An advance is money handed over before payday and worked off from later payslips. Recording it here means nobody has to remember to chase it — every pay run takes an instalment until the balance reaches zero.
Find it at Dashboard → HR → Payroll → Advances.
Recording one
Choose the staff member, the amount, the date the money is handed over, how many payslips it should be recovered over, and what it is for.
The instalment is the amount divided by the number of payslips. An advance of 300,000 over three instalments takes 100,000 off each of the next three pay runs.
Approval
A new advance sits at Awaiting approval and recovers nothing until the headteacher or a director approves it. A bursar can record one but cannot approve it — the same split that applies to a pay run. Approval does not move money. A bursar then disburses the approved advance, recording the account and payment method and posting the withdrawal to the ledger.
How recovery works
Once disbursed, each pay run reads the outstanding balance and puts one instalment in the Advance column of that person's payslip, coming off their net pay. When the balance reaches zero the advance is marked Fully recovered and stops appearing.
The last instalment is capped at whatever is still owed, so an advance can never over-recover: an advance of 250,000 over three instalments takes 83,333 twice and 83,334 once, not 83,333 three times and a rounding error left over.
An advance only recovers from runs that are actually paid. Generating a draft and cancelling it takes nothing off the balance.
The amount on any one payslip can be overridden while the run is a draft, the same as any other figure. Recovering less this month simply leaves more outstanding for the next run.
Steps
- Go to Dashboard → HR → Payroll → Advances and click Record advance.
- Search for the staff member, enter the amount and the date it is handed over.
- Set how many payslips it is recovered over, and say what it is for.
- Record it, ask the headteacher to approve it, then have the bursar disburse it from the relevant account.
Cancelling
An advance can be cancelled before it is disbursed, whether it is awaiting approval or already approved. Once disbursed, the withdrawal remains part of the financial record. Stop a later recovery by overriding the advance figure to zero on the draft pay run and settle the balance outside payroll if necessary.
Seeing what is outstanding
The Advances outstanding tile on the payroll page totals every balance still being recovered across the school, so the figure is visible without opening anybody's record.