Do your EMP201 — Worklog Help

What EMP201 does in Worklog

EMP201 is the monthly return you send SARS for the tax and levies you take off wages: PAYE (employee tax), UIF (an employee share and an employer share) and SDL (a skills levy, if it applies to you). It is due by the 7th of the month after the wages were paid.

Worklog does the sums for you. It looks at the pay runs you have captured for a month, adds up the PAYE, UIF and SDL, and shows you one total to pay SARS. You still submit the return yourself on SARS eFiling.

⚠️This is a calculation aid, not a filing. Worklog does not send anything to SARS. You submit the actual EMP201 on SARS eFiling, and declare UIF separately on uFiling.

Before you start

EMP201 is on the Team and Complete plans.
You need staff on your Staff Register. If you have none yet, the screen sends you to Staff Register to add them first.
You need to have done your Pay Run for the month. The EMP201 totals come straight from your pay runs.
Have your PAYE reference number set. If it is missing you will see a yellow warning with a link to Business Details, because SARS needs it on every EMP201.

Open EMP201 and pick the month

From the Compliance card, open SARS, then the Employees’ tax tab.
Use the ‹ and › arrows at the top to move to the month you want. The month and year show in the middle.
Read the dark blue card. Along the top it shows the month and how many employees were paid, then the lines: PAYE (employee tax), UIF — employee, UIF — employer, and SDL (only if it applies to you).
Check Total due to SARS at the bottom of the card, and the Due date shown just under it — the 7th of the following month.

ETI comes off your PAYE

The Employment Tax Incentive (ETI) is a break for hiring younger workers, and it lowers the PAYE you actually hand over. If any of your staff qualify for the month, Worklog works out the ETI from their pay runs and shows a Less: ETI claimed line on the dark blue card, subtracting it from the total so your Total due to SARS is what is really left to pay.

💡ETI can only ever reduce your PAYE down to zero, never below it — Worklog caps the claim at the PAYE for the month. If your ETI works out higher than your PAYE, the extra is carried over and your accountant handles it; the EMP201 total will simply show no PAYE left to pay.

Check the detail

Further down the screen, under the heading Pay runs in [month], Worklog lists the pay runs that make up the total. Each line shows the worker, their gross wages, the pay date, and how much PAYE and UIF came off.

💡If the total looks wrong, this list is where to look. A number that seems off usually means a pay run is missing for the month, or one was captured under the wrong pay date. Fix it in Pay Run and the EMP201 total updates by itself.

If the card shows nothing and you see "No pay runs recorded for [month]", it means you have not done a pay run for that month yet.

Mark it as filed

Once you have actually submitted the return on SARS eFiling and paid, come back and record it in Worklog so you have a history.

Submit the EMP201 on SARS eFiling and pay the total.
Back in Worklog, on the correct month, tap Mark EMP201 as filed.
The screen then shows a Marked as filed note for that month, and the return appears under Filing history with the amount and date.

💡The Mark EMP201 as filed button only shows up once there is a pay run for the month and you have not filed it yet. Filing history keeps a running record of every month you have marked filed, so you can see at a glance which months are done.

Share the month's figures

Below the filing note there is a 📤 Share report button. Tap it to share the month's numbers — PAYE, UIF (employee plus employer), SDL if it applies, any ETI claimed, and the Total due to SARS — as a plain-text summary through your phone's share sheet. It's handy for sending the figures to your accountant, or into WhatsApp or email, before you file on eFiling.

The SDL nudge

SDL (the Skills Development Levy) only kicks in once your payroll gets big enough. If your wages for the month, spread across a full year, work past the SDL registration threshold and you have not switched SDL on yet, Worklog shows a yellow nudge on this screen so it does not catch you by surprise.

💡The nudge is a heads-up, not an instruction. Check with your accountant whether you now need to register for SDL, and once you know, switch SDL on in Business Details — from then on it is added to your EMP201 total automatically.

Related returns: EMP501 and COIDA

At the bottom of the screen, under Related returns, Worklog reminds you of two more payroll returns that hang off your EMP201s so they do not slip through.

EMP501 reconciliation — a twice-yearly reconciliation of your EMP201s: the interim is due 31 October and the annual is due 31 May. This is where you tie these monthly totals back to your staff's IRP5/IT3(a) certificates on SARS e@syFile.
IRP5 / IT3(a) worksheet — each employee's figures for the tax year, split across the SARS source codes you capture on e@syFile. Worklog cannot issue a certificate (a valid IRP5 carries a certificate number minted by SARS), but it does the adding up and tells you whose details are missing before e@syFile rejects them.
COIDA (annual Return of Earnings) — Worklog shows the total gross wages you have paid this calendar year, which is the earnings figure you report on your annual COIDA Return of Earnings.

Employees’ tax — EMP201, EMP501 and the IRP5 certificates — sits under SARS. UIF and COIDA answer to Employment & Labour and the Compensation Fund, and have their own screen: Dept of Labour.

Good to know

⚠️Worklog reminds you on this screen that a late EMP201 carries a SARS penalty of 10% of the PAYE, so aim to file and pay before the 7th.

Worklog keeps your records and works out the figures, but it is not a tax adviser. If you are unsure whether SDL applies to you, or about anything on your return, check with SARS or a registered tax practitioner.

Still stuck? Open the in-app help assistant, or email us at hello@worklogsolutions.co.za.

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