HR & Payroll — User Guide

An end-to-end guide to running HR and payroll for SMBs across the GCC, the UK and India — setup, the day-to-day workflows, region-specific payroll, and the employee self-service portal.

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In one minute: your company country drives everything regional — weekend days, locale, holidays, statutory leave, and which payroll engine runs (India / GCC / UK). The spine is Employee → Salary → Payroll Run → Payslip. Every employee also gets a personal self-service portal.

1.First-time setup (admin)

Do these once per company, in order.

Set the company country & currency

Onboarding sets your country (UAE/GCC, India, UK, US, International), base currency and regional payroll path. GCC states (SA/QA/OM/BH/KW) are accepted and use the GCC engine while keeping their own country code.

HR Settings — `HR → Settings`

Working week / weekend: GCC defaults to Fri–Sat, UK/India to Sat–Sun. Leave & attendance day-counts exclude these.
Hours/day, locale, timezone: locale controls money/date formatting; timezone drives attendance check-in/out.
Seed defaults: one click seeds country leave types + a public-holiday calendar (current & next year).
Import holiday set: add a future year (GCC Islamic dates are approximate, clearly labelled).
Air-ticket provision (GCC): set a ticket value + frequency to accrue a monthly flight allowance.

Organisation structure

Departments (branch-wise, hierarchical), Designations, Positions, nested Employee Categories.
Compensation Bands — salary ranges (min/mid/max) per grade.
Holidays — review the seeded calendar; mandatory holidays are excluded from leave counts, optional ones are not.

2.Employees

Add employees from HR → Employees → New (or bulk-import a spreadsheet). The edit form has a grouped Statutory / Region section:

Common: nationality, contract type, probation end, notice period, IBAN.
GCC IDs: passport, visa, Iqama, Emirates ID, labour card, national ID.
UK payroll: NI number, tax code (e.g. 1257L), NI category.
Right to work: status, check date, expiry, share code, settled status.

Documents support uploads up to 100 MB with a master document-type picker and an expiry date. Statutory IDs expiring within 90 days surface on the dashboard “Expiring IDs” widget with 90/60/30-day alerts.

3.Compensation (admin)

Components & structures: earnings (basic, housing, transport, air-ticket) and deductions; GCC companies get the standard set seeded. UK salary-sacrifice components can be flagged pre-tax / pre-NI.
Assign a salary (Employee → Compensation tab): basic + optional structure + effective-from. It’s effective-dated, so history is kept. UK: a below-minimum-wage warning shows on save (age-band aware).
Merit cycles: plan increments; finalizing applies new basics.
Salary/bank figures are field-level permission-gated.

4.Attendance & timesheets

Attendance — daily check-in/out + status (importable). Respects the company timezone for cross-region time differences.
Timesheet approvals — review & approve employee time.
Employees self-record under My Self-Service → Attendance / Timesheets.

5.Leave

Leave types are seeded per country (GCC: Annual 30 / Sick tiered / Maternity / Compassionate / Hajj; UK: Annual 28 / SSP / Maternity / Paternity; India: Casual / Sick / Earned).

When requesting leave, the form shows a live “X working days will be deducted” count that excludes weekends and mandatory holidays — so a Thu–Sun request over a Fri/Sat GCC weekend deducts 2, not 4. Annual entitlement pro-rates by join/leave date and part-time fraction (a UK mid-year joiner on a 28-day policy gets ~14 days).

6.Payroll runs

From Payroll → Runs → New:

Create a run for the period, then Compute — a payslip per active employee.
The engine resolves the company country and applies the right statutory path automatically: India (PF/ESI/PT/LWF/gratuity/TDS), GCC/KSA (GOSI by nationality), UK (PAYE + NI + pension + salary-sacrifice).
Approve → Post to GL → mark Paid.

