Run a monthly payroll

Payroll runs the same way every month. You check the figures, approve them, pay your people, report, then pay what the company owes on top. Reporting means sending files to SISweb, the Social Insurance Services' online system, and to Tax For All, the Tax Department's portal. In Sumly, each month's run holds these jobs as a checklist in order, and the run only reads Completed once every step is ticked. Do it on the day you pay salaries.

Open the month's run

Open "Payroll" in the top nav and choose "Payroll runs". The list has one row per period, with the columns "Payroll run", "Period", "Salaries (EUR)", "Total cost (EUR)" and "Status". The month you're working on shows "Draft". Open it.

Inside the run, the employee table is on the left. The "Steps" panel on the right lists "Approve payroll", "Send payslips", "Pay salaries", "Report to SISweb and Tax For All", "Pay taxes and contributions" and "Finished". You work down it in order, and only the step you're on shows a button. So you can't register a salary payment until you've approved the run.

Check the figures before you approve

Expand an employee row with the chevron to see the whole calculation, not just a total. "EARNINGS" lists "Base salary" and "Gross pay". "EMPLOYEE DEDUCTIONS" takes off "Social insurance", "GHS (GeSY)" and "PAYE income tax", which leaves "Net pay". GeSY is the General Healthcare System, Cyprus's national health scheme, and PAYE is the income tax you take from each salary. Then "EMPLOYER TAXES" adds what the company owes on top: "Social insurance", "GHS (GeSY)", "Redundancy fund", "Industrial training" and "Social cohesion". The row ends at "Total cost". Our guide to social insurance in Cyprus explains each contribution and who pays it.

The base salary comes from the employee's contract, so most months you read this and move on. If someone's pay is different for this month only, type over "Base salary". The run updates straight away. The deductions, net pay, employer taxes and run total all follow the new figure, so there's nothing to recalculate by hand. A "Reset to contract values" link appears under the figure to undo it. For a change that should carry into every future month, edit the employment contract instead.

Check every employee, not only the one you changed, because approving locks the figures. When every row is right, click "Approve payroll". The step gets a green tick and "Send payslips" becomes the live step.

Send the payslips

"Send payslips" opens a window with a row per employee and an "E-mail" column. Sumly fills in the addresses from your employee records, so if you added them when you set each employee up, there's nothing to type. An employee with no address on file has a blank field. Fill it in here before you send. Then click "Confirm and send payslips".

Afterwards the button reads "Send again", so you can resend if an address was wrong. It's a different button from the one you just used, so a second send always takes a deliberate click.

Register the salary payment

Sumly records payments. It doesn't make them. Click "Register salary payment" and the window's "Payment" tab lists the net amount owed to each employee, with a total. Work from that list. Copy each amount into your bank, make the payments, then record here what you paid.

"Payment date" and "Paid from" are both required. Pick the date, then choose the bank or cash account the money came from. If you've connected more than one account to Sumly, check it's the right one. Then click "Register payment".

Report, then pay the taxes and contributions

Under "Report to SISweb and Tax For All", click "Generate reports". Sumly builds the two official files from the run, so you don't put them together by hand. They appear as two downloads, "SISweb file" and "Tax For All XML".

The last step is "Register tax payment". Sumly has already worked out the amounts from the run and splits them in two, "PAYE" and "Contributions". That's because a run can owe contributions even when its PAYE total comes to nothing. Set "Payment date" and "Paid from" as before, then click "Register payment".

Every step now has a green tick, "Finished" included. Click "Back to overview" and the run's "Status" has changed from "Draft" to "Completed".

That closes the month's payroll. What's left is the few entries that no invoice, bill or payroll run makes for you, such as an accrual or a correction to something already posted. An accrual puts a cost into the right month before its bill arrives. You type those entries yourself. That's the next walkthrough, Post a manual journal.