch and kept exactly as made.

  1. 1

    Check in

    Press Check in. Your browser may ask for your location — see the note below.

  2. 2

    Work

    The card shows you are in, and since when.

  3. 3

    Check out

    Press Check out when you finish. The time between the two is your worked time for the day.

A punch can never be edited or deleted, by anyone. A mistake is corrected by recording another event, which is what leaves a trail somebody can read later.

If your organisation has set up work sites, your punch records which site you were nearest and whether you were inside it. Refusing the location does not stop you clocking in — being refused a shift you are standing in the middle of, because of a vague GPS reading, would be worse than the missing detail.

A night shift belongs to the day it STARTED. Clock in at 22:00 on Monday and out at 06:00 on Tuesday and the whole shift is Monday's — it is not split across two days. How far it reaches into the next day is set on the shift (Reaches into the next day by (minutes), 120 to begin with); where overtime past a night shift is routine, raise it, or those hours land on the next day's muster and payslip.

How each day is worked out

Nobody types a day in. It is worked out from what is recorded, in a fixed order — and the platform can always show you that order for any day.

Checked in this orderWhich means
A person overruled the daySomebody decided it deliberately. That beats everything else, and stays put through any later recalculation.
Leave charged for that dayBeats a holiday and a weekly off on purpose — the leave type's own rule already decided whether the non-working day inside the leave was charged.
A holidayFrom the company calendar.
A weekly offFrom the calendar's weekly-off pattern.
What the punches sayWorked time, against the shift, its grace period and its half-day threshold.

A session nobody clocked out of is worth ZERO minutes and is flagged, never quietly closed at the shift's end. Inventing a clock-out would put hours somebody may not have worked into their pay.

Work on a holiday or a weekly off is comp-off or overtime, never an ordinary day.

Fixing a day that is wrong

Two routes, depending on who is asking. Both end up in the same place, and neither erases what was there before.

  1. 1

    The employee asks

    From My HRAttendance, raise an attendance correction. It goes to HR as a request like any other, and an approved correction is applied to the day.

  2. 2

    HR sets the day directly

    On Human ResourcesAttendanceDerived check or from the muster, use Set this day, choose what it should be and say why.

  3. 3

    Check it held

    Open the day on the muster. It shows the answer, who decided it and their reason.

An override is recorded as a decision, not as a fact — who made it, when, and why. Changing your mind leaves both decisions on the record, and the day survives every later recalculation instead of being quietly overwritten by the punches.

The muster — the month at a glance

Human ResourcesMuster shows the month as a grid: a row per person, a column per day, filterable by team, with payable days and overtime totalled per person and for the whole establishment.

MarkMeans
PPresent
RPresent, worked remotely
½Half day
AAbsent
LLeave with pay
LWPLeave without pay
WWeekly off
HHoliday
Nothing recorded — NOT an absence
·Not employed that day — joined or left during the month

Anybody employed for ANY part of the month appears here, including somebody who has since left. The month is built from who was employed on each day, not from who is employed today — a person who worked the first twelve days and left belongs on the register their attendance is on, and in the payroll run for the month they worked.

The two blank-looking marks mean opposite things and are deliberately different. A dash is a day nobody recorded, which is PAID on trust. A middle dot is a day before they joined or after they left, which is not paid — and is not a loss of pay either, so a joiner on the 25th shows no shortfall. Their payslip records how many days they were not employed, so "10 of 31" can never be read as twenty-one days of absence.

That last row is the one that matters most. A day with nothing recorded shows as a dash and is counted separately, never rolled into absent. "Was not here" and "we do not know" are different, and the difference is somebody's pay.

Click any day to see how it was reached: the answer, what it counts as, the reasons behind it and every raw punch in order.

The attendance register — printing and downloading it

A muster on a screen is a management report. A register is what an inspector asks for, and it has to name itself and your establishment. Both come from the muster page.

  1. 1

    Tell the platform what your register is called

    One-off setup. Which form you keep attendance in depends on the Act that binds you and your state, so it is not guessed: set the form number, title, the rule it is kept under and who signs it at Human ResourcesStatutory config, as an Attendance register entry with the date it takes effect.

