How to set up and manage payroll entities

A payroll entity is a group of workers who are paid on the same cycle — for example everyone on your night shift team, or everyone based at a particular location. Each entity has its own pay schedule, its own pay day, and its own list of members.

Entities are the foundation of payroll. Every payroll you run is created for one entity and one pay period, so it is worth setting them up carefully before your first pay run.

Most agencies end up with several entities rather than one, because different groups of workers are often paid on different cycles.

Before you begin

You will need a user access level that allows you to work with payroll. Payroll contains sensitive information, so access is usually limited to a small number of people.
Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required.
Have your list of workers to hand, along with the pay schedule that applies to them.

If you would like more background, select What is a Payroll Entity? at the top of the screen.

Viewing your existing entities

Select Payroll in the left-hand menu to reach your entities.

The panel on the right lists every entity you have, showing its name, your agency name and its current status — ACTIVE or DEACTIVATED. To find a particular one, type into Search by Entity Name or use Filter By Status.

Select an entity to open it. You will then see:

The entity's name, with a link to View entity description
The date it was created
A badge showing how many members it has
A table of those members

For each member, the table shows their name, their pay type such as paye or psc, their email address, their designation, their primary location, the number of agency locations they are linked to, and their profile status.

Select the ⋮ menu beside the entity name for the two actions available to it — Edit Entity Details and Deactivate Entity. Both are covered further down this article.

Creating a payroll entity

Open the Create Payroll Entity page.
Under Entity Information, enter an Entity Name. Choose something your team will recognise, such as the team or location the group belongs to.
Choose the Payroll Schedule — how often this group is paid.
Set the Payroll Date, which is the day of the week the group is paid on.
Set Payroll Process Starts (Days Before) — how many days ahead of pay day the payroll run should begin. Allow yourself enough time to check the figures without rushing.
Add an Entity Description if it would help colleagues understand who the entity is for.
Move down to Assign Workers and use Search by Employee Name / Email to find each worker you want to include. Each one you add is confirmed on screen and appears in the table below.
When your list is complete, select CREATE PAYROLL ENTITY.

Tip: The CREATE PAYROLL ENTITY button stays greyed out until every required field is complete. If it will not respond, scroll back up and look for an empty required field.

Keeping your entities up to date

An entity is only as good as its member list, so it is worth a quick review before each pay run:

Has anyone joined? Add them to the right entity before the payroll is created, not after.
Has anyone left? Remove them so they are not included in the next run.
Is anyone in the wrong entity? A worker paid on a different cycle to the rest of their group will need moving.
Is the schedule still right? If a group's pay cycle changes, update the entity rather than working around it each period.

Use the ⋮ menu in the Actions column of the member table to make changes to an individual worker's place in the entity.

Editing an entity

To change an entity's name, schedule, pay day or description:

Open the entity from the list on the right.
Select the ⋮ menu beside the entity name.
Choose Edit Entity Details.
Amend whatever needs changing, then save.

Please note: Changing the schedule or pay date affects every future payroll created for that entity, so make the change between pay runs rather than in the middle of one.

Deactivating an entity

Deactivate an entity when the group it covers no longer exists — a team that has been disbanded, or a location you have closed.

Please note: All workers in this entity will need to be reassigned if it is deactivated. A deactivated entity cannot be used for a payroll, so any worker left in it will simply be missed out of the next pay run. Move them to another entity before you deactivate, not afterwards.

Open the entity from the list.
Select the ⋮ menu beside the entity name.
Choose Deactivate Entity.

The entity's badge changes to DEACTIVATED. It stays in your list rather than disappearing, so nothing is lost, and you can find it again at any time using Filter By Status. If you need to bring it back into use later, check the ⋮ menu on that entity.

Before you deactivate, check two things:

Every member has somewhere else to go. Reassign them to the entity that matches how they are actually paid.
No payroll is in progress for it. Finish and export any open pay period first.

Tip: Deactivate rather than leaving unused entities active. A short, current list makes choosing the right entity at the Create Payroll step much less error-prone.

What to do next

Once your entities are set up, you are ready to run your first payroll. See How to run and export a payroll for the next steps.

If something looks wrong

If a worker cannot be found when you search, check that their profile is complete and active — an incomplete profile may not appear in the results.

If an entity shows the wrong number of members, will not save, or appears with a status you did not set, please contact our Support Team with the entity name and we will look into it for you.