Run a pay run (payroll)

What a pay run does

A pay run is how you pay your workers for a period. You tick everyone you are paying, set the period once, check each person's earnings and deductions, and Worklog works out the take-home pay for every one of them. Each person gets their own payslip you can share, usually on WhatsApp.

One run covers any number of people — paying a crew of six is one walk through the wizard, not six. The Pay Run tool opens on a list of your past runs; tap + New to start one. The wizard moves through five steps: Employees, Period, Earnings, Deductions and Summary, and a little bar at the top shows which step you are on. Behind the scenes each person still gets their own pay run record and payslip number, so everything else — the EMP201, voiding, the payroll reports — works per person exactly as before.

Before you start

Add the person in your Staff Register first. If nobody is registered, step 1 shows a link that says Add them in Staff Register.
Pay Run is part of the Team and Complete plans. It is not available on the Solo plan, so if you are on Solo the app will prompt you to upgrade before you can run payroll.
Make sure the worker's pay type and rate (hourly, daily or monthly) are set on their staff record, because the wizard uses those to work out the money.

Step 1 — Tick everyone you are paying

Open Pay Run and tap + New.
Under Who are you paying?, tap each person going on this run — a tick appears on everyone you choose. Each card shows their rate, when they were last paid, and any outstanding loan.
Paying the whole team? Tap Select all (it skips anyone marked as left). Clear unticks everyone.
Contractors show a Contractor tag and a No UIF or PAYE note, which means no UIF or PAYE comes off for them.
Tap Next → Period. Everyone on the run shares one period, and each person gets their own payslip.

What Worklog pulls in for you

When you tick a worker, Worklog pulls their standing setup onto this run so you do not have to retype it. Everything it fills in stays editable — changing it here only affects this one pay run, never their saved setup.

Monthly allowance: if you set a recurring allowance on their staff record (say a travel allowance), it is added to the earnings automatically with its description. A note shows it was pulled from their setup, so you know you can edit or clear it for this run only.
Advance repayment: if they have an outstanding advance with an agreed amount to repay each run, that amount is pre-filled into the loan deduction. It is never more than the balance still owed, so the final repayment is capped to clear the advance exactly.

💡Each person's figures live on their own card, so nobody's allowance or deduction ever leaks onto someone else. If you untick someone and tick them again in the same run, anything you had already edited for them is still there.

Step 2 — Set the period

A blue bar at the top lists everyone on the run, so you can check you ticked the right people.
Under Period type, choose Weekly, Fortnightly or Monthly. The whole run shares this one period.
Set the Pay date using the date picker.
Under Paid from, check the account the wages leave from — it starts on your default account. The run's full cost comes off that account's balance on pay day.
Check the Days are counted over this stretch dates. They follow the pay date on their own (the calendar month, 7 days or 14 days it falls in) — change them if your period runs differently, say the 26th to the 25th, and Reset puts them back.
Tap Next → Earnings.

⚠️What lands on the Paid from account matches your bank statement line by line: each person's NET take-home is booked as its own wage payment, and the PAYE, UIF and SDL are booked as separate SARS lines whose total is exactly your EMP201 payment for the month. On the Profit & Loss each one lands under its own heading: net pay and anything withheld and kept (an advance repayment) under Salaries & wages, then PAYE, UIF (both halves together) and SDL on the three lines the EMP201 declares. Add those four together and you have your full gross wage cost — the Wage Bill report states it outright if you would rather read one number. Because those SARS lines are already on the books, don't log the EMP201 payment to SARS as another expense — and when you import your bank statement, the salary lines are pre-unticked for you so the wages can't be counted twice. One more quiet rule: an advance repayment withheld from wages is bookkeeping, not a bank movement, so it never appears in Banking — the net pay you see there is already after the repayment, exactly like the bank statement

Step 3 — Enter the earnings

Each person on the run has their own card. Tap a name to open their card (the first one starts open); the closed cards still show the person's days and gross, so you can see the whole run at a glance. A dark bar at the bottom keeps the Total gross for everyone.