  2. 2

    Pick the month

    Open Human ResourcesMuster and choose the month, and a team if you want only part of the establishment.

  3. 3

    Download or print

    Download register gives you a spreadsheet; your browser's print gives you a signed copy. Both are built from the same figures, so they cannot disagree.

Until you record a form number the register prints honestly as a plain attendance register with none claimed. Printing a form number you do not keep would be a false statement on a compliance document.

A register filtered to one team says on its face that it covers that team only — a partial register that did not say so would read as the whole establishment's.

Closing the month

Human ResourcesMonth close finalises a month so its attendance stops changing under payroll. It checks six things first and never blocks you.

  1. 1

    Read the checklist

    Three items can still change somebody's pay — a session nobody clocked out of, leave still undecided, corrections still undecided — and three are only untidiness. They are separated for that reason.

  2. 2

    Fix what you mean to fix

    Each item links to where it is settled. You may well know exactly why a day is blank when the software does not, which is why nothing here blocks the close.

  3. 3

    Finalise

    Press Finalise this month. A snapshot of everyone's payable days is taken and kept, with the previous one beside it.

  4. 4

    If you reopen it later

    Reopen this month lets attendance change again. When you close it once more, the page lists exactly what moved and by how much, sorted by pay impact.

Reopening a month whose payroll is already finalised is a different act, and the page says so before you click: from that point the register and the payslips people already hold can disagree. That is settled with an arrears line in the next run, never by editing an issued payslip.

Where payroll gets its day count

Payroll reads the same muster the register prints and the month was closed on. One number, one source — so the payslip and the register can never tell different stories.

A day nobody recorded is PAID, and flagged. Not docked. Nothing recorded is not the same as absent, and overpaying somebody while telling you is fixable before you finalise — underpaying quietly is discovered by them on payday. The run says how many people and how many days, above the Finalize button.
A company not using attendance is not penalised. If nothing at all was recorded for anybody that month, everyone gets a standard month and the run says so.
Every payslip says where its days came from. The source, the unrecorded count and the loss of pay are kept with it, so a figure can still be explained months later.
If attendance changes after you pay. A finalised run shows who has moved since, in rupees as well as days, largest first. Settle it as arrears in the next run.

Shift rules, lateness, overtime and comp-off

Almost nothing here is fixed by law, so almost nothing is fixed in the product. Each figure below is a setting, edited by whoever administers HR, and every one starts at the value that changes nothing until you choose otherwise.

