Monthly payroll processing is vital for organizations as it ensures timely and accurate employee compensation, compliance with legal regulations, and effective financial planning. Beyond avoiding penalties and maintaining trust with employees, consistent payroll handling supports employee satisfaction, productivity, and retention. This regular and reliable process contributes to accurate recordkeeping, facilitates proper deductions and tax submissions, and enables organizations to budget efficiently for payroll-related expenses.
Running payroll on Keka is comprised of 6 major steps that take you through everything from adjusting leave and LOP to overriding statutory component values.
Let us take a look at the Run Payroll tab and learn how to run your monthly payroll on Keka.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Step 1 - Leave, Attendance & Daily Wages
- Step 2 - New Joinees & Exits
- Step 3- Bonus, Salary Revisions & Overtime
- Step 4 - Reimbursements, Adhoc payments, Deductions
- Step 5 - Salary on Hold & Arrears
- Step 6 - Overrides (PT, ESI, TDS, LWF)
- Finalizing Payroll
Go to the Payroll (1) module, and then click on Run Payroll (2).
In this tab, at the top, you will see the all the months of the current financial year listed at the top with the months for which payroll has already been run marked in Green as Completed (1). You will also see the present month marked in Blue as Current (2) and all future months marked in grey as Upcoming (3).
Below that, you will see the current month and the total employees
Further down, you will see the six steps (1) involved in running payroll. This what you have to really focus on.
To the right, you will see the Activity (2) feed with a list of all the actions done by all admins within the Run Payroll module.
In Keka, the payroll finalization process is divided into six steps. Each of these steps are further divided into a number of sub-steps. Now let us take a closer look at each of the six steps involved in the payroll run for any particular pay cycle. To begin the process of running payroll, click on the first step, Leave, Attendance & Daily Wages.
Step 1 - Leave, Attendance & Daily Wages
Managing leave applied
The first step involves taking action on unapproved leave requests for the entire month. On the Leave Applied page, all leave requests applied by employees throughout the month are visible here, including approved and unapproved leave requests. No action needs to be taken for approved leave requests, but action will need to be taken for unapproved leave requests.
You can either approve or reject an unapproved leave request from here under the Actions column.
After clicking on either the Approve or Reject icon, you will be prompted to provide a reason for the action after which you can click on on Confirm.
Once all the leave requests have been actioned and there is no pending action needed to be taken for any employee, then you can click on Save & Continue to move to the next step.
Managing no attendance days
The next step involves taking action for employees with no attendance on certain days throughout the month. You can deduct leave for an employee with no attendance by clicking on the 3 dots under the Actions tab and then clicking on Deduct Leave.
A pop-up window will appear where you will be required to select the leave type to be deducted for the concerned employee after which you can select the amount of leave to be deducted and then click on Confirm.
However, if you choose to skip this step and directly click on Save & Continue, then a pop-up window will appear displaying a warning notice stating that if you skip this step then there might be a mismatch. It is recommended that you action all the days with no attendance logs so that the LOP days are calculated accurately. Click on Save and Continue to move to the next step.
If the no attendance step is skipped and a manual override of LOP days is done, then the system calculates the LOP days starting from the last day of the month and going backwards from there. This will inevitably cause a mismatch of the actual dates of the LOP to the dates automatically calculated by the system by doing an override. Therefore, it is recommended that you take action against all days with no attendance logs individually from the No Attendance step itself.
Managing Loss of Pay
In the next step, you will see the LOP summary page, where the LOP (Loss Of Pay) days for each employee for the entire month will be visible. Here, you can make changes to the system-calculated LOP days by typing in the number of days that you want to mark as LOP days under the LOP Adjustment tab.
You also have the option to add a comment next to each employee after making any change.
Once you have made all the necessary adjustments, you can click on Save & Continue.
LOP Reversal from previous months
The last step of LOP Reversal allows you to make changes to past LOP days incurred by employees in previous months.
You can add employees manually along with the number of days for which the LOP needs to be reversed or import an LOP reversal Excel sheet in order to take bulk action.
Once you have made the necessary changes, click on Save & Close to save your changes and mark this step as complete.
Step 2 - New Joinees & Exits
The second step of running payroll involves taking action on pay actions for new joiners and also processing the Full & Final settlement for exiting/exited employees. Click on the New Joinees and Exits from the list of steps under Run payroll.
New Joinees
In the first step, New Joinees, you will find the list of new joinees that have joined your organization in the last month. You can take pay action against each of these new joinees according to your need. You have five possible pay actions -
Hold salary processing this month - This means that the salary payout is not being processed for the current month and is being held to be paid out in the future.
Process as salary - This implies that the salary is to be processed as per the normal routine.
Void salary processing - This means that the salary will not be processed now or in the future.
Hold salary payout this month - This implies that the salary will be processed but not paid out and can be paid sometime in the future.
Void salary payout - This means that the salary will be processed, but never paid out to the employee.
Already paid - Select this if you have already made the payment to the employee outside of the Keka payroll.
Next to each employee’s name on the left side, you will see an arrow (1), if you click on it additional information will be displayed to you, like the particular employee’s regular salary, his working days for the month, and the salary to be paid for this month.
After taking the necessary pay action you also have the option to add a comment against each employee.
Once you are done you can click on Save & Continue (2) to move to the next step.
Employees in Exit Process
On the next step of Employee in Exit Process, you will be able to see all employees who are in the process of leaving the organization and are currently in the exit process.
Here, you can click on the downward arrow next to the employee’s name to reveal details and also allow you to set the required Pay Action along with a comment if required.
After you have made the necessary changes, click on the Save & Continue button to move to the next step.
Full & Final settlements
In the final step of Full & Final Settlement, you will see all the employees in the organization who have been relieved but whose full and final settlement has not yet been done.
Under Actions, you can click on the Click here button to take you to the Full and Final settlement page where you can take the appropriate steps to complete the F&F of the given employee.
Once you have completed the Full & Final settlement of the employee, you will see the Status change from Approved to Finalized for the given employee and you can view the Settled Amount for the particular employee.
Once you have taken action for all employees, click on Save & Close to save your progress and move to the next step.
Step 3- Bonus, Salary Revisions & Overtime
This section is where you configure all the pertinent details related to bonuses, salary revisions, overtime payments and shift allowances. Click on the Bonus, Salary Revisions & Overtime tab from the Run Payroll section.
Bonus
You will be on the Bonus screen. Here, you will see the list of employees for whom bonus payout is due in the current pay cycle. Under Pay Actions, you will find the list of possible actions that you can select to proceed.
You can select Pay from the drop down if you wish to pay this bonus in this pay cycle. If you wish to hold the bonus payment until another cycle, Select On Hold. You can also choose to void the bonus payment and remove it permanently by choosing the Void option.
Here you will see extra options of Pay Outside Keka Payroll and Partially Pay.
Pay Outside Keka Payroll - This implies that the employee has already been paid this amount and does not need to be paid while running payroll on kea for the current pay cycle.
Partially Pay - This gives the option to partially pay the bonus amount. Reasons for partial pay could vary from level of employee performance to
Additionally, you also have the option to add comments for actions for each employee.
Once done, you can click on Save & Continue t