Payroll handles paying your team the South African way — PAYE, UIF, SDL and ETI, all calculated for you.
Employees
Payroll → Employees. Add each employee: names, ID number, tax number, date of birth, start date, pay — a monthly salary or an hourly wage — medical-aid members, retirement contributions, and their banking details for salary payments. For hourly staff you capture the month's ordinary and overtime hours on the draft payslip (Pay run → Edit); overtime pays at 1.5× (BCEA s10) and the payslip shows the hours and rates, as section 33 requires. You can also track each employee's leave balance here — it accrues automatically as you finalise pay runs (BCEA 1.25 days a month), and you can record leave taken.
Pay runs
Payroll → Pay runs.
1. Generate draft payslips for a month for all active employees. 2. Review each — 360books computes PAYE (on the SARS tables, with rebates and medical credits), UIF, SDL, and the Employment Tax Incentive (ETI) for qualifying young, lower-wage staff. Edit any payslip to pro-rate, add a bonus, allowance or deduction. 3. Finalise — this posts the payroll journal (salaries, PAYE, UIF, SDL, net pay) and accrues leave.
Payslips are professionally formatted: your company letterhead (registration number, address, contact details — set under Settings → Letterhead), the employee's details, earnings and deductions side by side, a highlighted net pay, employer contributions, year-to-date totals and the annual leave balance. For leave requests and expense claims, see Leave & expense claims.
EMP201, IRP5 & EMP501
- The pay run shows your EMP201 totals (PAYE + UIF + SDL, less ETI) to declare monthly.
- The pay run also shows an EMP501 summary card — monthly PAYE/UIF/SDL across the tax year, interim or annual, with the IRP5/EMP501 CSV export next to it.
- Payroll → Reports → EMP501 reconciliation goes further: it is the submission SARS actually queries. Pick interim (Mar–Aug) or annual (Mar–Feb) — they are two separate filings. It puts three numbers that are supposed to be identical side by side, month by month: what the IRP5 certificates say, what the monthly EMP201s should have said, and what the ledger accrued and paid over.
- A difference between declared and accrued is a real finding, not rounding — it means a payslip was finalized without its journal, or something was posted straight into a SARS control account. The report says which month and by how much.
- It also catches the two things that get an EMP501 rejected outright: certificates whose PAYE does not add up to the monthly declarations, and an employee with PAYE deducted but no income tax reference number.
- 360books does not file for you, so it cannot know what you actually submitted. The declaration column is what your EMP201 should have said, rebuilt from finalized payslips — compare it against your eFiling history before you sign.
- ⬇ IRP5/EMP501 CSV exports a per-employee file with SARS source codes (income 3601, PAYE 4102, UIF, SDL, ETI, retirement, medical) — ready to capture into e@syFile.
- Individual IRP5 certificates are generated per employee as ID-protected, signed-link PDFs.
Contractors, PSPs and fixed-term staff
Not everyone you pay is a permanent employee, and in South Africa the classification is not yours or theirs to choose — it is a statutory test, and the liability for getting it wrong sits with the employer.
Pick the type on the employee record:
| Employed as | PAYE | UIF | SDL | IRP5 | Leave |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Permanent | tax tables | ✓ | ✓ | 3601 | accrues |
| Fixed-term | tax tables | ✓ | ✓ | 3601 | accrues |
| Contractor (deemed employee) | tax tables | ✓ | ✓ | 3616 | none |
| Personal service provider | flat 28% / 45% | ✗ | ✓ | 3616 | none |
| Labour broker | full PAYE unless valid IRP30 | ✓ | ✓ | 3619 | none |
A fixed-term employee is an employee. Same tax tables, same UIF, same IRP5 code — and leave still accrues. That is the mistake people make: the contract has an end date so it feels like contracting, and three years later there is a leave liability nobody provided for.
A true independent contractor does not go on payroll at all
They invoice you, you capture it under Purchases → Bills, and you pay it in full. If they are VAT-registered you claim the input VAT. On a job, tag the bill to the project and it lands in your job cost.
Only put someone on payroll if they fail the test.
The test
Under the Fourth Schedule paragraph 1, a person is not an independent contractor if both are true: they work mainly at your premises, and you control the manner or the hours. Both true → PAYE must be withheld, whatever the contract says.
Separately, LRA s200A presumes employment for anyone under the earnings threshold if any one of seven factors is present — you control their hours, they are part of your organisation, more than 40 hours a month, economically dependent on you, you supply the tools, they work only for you. The burden of rebutting that presumption is yours.
