Payroll setup: staff pay, leave and settings

Payroll works out each person's pay from the time clock, the roster, overtime and leave you already keep in AirQR. You set how each person is paid once; every month (or week) AirQR does the sums, you check them, approve and record who was paid. AirQR records payroll. It doesn't send money: you pay by cash, UPI or bank transfer as you do today, then mark it paid.

Turning Payroll on

Payroll is a module. Pro and above, Custom, Licence and the free trial include it. On Starter and Growth you can add it for ₹199 a month in Settings → Modules. It needs Staff shifts & attendance; on Starter, adding Payroll brings that module with it. When it's on you'll see Team → Payroll and, for everyone, Team → My pay.

Who can do what

• See payroll (See pay rates and labour cost): owners, managers and accountants by default. They can open every Payroll page and download payslips.
• Set pay and run payroll: owners and accountants. Managers only if the owner allows it in Staff → Roles → Manager → Choose what managers see → Payroll for owners. This covers pay, leave, settings and preparing runs.
• Approve and pay payroll: owners. Managers only if the owner allows it. Approving locks the attendance of that period.

Nobody can set their own pay, enter their own leave, edit their own time entries, change their own payslip, mark it paid or approve a run that has their own pay on it, unless they are an owner. Only an owner can change an owner's pay, and an owner's pay and payslip are confidential: only owners see them. Everyone else sees the run, the totals and the downloads without them, with a note like "1 confidential payslip not shown". Giving someone permission to set pay or approve payroll also lets them see pay.

Step 1: set each person's pay

Open Payroll → Staff pay. Tap Set pay next to a name and choose how they are paid:

• Monthly: a salary for the month. Leave or absence takes a day's pay off.
• Hourly: paid for the hours they clock.
• Daily: paid per day worked; a full day or a half day depending on the hours.

Then fill in:

• Starts on: the date this pay begins, and pay counts from it. For someone's first pay it suggests the start of the current pay period, so pick an earlier date if they started before. Earlier pay stays as it was; a raise is a new entry with a later date.
• Allowances (travel, food, house rent…) and Deductions (uniform, a fund…). Each is a fixed amount or a percentage. Percent allowances are a share of their base pay; percent deductions are a share of their gross pay (before any bonus you add on the run). For a salary, fixed amounts are per month: a weekly run takes a week's share, and someone who joins mid-month pays part of it. Leave and absence shrink a fixed allowance but not a fixed deduction. For hourly and daily pay, fixed amounts are per pay period, and a fixed deduction is skipped for someone who earned nothing.
• How do you pay them: cash, UPI (with their UPI ID) or bank transfer. It's a reminder for you, shown on the run.
• Under More options: an overtime rate per hour for this person, and a note.

The sheet shows a preview, for example "For a full month: gross ₹19,500, take-home ₹18,900". History lists earlier pay; a change that hasn't started yet can be removed.

Use Missing pay to find people who still have none. Staff who are no longer on the team stay listed if they have pay history.

Once Payroll is on, the hourly rate that the roster, Attendance and Tips split use for labour cost comes from this pay (an hourly equivalent for salaries and daily wages). The hourly-rate box on the Staff page becomes read-only and links here.

Step 2: add leave

Payroll → Leave lists leave month by month. Tap Add leave, pick the person, the days, Paid leave or Unpaid leave, and optionally Half a day only for a single day.

• Paid leave counts as a paid day: a salaried person loses nothing; a daily-wage person is paid for the day.
• Unpaid leave takes a day's pay off a salary, and earns nothing on a daily wage or hourly pay.
• A scheduled shift with no clock-in and no leave counts as an absence, and takes a day's pay off a salary too. Add the clock-in on Attendance if they did work.
• Half a day works with the clock: if they came in for the other half, the half day still counts (half a day's pay off a salary when unpaid; half a day on top of their hours on a daily wage when paid). A whole day of leave on a day they clocked in is ignored, because they worked.

You can't add or remove your own leave (an owner does that), and only an owner enters an owner's leave.

Leave inside a period you've already approved can't be added or removed until that payroll is reopened.

Step 3: check the settings

Payroll → Settings (needs permission to set pay):

• Pay cycle: monthly (1st to the end of the month), every 2 weeks (counted from a Monday you choose) or weekly (Monday to Sunday).
• Days in a month (for monthly salaries): Actual days divides a salary by the days in that month; Fixed days divides it by 26 or 30 every month.
• Standard hours in a day (default 8): turns salaries and daily wages into an hourly rate for overtime and labour cost.
• Daily wages: how many hours make a full day (default 6) and a half day (default 3).
• Overtime: Normal rate pays hourly staff their overtime hours at the usual rate and gives salaried and daily staff nothing extra; Higher rate pays overtime hours separately at a multiple of the normal rate (a person's own overtime rate beats the multiple). Overtime is the time worked beyond the scheduled hours, or beyond 9 hours a day when nothing is scheduled.
• Round take-home pay to a whole amount: shows the small difference as a Rounding line, just above the take-home pay.
• Staff can see their own payslips: with a login, in My pay, once a run is approved.

Changes apply to the next run you prepare. Approved runs never change.

How pay is worked out

• Business days: each clock-in counts on the business day of the outlet where it happened (an outlet whose day starts at 4 am counts a 2 am clock-out on the day before), and someone who works at two outlets is paid for both.
• Hourly: worked hours at the hourly rate.
• Daily: a day with at least the full-day hours is 1 day, at least the half-day hours is half a day.
• Monthly: the full salary when nothing was lost; otherwise the salary divided by the days in the month, times the days paid.
• Joining or leaving mid-month, or a raise from the 16th: each part of the month is paid at its own rate, by days.

Common questions

• Does AirQR pay my staff? No. It works out the pay and keeps the record. You pay them yourself and mark it paid.
• Someone worked but isn't on the run. They have no pay set, or their pay starts later. Set it on Staff pay; the run flags anyone who worked without pay. Owners are the exception: an owner is on payroll only once their own pay is set.
• The numbers look wrong. Check attendance first (forgotten clock-outs, missing leave), then recalculate the draft. See Running payroll.
• Does it calculate PF, ESI or tax? Not yet. Add them as a deduction on the person's pay or as an adjustment on the run.