On each person's card, fill in Hours worked or Days worked (the label matches their pay type). Worklog suggests a number for the period — you can keep it or change it.
If they did overtime, tap + Add overtime / public holiday, enter the overtime hours or days, and pick the rate: 1.5× — Standard overtime, or 2× — Public holiday / Sunday worked.
If the worker has a monthly allowance on their staff record, it is already filled in here — adjust or clear it for this run if you need to. For a one-off extra like travel or a meal, tap + Add allowance and enter the amount and a short description.
Work through each card, check the Total gross bar, then tap Next → Deductions.

💡Pick 2× — Public holiday / Sunday worked when the day was a public holiday or a Sunday. Under the BCEA, work on a public holiday or Sunday is paid at double the normal rate.

Step 4 — Deductions

Same cards, one per person — the closed ones now show each person's net pay, and the dark bar keeps the Total net pay for the run. The statutory deductions are worked out for you — you do not type them in. Under Statutory (auto-calculated) you will see the employee's UIF, and PAYE if the wage is above the monthly threshold. If it is below, Worklog says there is no PAYE and shows the threshold amount. For a contractor it shows no UIF and no PAYE, because they handle their own.

If a worker has an outstanding advance, an Outstanding advance box appears on their card showing what is still owed. If you agreed a set repayment each pay run, that amount is already filled in for you (never more than the balance) — keep it, change it, tap Deduct all, or None this time.
If they took leave this period, tap Leave taken this period? and pick the leave type and number of days. Paid leave (annual, sick, family) does not change the wage — it is only recorded against their balance. Unpaid leave does reduce the pay: the days come off at the daily rate. If leave was already recorded in the Leave tool this month, Worklog flags it so you can include it.
For anything else (uniform, tools, a fine), tap − Other deduction and enter the amount and a description.
Work through each card, then tap Next → Summary.

Step 5 — Check, save and share

With more than one person on the run, the Summary opens with a This pay run card: total gross wages, the PAYE and UIF coming off, any advance repayments, and the Total to pay out. Under it, every person gets their own Payslip preview — basic pay, overtime and allowances, deductions, and the big NET PAY figure — which stays editable until that person's run is saved. A box titled To pay SARS by the 7th — EMP201 shows the PAYE withheld, both halves of UIF, SDL if you are registered for it, and the total for the whole run.

Check each person's payslip preview and the SARS box.
Tap Save Pay Run: everyone on the run is saved as Prepared, one after the other — the button counts as it goes. If it stops partway (say the signal drops), whoever saved stays saved; tap it again and it finishes the rest without paying anyone twice. A blue banner keeps count: 2 of 3 pay runs saved.
If you have approval rights, you can instead tap Mark Pay Run as approved — it saves anyone not yet saved and approves the whole run in one go, including people already saved as prepared. If you do not have approval rights, the runs wait as Prepared: whoever does sees them under Needs you today on the dashboard and at the top of the Pay Run list, and taps a prepared run there to approve it — or reject it with a reason. A rejected run comes off the books entirely (the wage expense is removed, and any advance repayment or leave goes back); it stays on the Pay Run list marked rejected, with the reason inside, until whoever prepared it dismisses it and runs a corrected one with + New.
The moment a person's run is saved, share actions appear under their payslip — save or print the payslip PDF, or send it through your phone's share sheet, usually to WhatsApp. (Payslip PDF and share are part of the Business plans, not Solo.)
Once everyone is saved, a Pay run breakdown card appears: one document for the whole run, listing each person's net pay and banking details from the Staff Register, plus the SARS total — made for loading the payments at your bank. Download it as a PDF or CSV, or share it.
Tap Done — back to pay runs.

💡Every person's payslip gets its own number in the form PS-YYYY-NNNN (for example PS-2026-0001) the moment their run is saved, and it carries onto the PDF — so each payslip is uniquely numbered for your records.

💡The PAYE, both halves of UIF, and SDL are what you pay over to SARS on the EMP201 by the 7th. Your saved pay runs feed straight into it.

⚠️Worklog keeps the records and does the sums, but it is not a tax or labour adviser. For your own situation, or if the numbers look off, check with SARS or a registered accountant or tax practitioner.

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

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