Payslip PDFs are currency- and label-aware (₹ / £ / AED), show region-specific lines (UK adds PAYE/NI/Pension + YTD), and are password-protected (password = date of birth in DDMMYYYY). Loans, expense claims, Full & Final settlements and India declarations live under the Payroll menu.

7.Region cheat-sheets

GCC (UAE / KSA / QA / OM / BH / KW)

Weekend Fri–Sat, Arabic locale	HR → Settings (auto by country)
Islamic + national holidays	HR → Settings → Seed defaults / Import holidays
End-of-Service Benefits (EOSB)	Payroll → Full & Final (21/30-day bands, resignation scaling)
WPS salary file (UAE SIF)	Payroll → Statutory Exports → UAE WPS (set establishment ID + routing → Download SIF)
GOSI (KSA)	Automatic in the payroll run for country = SA, per nationality
Air-ticket accrual	HR → Settings → Air-ticket provision
Visa / Iqama / Emirates-ID expiry	Employee statutory fields + dashboard “Expiring IDs”

United Kingdom

Weekend Sat–Sun, en-GB, £	HR → Settings (auto)
28-day leave + bank holidays	HR → Settings → Seed defaults
PAYE / NI / Pension	Automatic in the run (from tax code, NI category, pension opt-out)
Salary sacrifice	Flag a deduction component pre-tax / pre-NI
Minimum-wage (NMW/NLW) check	Shown on salary assign, age-band aware
P60 / P45 / FPS	Year-end exports (export-for-upload; live HMRC RTI is out of scope)
Right-to-work	Employee → Right-to-work fields + expiry reminder

India

Weekend Sat–Sun, en-IN, ₹	HR → Settings (auto)
PF / ESI / PT / LWF / TDS	Automatic in the payroll run
Form 16 / 24Q / PF ECR / ESI	Payroll → Statutory Exports + Form 16
Investment declarations	Payroll → Declarations
Gratuity (15÷26)	Payroll → Full & Final

8.Employee self-service (ESS)

Employees get a personal portal (no back-office nav): a dashboard with today’s check-in/out, leave balances and recent payslips, plus Payslips, Attendance, Timesheets, Leave, Documents, Profile and Policies. Leave requests show the same weekend/holiday-aware working-day count.

Mobile / PWA: ESS is installable (“Add to Home Screen”), runs standalone, and shows a bottom navigation bar on phones for one-handed use.

9.Language & RTL

Switch language from the globe icon in the top bar (and on the login page): English, العربية, हिन्दी, മലയാളം, தமிழ். The choice persists per browser.
Switching to Arabic flips the UI to right-to-left; HR/ESS layouts mirror.
New companies default the UI language from the company locale (a UAE company starts in Arabic) until the user changes it.

10.Roles & permissions

Owner / Admin: full HR + payroll, including configuration.
Accountant: payroll + finance; most HR config.
User (member): day-to-day HR pages, but not admin HR config (Settings, Comp Bands, Merit Cycles, Positions, Designations, Categories, Departments).
Employee: self-service portal only.
Compensation/bank figures are additionally gated by a field-level permission.

11.Reminders & automation

Document / statutory-ID expiry: daily, with 90/60/30-day escalation.
Right-to-work expiry: daily, 60-day warning.
Pension re-enrolment (UK): monthly nudge to review opted-out staff.
Leave accrual & comp-off expiry: scheduled accrual + cleanup.

12.Troubleshooting

Wrong weekend on leave counts	HR → Settings → set weekend days
No leave types / holidays	HR → Settings → Seed defaults
Payslip shows wrong currency/lines	Confirm the company country and base currency
UK PAYE/NI is zero	Set the employee tax code and NI category; ensure country is UK
WPS file empty	Set establishment ID + bank routing; ensure the run is finalized
“Below minimum wage” warning	UK age-band NMW check — confirm the rate or the DOB/age band

Region statutory rules (rates, thresholds, holiday dates) are seeded as current-year defaults and are editable — review them against the latest local regulations before each filing.

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