What Dept of Labour is for
Payroll brings a handful of statutory jobs with it — a return to SARS every month, a couple of reconciliations a year, a UIF declaration, and an annual COIDA return. They normally live scattered across different screens. Payroll Compliance gathers them into one place so you can see, at a glance, what is due and what you owe.
It is a read-only summary. Worklog surfaces the figures and the reminders; it does not file anything for you. The actual filing still happens on the SARS and Labour portals.
Returns and declarations
The Returns & declarations list is the whole of the Overview: every payroll return, when it is due, and Open to go and work on it. Two rows carry a figure as well — EMP201 shows what you owe SARS for the current month, and COIDA shows the earnings to report so far this year.
- EMP201 — monthly. PAYE, UIF and SDL for this month, due by the 7th of the next month. The amount on the row is what you owe; tap Open for the full working.
- UIF declaration — monthly, on uFiling. Plus a UI-19 whenever someone joins or leaves your business.
- EMP501 — reconciliation. Ties your EMP201s back to your pay runs; the interim is due 31 October and the annual 31 May, done on e@syFile. It does not issue the IRP5/IT3(a) certificates — those come from e@syFile — but the IRP5 tab beside it works out the figures that go on each one.
- COIDA — Return of Earnings. Filed once a year on CompEasy; Worklog shows the earnings to report, which is your total gross wages for the calendar year so far.
The EMP201 amount is PAYE (after any ETI) plus UIF plus SDL, worked out from this month's pay runs. Open the EMP201 tab to see it broken down:
- PAYE — the employee tax off this month's pay runs.
- Less: ETI claimed — the Employment Tax Incentive for qualifying younger staff, capped so it can only reduce PAYE down to zero, never below.
- UIF — the employee and employer shares together.
- SDL — the skills levy, shown only if it applies to you.
The SDL nudge
SDL (the Skills Development Levy) only becomes payable once your payroll is 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, a yellow nudge appears above the returns list.
If you have no payroll yet
Until you have staff or pay runs, the page shows a short prompt instead of the figures. Add employees in the Staff Register and do a Pay Run, and Dept of Labour then starts tracking what you owe SARS and Labour.