Add an employee
- Open Payroll › Employees and press New employee.
- Enter First name, Last name, Employee number, Email, Phone and Nationality. For Phone, pick the country's dialling code from the list (type a country's name or the code to find it) and enter the number beside it.
- If you keep them, enter the Date of birth and choose the Gender — Female, Male or Other; Not stated leaves it blank. A date of birth that would make them younger than 15 on their Join date is refused: that is the youngest anyone may be employed in the UAE, so it is almost always a typing slip.
- Enter the Job title, Department and Join date. The Status is set when you edit the employee later.
- Choose the Regime (see below) and, for a UAE or GCC national, the Pension scheme.
- Enter the identity documents: Emirates ID, Passport number, Visa number and Labour card number.
- Enter the salary bank details: Bank name, IBAN and Bank routing code.
- Save.
Documents on file
Open an employee and there is a Documents panel: what your company holds on that person, and when it expires. Press Add a document, say what it is — employment contract, identity document, passport, residence visa, labour card, a licence, a certificate, a qualification, an offer or resignation letter — and record its number, who issued it, and the dates.
Attaching a copy is optional. Recording that a visa expires in March, with the number and nothing else, is the ordinary case and is not half a job. If you do attach one, it can be a PDF, PNG, JPG or WebP up to 10 MB; what a file is is decided by reading it rather than by what it is called, so a web page renamed to .png is refused rather than stored.
- The list is ordered by what expires soonest, and each row says how long it has left. A document expiring within 30 days is marked, and an expired one is marked more loudly.
- A copy downloads rather than opening in the page. These are somebody’s identity papers and the browser has no business rendering them.
- Only roles carrying the payroll permissions can see any of this, add to it or remove from it. Seeing invoices has never been a reason to read somebody’s visa.
- Filing and removing a document is written to the company’s audit trail with who did it — but the trail records what kind of document, not its number. An account of who filed a passport must not become a second copy of the passport number.
The regime decides the money
| Regime | What accrues |
|---|---|
| Expatriate · gratuity | End-of-service gratuity under Article 51: 21 days of basic wage for each of the first five years of service and 30 days for each year after, capped at two years of wage. No pension. |
| UAE / GCC national · GPSSA | No gratuity at all. Employee and employer pension shares are deducted and booked with every pay run. |
| Domestic worker | A different law applies. The product does not calculate it — settle by hand, within 10 days of the contract ending. |
| Exempt | Handled outside this payroll; nothing accrues here. |
| Pension scheme | For |
|---|---|
| GPSSA — Decree-Law 57/2023 scheme | Nationals who joined from 31 October 2023 |
| GPSSA — legacy scheme (joined before 31 Oct 2023) | Nationals who joined earlier |
| None | Everyone else |
Pay and components
- Open the employee. Under compensation, choose a Component, enter the amount and the Effective from date, and add it.
- Components are Earning (basic wage, allowances), Deduction (loans, the employee's pension share) or Employer cost (the employer's pension share).
- A new amount from a later date replaces the old one from that date; earlier pay runs keep what they used.
What they owe the company
Open an employee and Amounts owed lists money they owe the company: a fine or a toll the company paid for them, fuel, damage they caused. These are recorded where they happen, not typed in here: today, when a driver is charged on Transportation › Fines. Each pay run then takes what the law allows until the amount is paid off.
| Column | What it says |
|---|---|
| Total | What they owe, less anything they paid another way. |
| Taken so far | What pay runs have taken, and anything taken from their end-of-service amount. |
| Left | What is still owed. |
| Each run | The instalment agreed, or All it can when none was: as much as each run is allowed to take. |
| State | Being taken from pay, Waiting for their written consent, On hold, Cleared or Cancelled. |
Under each one it says what kind it is: Owed to the company (a debt: a fine, a toll, fuel) or Damage or loss they caused. The law treats the two differently, and so does the pay run — see Pay Runs and WPS.
Pay before Accmerio
Someone brought in by Payroll Import may show Pay before Accmerio: what they were paid each month while another system ran payroll, with the lines under each month. It is a record and nothing else — it posts nothing, it is never a pay run, it is not in any WPS file and no pay run counts it. A month brought in by mistake is taken out with Remove.
It may also say how many days of Unpaid leave before Accmerio they took. Those days are taken out of their service for end-of-service gratuity, together with the unpaid days on Accmerio's own payslips; the two never cover the same month.
What they are owed today
The gratuity panel shows the working, not just the figure: As at, Basic wage today, Daily wage, Service days, Days at the 21-day rate, Days at the 30-day rate, whether the Two-year cap applied, the Uncapped amount and the Gratuity. An employee who can reproduce the figure accepts it.
For a national, the pension panel shows the Contribution salary, Employee share, Employer pays, any Government subsidy and the Employer share owed.
When someone leaves
- Open the employee and go to Final settlement.
- Enter the Last working day and choose the Reason: Resignation, Termination by the employer, Contract expiry, Redundancy, Summary dismissal (Article 44), Retirement or Death.
- Enter any Unpaid leave days, which do not count towards service.
- Check the settlement and save. The status becomes Terminated.
- If they still owe the company anything, Final settlement then says so. Press Take what they owe from their end-of-service amount.
The answer lists what was Taken from their end-of-service amount and what was Not taken, with the reason, and what is Left of their end-of-service amount to pay them. Money owed is taken only with their written consent, and damage only within three months of falling due unless they agreed — counted from when it fell due, not from when it reached Payroll. What cannot be taken stays owed, for whoever recorded it to collect another way or write off. Their gratuity balance comes down by what was taken, as the liability account does.
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| 2310 End-of-Service Benefits Provision | The amount taken | |
| The account it was owed on (for a driver, Recoverable from drivers) | The amount taken |