360books records the answers, your conclusion and your reason, with a date and who assessed it. That record is the point: applying the test is easy, but proving in three years that you applied it is what answers a SARS reassessment or a CCMA referral.
What it watches for you
- a fixed-term contract that has run past three months (LRA s198B deeming)
- a fixed-term contract that has already ended while the person is still being paid
- a labour broker with no IRP30, or an expired one
- a contractor or PSP whose classification has never been recorded
Paying your team
Finalised payslips can be exported as a bank payment file (a beneficiary batch), so you pay everyone from your online banking in one go. Pick your bank next to the download button — the file comes out laid out for that bank's bulk-payment import: FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank or Capitec Business, or a generic CSV any bank accepts with column mapping. Missing branch codes are filled automatically with each beneficiary bank's universal branch code. Only employees with bank details and a positive net pay are included (skipped ones are counted so nobody goes unpaid silently). Check the column mapping on your first upload — banks occasionally change their import screens. Payslips are delivered to employees via a secure signed link — salaries never travel by plain email.
Automatic payroll
Turn on Settings → Automatic payroll, pick your salary day, and choose the mode:
- Fully automatic — on the salary day 360books generates and finalises payslips for every active employee (posting the books), emails each employee their secure payslip link, and emails you the bank EFT batch file ready to upload and pay everyone.
- Prepare drafts only — 360books generates the draft payslips and emails you to review; you finalise, send payslips and download the payment file yourself under Payroll → Pay run.
Employees marked inactive are skipped in both modes. On fully automatic, record bonuses, travel claims or unpaid leave before the salary day. In short months the day clamps to the month end.
HR tools
HR is part of payroll — included on every paid plan. Every employee row has an HR button that opens their HR file:
- Documents — upload contracts, ID copies, qualifications or disciplinary records against the employee (up to 7 MB each) and download them any time. Everything stays inside 360books, not on someone's laptop.
- Warning register — record verbal, written and final warnings with a description and lapse date. The warning appears on the employee's portal, where they tap "I have seen this notice" — a timestamped acknowledgment that gives you a CCMA-ready paper trail.
- Generated documents — one click produces a certificate of service (BCEA s42), an employment letter (with or without salary, for banks and landlords) and a full employment contract with the written particulars BCEA s29 requires — all on your letterhead.
- Performance reviews — record a rating, strengths, areas to improve and the next review date.
- Emergency contact — kept on the employee record.
Timesheets
Hourly employees log each day's ordinary and overtime hours on their own portal (the same link they use for leave and claims). At month end, open the draft payslip and click ⤓ Pull hours from timesheets — the month's totals drop straight in, overtime at 1.5×. No more collecting hours over WhatsApp.
Reports
Payroll → Reports is the compliance-and-management hub over your payroll and HR data:
- Payroll register — one PDF per month: every employee's gross, PAYE, UIF, SDL, ETI and net with totals and the EMP201 summary line. The document your accountant asks for first.
- UIF declaration — the monthly employer-declaration figures as a CSV (gross remuneration and both 1% contributions per employee) ready for uFiling.
- COIDA return of earnings — annual earnings per employee for the Mar–Feb assessment year, capped at the OID ceiling, totalled for your Return of Earnings.
- ETI tracker — months claimed (of the 24-month allowance) and amounts per qualifying employee, protecting your incentive at audit time.
- Payroll variance — this month vs last: who joined, who left, whose pay changed and by how much. The fastest error-and-fraud catch in payroll.
- Leave balances & liability — a PDF of balances, daily rates and the Rand liability accrued per employee.
- Timesheets vs paid hours — portal-logged hours against what's on each hourly payslip, mismatches flagged.
- Payroll cost trend and headcount — total cost of employment and staff counts by month.
- Warning register — every warning across staff: active, lapsed, acknowledged or awaiting acknowledgment. Your CCMA-readiness view.
- Employee file completeness — a checklist per employee (ID, tax number, bank details, address, emergency contact, documents on file) so onboarding gaps surface early.
- Reviews due — whose next performance review has arrived.
- Emergency contacts — a printable one-pager for the office safety file.
- Records pack — a zip of the whole tax year's payslip PDFs plus logged hours (the records BCEA s31 requires you to keep for 3 years).
Keeping salaries confidential
Pay information only travels through the HR & Payroll module. If someone on your team shouldn't see it, give them the Member role and leave HR & Payroll unticked — see module permissions.
Next: Fixed assets →