How short a full day may be, is yours to set. A shift says how many hours make a full day and how few make a half day. Full-day tolerance (minutes) on the shift decides the band in between: somebody up to that many minutes short still counts as a full day. It starts at 0, which means anything short of the full hours drops to a half day — so set it before you rely on the figures, or a person thirty minutes short is paid half.
Professional tax and LWF are per STATE, and LWF is the one to be careful with. Both are recorded per state at Human ResourcesStatutory config; the state comes from your company profile. Professional tax is a flat amount for the band your monthly gross falls in, not a percentage, and differs in every state — record yours or nothing is deducted. Most states charge the Labour Welfare Fund half-yearly or annually rather than monthly, so it carries a Deducted in months field (e.g. 6, 12). With no months recorded nothing is deducted and the run says why: charging a half-yearly fund every month would take SIX TIMES what is owed, and the platform will not guess which months a state uses.
The REGIME decides which deductions count at all. Verifying a proof is only half the question — the other half is whether the employee's regime allows that section, and the new regime allows very few. Record what each permits at Human ResourcesStatutory config on the income-tax slab version, under Deductions this regime allows (section references, comma separated — e.g. 80CCD(2), 80JJAA). BLANK MEANS NO RESTRICTION and everything declared is allowed: right for the old regime, and for the new one it UNDER-DEDUCTS, so the run says so until you record the list. A refused claim is never dropped silently — it is named in the run, on the employee's own tax page, and on their Form 16 under Claimed, but not allowed under this regime, struck through so nobody reads it as money that came off. Matching is exact: 80CCD(2) is a different deduction from 80CCD(1B) and a regime may allow one and not the other.
Income tax is a PROJECTION, and declared is not proven. TDS is estimated for the year — what has already been paid plus this month repeated for the months remaining — taxed under the employee's regime, and the balance spread over the months left. Before proofs are checked it uses what was DECLARED, and every run says so; once you verify the declaration only the items you accepted count, so a rejected proof pushes the monthly deduction back UP. Deducting on declarations after rejecting the proofs under-deducts all year and hands somebody a bill at filing. It never picks a regime silently, never refunds through payroll, and deducts nothing at all if no slabs are recorded — there is no built-in fallback, because slabs change every budget and a stale default would be wrong silently.
PF and ESI come from the statutory config, and their ceilings work in OPPOSITE ways. Rates, shares and ceilings live at Human ResourcesStatutory config, effective-dated. PF's ceiling CAPS the wage — earn above it and you still contribute, on the ceiling. ESI's ceiling decides ELIGIBILITY — earn above it and you contribute nothing at all. PF is computed on the statutory wage (basic + DA), which is why components carry Counts as wages; mark nothing and PF is left OUT rather than computed on gross, because computing it on gross would roughly double it.
When staying late becomes overtime, is yours to set. Two figures on the shift. Overtime counts from (minutes) is a QUALIFYING MINIMUM, not a deduction — set 30 and a 25-minute overrun earns nothing, while a 40-minute one earns the whole 40, not 10. Overtime counted in blocks of (minutes) then counts it in whole blocks, rounded DOWN, because rounding up would pay for time nobody worked and that is not a figure you could defend on a register. Both start at 0, which counts every minute past the shift — and left there, an establishment where people simply leave a few minutes late records a month of overtime that nobody worked and the register prints it.
What a leaver is owed rests on three settings, all yours. Which leave types are paid out on leaving is set per type (Human ResourcesLeave TypesPaid out when somebody leaves). What a day of that leave is worth — the divisor, and whether it is valued on the statutory wage or gross — is at PayrollSettingsLeave encashment. And which salary components ARE the statutory wage is marked per component (PayrollSalary ComponentsCounts as wages). Until the last of those is marked, a settlement leaves gratuity and encashment out and says so, rather than computing them on gross and overstating both.
Lateness penalties are your policy, not law. "Three late marks make a half day" is a common rule and no Act sets it, so it lives at PayrollSettingsLateness where an administrator edits it. It is OFF until you switch it on.
Only a day somebody worked can be late. A leave day, a holiday and a weekly off cannot. A day a person has already overruled is left alone — that decision was made with the lateness in view.
There is a monthly ceiling. So one bad month cannot wipe out a salary. The deduction is always explained in a sentence.
Overtime limits warn before the breach. The check runs while a request is still waiting, in three grades — nothing, a nudge as the limit nears, a red flag if saying yes would cross it. It warns and never refuses: exemptions and state rules are not facts the platform holds.
Overtime figures are per state. The Factories Act sets central figures and states amend them, so they are recorded at Human ResourcesStatutory config with the date they take effect.
Comp-off can expire. Set how long it stays valid at PayrollSettings; leave it blank and it never expires. The credit is dated to the day the extra work was done, not the day it was approved.

What to deposit, and by when

PayrollStatutory & taxRemittances adds a month up: what was deducted from employees, what the employer owes on top, and the total to deposit with each authority — EPFO and ESIC by the 15th of the following month, TDS by the 7th (March's by 30 April), and the state levies by your state's rules.

