Most organizations employ people under a number of categories, having different components of earnings and deductions. Payroll is governed by statutory regulations like PF, ESI, Professional Tax that are subject to change and which specify a number of mandatory forms that need to be filed by the employer every month. The Payroll module of Sage Pocket enables you to deal with these issues in a simple, automated manner.

The Payroll module has the following key features:

Employee master management

The Payroll module enables the creation of a comprehensive employee master sheet containing all employee information pertaining to his education, training, past employment, current earning and deduction components, leave record, increments, transfers etc. Sage Pocket also allows you to upload employee photos, resume and other employee documents.

With the Sage payroll module you can customize the fields that appear on the screen, their display name and their text type; set the specific components for earnings and deductions for each category and also specify formulas that need to be used for calculation of monthly salary for each category.

Monthly Payroll Processing

Using Sage Pocket payroll module you can configure variable monthly data components like travel and house rent allowance. while calculating gross salaries. It also allows you to compute PF and ESI as applicable for each employee. You can then set formulas and conditional settings for earnings and statutory requirements and calculate each employee’s monthly earnings automatically. Due to its integration with the leave module, the necessary leave information such as number of leaves availed, compensatory off’s and loss of pay are also considered while calculating monthly earnings.

Grade based bonuses can also be computed as per company policy. Loans, salary advances that have been availed of from the company and related recoveries are also included at the time of salary computation. Payslip format and settings can also be configured. Payslips are generated in pdf format which can be mailed to employees.

Promotions and Transfer Management

The payroll module allows you to record employee information such as increments or transfers in the employee master details. If the increment is retrospective the arrears can also be calculated for the said period and added to the monthly pay. There is also a provision for recording separations from the company, issuing stop payment on their monthly payroll and calculating and processing their full and final settlement.

Statutory Compliance

The payroll module makes available PF form 12a, PF form 5, PF form 10, PF form 3a, PF form 6a, PF summary and extract, Form 2, PF challan, ESI form 6, ESI form 7 and ESI extract. Statutory regulations like PF, ESI and Professional Tax can be set and deducted from salaries, on the basis of earning slabs, state-wise government regulations and other considerations. The payroll module also helps you to maintain records of monthly and annual PF, ESI, labor welfare and Professional tax returns.

Report generation

You can also create customized reports with select masters, components and bank templates using the report wizard for data such as department-wise employee head count, cost centres, branch employee age group.

Loan Management

Sage Pocket professional edition allows you to manage employee loans without levy of interest. It enables you to track loans and salary advances to employees and maintain a separate loan ledger for each employee. It also helps in loan recovery from the employee by integrating with the payroll computation and payment.

Import & Export from excel

Sage Pocket allows you to flexibly import and export data from pre-existing excel sheets by configuring fields in the excel sheet to the related field in the Sage Pocket software. This is a feature that sets it apart from other payroll applications.

Calculation of Income tax is another routine and pain staking activity that needs to conform to government regulations and norms. Sage Pocket allows you to automate this activity for greater efficiency and accuracy.

This module comes with the following features:

Configurable sections & sub-sections

The income tax module of Sage Pocket allows you to configure the tax sections and sub sections as needed in the financial setting. It also lets you define the earning components, tax percentage applicable for different income slabs, exemptions available under the different sections and also set the limit for these exemptions.

Employee Declaration management

It allows you to enter employee declarations of investment under each section and also upload proof documents for these declarations. It also enables you to keep a record of pending declaration documents and generate MIS reports as well a declaration of taxable income from previous employer and tax deducted at source for the current financial year

Income Tax updation to payroll

Sage Pocket Income Tax module calculates the monthly income tax for each employee on actuals on the basis of proof and declarations and updates the TDS in the payroll module during the computation of monthly salaries.

Form generation

It allows you to create sample TDS worksheets and Form 16 and submit the same for each employee on a monthly basis. Similarly it enables you to generate quarterly and annual TDS related forms for each employee.

Reports

Tax related reports can be generated to Form 16, 16A, 16AA, Form 24Q, 26Q, Form 12ba

Sage Pocket is integrated with Sage Accpac – ERP Accounting Software. However the payroll activity, which is also a company expense like any other vendor payment, is managed by the payroll application. Since the payroll operation involves multiple stakeholders performing different activities, it can be quite cumbersome and error prone to manually enter the payroll expense into the company General Ledger.

However since Sage Pocket is tightly integrated with Sage Accpac it seamlessly shares information with it. As a result the expenses incurred in Sage Pocket reflect in the General Ledger module of Sage Accpac, thereby preventing duplication of effort and errors. Currently, this is facilitated through the export and import of option available in Sage Pocket and Sage Accpac.