The payroll workflow
- Inputs are in place — salary structures assigned to employees, the month's attendance, approved leave, loan instalments, approved claims and payroll adjustments.
- Generate. Pre-checks report problems as warnings. Every figure is calculated with a trace; where one cannot be worked out, the payslip says why instead of guessing.
- Review. The run is put under review, and the register, component and LOP reports are checked.
- Approve, with a written note. Employees can see their payslips from this point.
- Freeze, with a written note. The month is final and its attendance days are locked.
- Pay and file. A payment batch is built from the frozen payroll and exported as a bank file; statutory return files are prepared from the same frozen figures.
Generating, reviewing, approving, freezing and unfreezing are separate permissions, so a company can give them to different people. HRMSMax does not force two people for the payroll run itself: if the same person generates and approves, the audit log records it as self-approved. Salary payment batches are stricter — see salary payments.
Salary structures
A salary structure is a reusable set of components. Each component is an earning, a deduction, an employer contribution or a reimbursement, and is calculated as a fixed amount, a percentage, a formula, a condition or a statutory rule.
- Each component says how it behaves in a part month: reduced for unpaid days, always paid in full, or paid only when the whole month is paid.
- Each component is classified against the wage definition of the Code on Wages, 2019, which statutory calculations use.
- Structures are versioned. Once a structure has paid a frozen month, a change creates a new version from a chosen date, with a reason, and the old version is kept. A new version cannot be backdated into a frozen month.
- Structures are assigned to employees with effective dates — one at a time or in bulk — and overlapping dates are refused. A revision closes the old assignment and opens a new one, so salary history is always intact.
- Annual CTC is held on the structure and the employee's assignment.
Gross, deductions, employer contributions and net pay
HRMSMax keeps these separate on every payslip, because they answer different questions:
| Figure | What it is |
|---|---|
| Gross earnings | All earning components for the month after proration for unpaid days. |
| Employee deductions | The employee's PF and ESI shares, professional tax, labour welfare fund, TDS, loan and advance recovery, and other deductions. |
| Employer contributions | The employer's PF (with its pension-fund part), EDLI, PF administrative charges and the employer's ESI share. Shown on the payslip; never taken out of net pay. |
| Reimbursements | Approved claims paid with salary. |
| Net pay | Earnings plus reimbursements, minus employee deductions. |
| CTC | The annual cost to company on the salary structure — not a monthly payslip figure. |
The difference between these figures is explained in gross salary, net salary and CTC.
Loss of pay
Payroll reads each day of the month from attendance: present, half day, paid leave, unpaid leave or absent, including fractions of a day, each with its reason. Payable days are the days paid; loss-of-pay days are the days employed minus the payable days. Components set to reduce for unpaid days are prorated on the calendar days of the month. How this works step by step is in how loss of pay is calculated.
Loans, claims, increments and adjustments
- Loans and advances are approved in HRMSMax and recovered in monthly instalments through payroll; freezing the payroll marks the instalment recovered.
- Travel and expense claims can be settled through payroll as a reimbursement; a travel advance paid through payroll is recovered later.
- Increments are raised in rounds, approved by someone other than the person who raised them, and applied as effective-dated salary revisions.
- Payroll adjustments — an earning, arrears, a deduction or a reimbursement — are approved before they are paid. A change made after a month was frozen raises a pending adjustment for a later payroll rather than rewriting the paid month.
Payslips
Each payslip is a PDF with earnings, deductions and employer contributions in separate sections, payable and LOP days, and net pay in figures and words. Employees see only their own, in self-service, once the run is approved.
Payroll reports
Payroll register and summary, salary by department, component-wise and component matrix, LOP, overtime pay, bank advice and the payslip register; reconciliation reports for bank payments, components, statutory amounts, loan recovery and adjustments; and the statutory wage register. Reports download as CSV, Excel or PDF.
What HRMSMax payroll does not do
HRMSMax does not move money or file returns. It prepares bank files and statutory files; your team uploads them to the bank and to the government portals and makes the payments.
- There is no statutory bonus calculation; a bonus is paid as a component or an adjustment.
- Full and final settlement is not calculated as a payroll process. The exit workflow's clearance step shows what is owed.
- Leave encashment is paid through an adjustment, not automatically.
Questions
How does HRMSMax payroll work?
Salary structures, attendance and approved leave go in. The run is generated, reviewed, approved and frozen. Freezing makes the month final, and payslips, payment batches and statutory files are produced from the frozen figures.
Can attendance feed payroll automatically?
Yes. Payroll reads each day's attendance and approved leave to work out payable days and loss-of-pay days. Nobody re-keys attendance into payroll.
Does HRMSMax transfer salaries to employees?
No. HRMSMax prepares a salary payment batch and a bank upload file. Your finance team uploads the file to your bank's corporate banking portal and records the results.
Is there maker-checker on payroll?
Generate, approve and freeze are separate permissions, and self-approval of a payroll run is recorded in the audit log. Salary payment batches enforce maker-checker: the person who prepares a batch cannot approve it.
Can a frozen payroll be changed?
It can be unfrozen by someone with that permission, with a recorded reason, and every reopening is counted in the audit trail. Changes to a paid month are usually handled as adjustments in a later payroll instead.
Are employer PF and ESI contributions deducted from net pay?
No. Employer contributions are shown on the payslip in their own section and are part of the employer's cost, not deductions from the employee's pay.