Payroll is the process of managing employee compensation, calculating salaries and wages, applying deductions like taxes and pension contributions, and recording the resulting expenses and liabilities in your books. On Tyms, setting up payroll means telling the system which accounts your payroll transactions should flow into, defining rules like tax rates and pay frequency, adding your employees, and then running payroll each pay period to generate a payroll journal.
Step 1: Configure Payroll Settings
Go to Settings.
Click Accounting.
Under Accounting, click Payroll.
Set Your Payroll Accounts
These settings determine which ledger accounts your payroll entries post to. Each field has a dropdown you can use to select or change the account.
Payroll Expense Account: The expense account payroll costs flow into; by default, Salaries and Wages. If you use a different expense account, select it from the dropdown.
PAYE Payable Account: The liability account employee income tax (PAYE) deductions flow into, e.g., PAYE Payable.
Pension Payable Account: The liability account employee pension deductions flow into, e.g., Pension Payable.
Salary Payable Account: The liability account net salary owed to employees flows into, e.g., Salary Payable.
Employer Pension Expense Account: The expense account your employer pension contributions are recorded against, e.g., Employer Pension Expense.
Housing Fund Payable Account: The liability account housing fund deductions flow into, if applicable, e.g., Housing Fund Payable.
Employee Compensation Expense Account and Employee Compensation Payable Account: The expense and liability accounts used if you record employee compensation (e.g., NSITF) separately.
Note: These are the same default accounts that populate automatically when you create a payroll journal later, so it's worth setting them correctly here before you start running payroll.
Set Your Payroll Rules
Still under Payroll settings, configure:
Default Tax State: Select the state or region where the employee resides or works for state income tax/PAYE calculation purposes (for example, Lagos). This ensures tax deductions are remitted to the correct state tax authority.
Employer Tax ID: Your organization's tax identification number.
Rounding: How payroll amounts should be rounded.
Allow Manual Pay Amounts: Whether pay amounts can be manually overridden instead of calculated automatically.
Pay Frequency: How often employees are paid (e.g., Monthly).
Payroll Country: The country your payroll rules should follow (e.g., Nigeria).
Step 2: Add Your Employees
Click More in the top navigation.
Hover over Payroll, then select Employees from the flyout menu.
Click Create Employees to see your options:
Ask Adam: Write a prompt describing your employee(s), or attach a PDF containing their details, and Adam will bring the information in for you. For PDF files, the document should be under 15,000 characters (roughly 100 entries) and no more than 10 pages.
Create Manually: Fill in the Add Employee form yourself (see below).
Import Excel: Bulk-import employees from a spreadsheet.
Creating an Employee Manually
Clicking Create Manually opens the Add Employee form, which is organized into a few sections:
Profile
First Name and Last Name (required)
Email, Phone, Employee ID, Job Title
Gender, Employment Status
Branch, Department
Hire Date: The day this person started working with you. Pay and tax start from this month; months before they joined aren't included.
Active: Whether the employee is currently active.
Address
Earnings: the monthly amounts this person is paid;
Basic, Housing, Transport, Other Benefits
Tax and Take-Home
Pay Calculation: Choose Automatic to have Tyms work out pay and tax for the pay month, or switch to manual if you need to type the amounts yourself.
Note: Automatic calculation works out pay and tax for the month you're paying for, not today's date. If it's early in the month and you're still paying last month, choose last month; for example, on 9 September, choose August.
Tax Location
Tax Country (e.g., Nigeria), Tax State, TIN
Enrolment and Relief
PAYE Tax: Turn this on to deduct PAYE tax from the employee. Turn it off if PAYE shouldn't be deducted.
Pension: Turn this on if the employee should be on pension. Both the employee and the company contribute.
Housing Fund: Only applies if housing fund is also turned on in payroll settings. If set to No, nothing is taken from the employee.
Annual Rent
Once the form is complete, click Create. The employee's details will now appear in the Employees table.
Step 3: Manage and Edit Employees
On the Employees table, find the employee you want to work with and click the three dots on the far left of their row. From here you can:
Open: View the employee's details, statement, and audit log (to check which team member updated their details).
Edit: Update the employee's information.
Recompute: Recalculate the employee's pay and tax.
Run Payroll: Start a payroll journal for this employee (see Step 4). You can select more than one employee at a time and run payroll for all of them together.
Delete: Remove the employee.
Step 4: Run Payroll
Selecting Run Payroll for one or more employees opens the Create Payroll Journal screen, pre-filled with the default accounts from your payroll settings.
Payroll Details: Title, Date, Reference, Currency
Note: Pick a date in the month you're paying for, not today's date; for example, on 9 September, pick a date in August if you're paying August salaries.
Employees: A table lists each selected employee with their Basic, Housing, Transport, Other Benefits, PAYE, Employee Pension, Employer Pension, Housing Fund, and Employee Compensation amounts, along with the total Gross Pay.
Accounts & Classification: The default accounts from your payroll settings are pre-selected here, including Branch, Payroll Expense Account, PAYE Payable Account, Pension Payable Account, Salary Payable Account, Employer Pension Expense Account, Housing Fund Payable Account, and Employee Compensation Expense/Payable Accounts. Adjust any of these using the dropdowns if needed.
Once everything looks right, click Save. The payroll journal is saved as a draft and will appear in the Payroll Journals table.
Posting a Payroll Journal
To post or edit a draft journal:
Click the three dots on the far left of the journal.
Select Post Journal.
Note: Posting records the payroll on your books. You can pay it next, or move it back to a draft if nobody has been paid yet.