The employer pays MORE than it deducts. A Provident Fund deposit is the employee's 12% plus the employer's EPF share, EPS, EDLI and admin charges. The last two were being collected in your statutory config and applied by nothing, so every employer cost the platform showed was short by them — a remittance built on that figure would have been under-deposited every month. They are now computed and recorded against each payslip.
Nothing is recalculated. Every figure is read back off the payslips that were issued, so the deposit reconciles against what people were actually paid. Statutory rates are effective-dated and employers change them; working the number out again today could produce one that matches no payslip and reconciles against nothing.
A figure that would be SHORT says so. Depositing less than is due attracts interest and penalty, so anything that would make a total understate the liability is flagged on that row rather than folded in quietly. A month run before employer contributions were being recorded shows the employees' deduction only and says it is short — it never presents half a PF deposit as the whole.
State due dates are not guessed. Professional tax and the Labour Welfare Fund are state levies with state deadlines, so the screen says the date follows your state's rules rather than printing a confident wrong one on a compliance screen.
Record what you actually paid. Press Record a payment and enter who it was deposited with, the amount, the date and the receipt reference. Each row then shows Not recorded, Part paid, Settled or Over paid, and one past its due date that is not settled is marked Overdue. Enter it against the month the deduction BELONGS to, not the month you paid — September's TDS paid on 5 October is a September payment. Paying in parts is fine; the parts are added up.
For TDS, copy the BSR code and serial from the receipt. The BSR code (7 digits), challan serial (5 digits) and date together are the challan identification number your quarterly return has to quote. Those boxes appear only for TDS. The same challan cannot be entered twice — the same code, serial and date are one deposit, and counting it twice would double it on a return.
Nothing is netted off or hidden. An overpayment to one authority does not cover a shortfall to another: paying ESIC too much does not settle what you owe EPFO. A payment recorded against something that was not due still appears, with a note to check the month — money that vanished from the screen would look as though it was never entered. A typo can be removed with the bin icon, and the removal is recorded along with what was removed.

Form 16 at the end of the year

PayrollStatutory & taxForm 16 lists everybody paid in a financial year; open a row for their certificate. The employee sees the same one at My HRMy Form 16 — identical figures, because a certificate that read differently depending on who opened it would not be a certificate.

Part B is yours to give. Part A is not. Part B — the salary breakup and the tax working — is what this builds. Part A carries your TAN and the challan identification numbers, and is downloaded from TRACES after the quarterly return is filed; one this platform printed would not be a valid certificate whatever it said. Every certificate says so on its face, and you give the employee BOTH parts together.
It reports what was PAID, not what should have been. Every figure comes from the payslips actually issued — nothing projected, nothing estimated, no gap filled in. Nine months of payslips produces a certificate that says Only 9 months of payslips were found: correct for somebody who joined in July, and a warning if a month was never run.
The lines follow the statute's order, so it can be added up. Gross salary (17(1)), less allowances exempt (section 10), less standard deduction and professional tax (16(ia), 16(iii)) to reach income chargeable under Salaries, less deductions claimed (Chapter VI-A) to reach total income and the tax on it. Professional tax is a DEDUCTION here rather than a tax, and the amount is the one actually deducted on the payslips, not the one the config says should have been.
The tax is recomputed, not totalled. The certificate does not add up the twelve monthly deductions. It works the year's real liability out again on the year as it was actually paid, by the same rules payroll follows — and the DIFFERENCE is the point, because a monthly TDS is a projection. The statement says whether the employee still owes at filing or is due a refund.
A claim the regime does not allow is SHOWN, not dropped. If somebody chose the new regime and still declared 80C, it does not reduce their tax — and the certificate says so, under Claimed, but not allowed under this regime with the amount struck through and a line explaining it. An employee who invested ₹1,50,000 and saw no relief can see why rather than assume it was lost. It does not stop the certificate being issued: a refused claim is a fact, not a fault.
Three things stop a certificate being issued. No payslips for the year, so there is nothing to certify. No slabs recorded for that regime — the tax would come out zero, which looks exactly like a correct certificate for somebody who owed nothing. Or deductions that have not been verified against proofs, which would certify what somebody CLAIMED rather than what you checked; verify the declaration at PayrollTax Declarations first. Rejected items are already excluded — only what you accepted appears.
An employee never sees a certificate that is not ready. They are told HR is still finalising it — not the draft figures, which may be wrong, and not the reason, which is yours to act on rather than theirs.
What it does not do. Form 24Q, the quarterly return, is not produced yet. The challan details it needs can now be recorded under PayrollStatutory & taxRemittances, so record them as you pay — they are what 24Q is built from. Form 16A, the certificate for contractor TDS, is a different certificate under a different section, so Form 16 appears only for employee-class workers.

Confirming someone after probation

Confirmation is a decision with a recommendation behind it: the reporting manager writes an assessment and proposes an outcome, and management accepts it or does not.

  1. 1

    Start the probation

    HR opens it at Human ResourcesProbation with Start probation. The confirmation date is the start plus the period.

  2. 2

    The manager writes the review

    From My HRMy team (or HR's probation screen), press Write review: recommend Confirm, Extend probation or Do not confirm, and write a short assessment. A recommendation about somebody's job needs a reason on the record, so the assessment is required.

  3. 3

    Management decides

    It arrives in ApprovalsWaiting on you. Accepting applies the recommendation; not accepting leaves the probation open, unchanged, to be reviewed again.

  4. 4

    Nudge a manager who has not done it

    HR can press Remind their manager on the probation screen.

  5. 5

    The employee reads the decision

    On their own My HR home, under Probation — nobody has to send it to them. They see the outcome in plain words, who decided it and when, and the assessment it rested on. The card stays after they are confirmed, showing the date they were confirmed from.

The manager who wrote the review cannot approve it, and nobody decides their own confirmation.

A confirmation takes effect on the date it was DUE, not the day somebody got round to deciding — you can override it. Somebody confirmed three weeks late was not on probation for those three weeks.

Accepting "do not confirm" records that the probation was not passed. It does not end anybody's employment: the exit is still raised in Separations by a person who means to raise it.

The employee sees their review once it has been decided, not while it is still waiting — an outcome nobody has decided yet is not one to show them. Where management turned a recommendation down they are told only that the review closed without a change, never which outcome had been proposed.

An accepted confirmation emails them. An extension and a "do not confirm" send nothing — those are conversations a manager has in person — so for those two the card on My HR is the only place the outcome appears.

A withdrawn review is never shown to the employee either. Starting a recommendation and thinking better of it puts it back to being nothing that happened: they are not told it existed and cannot read what was in it. Management, HR and their reporting manager keep sight of it.

Expense claims

Human ResourcesExpenses holds the whole life of a reimbursement claim, under the Travel & expenses menu beside Travel. The queue used to sit on the attendance screen, which is not where anybody looks for an expense.

  1. 1

    The employee claims

    From My HRMy Expenses, with the amount, the date it was spent, a category and a receipt.

  2. 2

    HR decides

    Human ResourcesExpensesPending approval. Tick several and decide them together, or use Approve and Reject on a single claim. A note can be added to the decision, and is worth adding on a rejection.

  3. 3

    Then it is paid

    Approving is NOT paying. An approved claim sits under Approved — awaiting payment until somebody marks it paid, so what has been cleared and what has actually left the bank are never the same number by accident.

A claim cannot be approved without a receipt attached. The button says so rather than failing quietly — a reimbursement with no receipt behind it is a problem for whoever signs the accounts, months later.

Categories come from master data (SettingsMaster Data, EXPENSE_CATEGORY), so they are yours to change and are not fixed in the product.

Resignation

An employee submits a resignation from My HRResignation. It now reaches a named person's inbox instead of waiting for somebody to open the separations screen.

  1. 1

    The employee submits it

    They give a last working day and, if they wish, a reason. Only one can be open at a time.

  2. 2

    Management decides

    It appears in ApprovalsWaiting on you. The card flags anything worth stopping over: no last working day given, a last working day that has already passed while the decision is open, or approved leave that runs past it.

  3. 3

    Accepting starts offboarding

    The record moves to In process — clearances begin. It does NOT mark anybody as having left; that stays a separate, deliberate act on the separations screen.

  4. 4

    Or the employee withdraws it

    While it is still pending, Withdraw on their own page takes it back and clears it from whoever was holding the decision.

Not accepting a resignation is recorded as declined, which is deliberately not the same as withdrawn — withdrawn is something the employee did, and recording the wrong person's act on this document would matter.