A contract is what a pay run reads. Until somebody has one, payroll cannot pick them up at all — they will simply not appear in any run.
Find it at Dashboard → HR → Staff → (the person) → Contract & pay.
The three things a contract says
School pay in Uganda does not come in one shape, so a contract answers three questions rather than one.
How often are they paid? Monthly, fortnightly, weekly, once per term, or per unit of work. A pay run only pays contracts set to its own frequency — somebody on a weekly contract is never picked up by a monthly run, and is paid by a weekly run of their own.
Do they earn all year, or only in term time? This is the difference between a teacher and an askari. A term time only contract earns nothing for a period with no term running, so a monthly teacher is paid nothing for December. An all year contract is paid regardless, which is right for the askari guarding the place over the holidays, and for a matron or cook kept on through them.
What is a unit, for per-unit work? A day worked, or a lesson taught. The quantity is not on the contract — nobody knows it until the period is over — so a per-unit line starts a pay run at zero and someone counts the days or lessons before it is approved.
Worked examples
| The arrangement | Paid | For | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teacher on 600,000 a month, term months only | Monthly | Term time only | 600,000 |
| Teacher on 800,000 a month, all year | Monthly | All year | 800,000 |
| Teacher on 1,800,000 a term | Per term | Term time only | 1,800,000 |
| Askari on 250,000 a month, works the holidays | Monthly | All year | 250,000 |
| Kitchen hand on 70,000 a week in term | Weekly | Term time only | 70,000 |
| Casual cleaner on 10,000 a day | Per unit | — | 10,000 per day |
| Part-time A-level teacher on 15,000 a lesson | Per unit | — | 15,000 per lesson |
A period only partly inside a term
A term-time contract shows one more choice: what happens in a month a term opens or closes part-way through. Pay the full period treats any overlap as a whole month. Prorate by the days in term splits it — a month where the term covers ten of twenty-two days earns ten twenty-seconds of the rate.
Whichever the contract says, the figure it produces is only a starting point. Every line in a pay run stays editable until the run is approved, so a half-month start or a docked week is corrected there rather than by bending the contract.
Standing allowances and deductions
Beneath the contract are the figures that repeat every single month, so nobody is retyping forty housing allowances.
Allowances — housing, transport, lunch, medical, airtime, or Other with your own wording for things like a head-of-department responsibility allowance or a duty-week payment.
Deductions — a SACCO or savings contribution, a staff loan being worked off, rent for staff quarters, fees for a staff member's own children studying here, statutory deductions, or Other.
Each pay run takes a copy of these onto every payslip. That copy is what the payslip quotes for ever after, so raising somebody's housing allowance in March cannot quietly restate the payslip you issued in February. The new figure applies from the next run.
Statutory deductions (PAYE, NSSF, LST) are entered by hand. YoShule does not compute them and the taxable flag on an allowance does not change any figure — it is a label for your own records. Work the amounts out against current URA rates and enter them as deduction lines.
Steps
- Go to Dashboard → HR → Staff and click the person's row.
- In Contract & pay, click Add contract (or Edit to change the one they have).
- Name the contract — Permanent, Part-time, Casual, whatever you call it — and choose how often they are paid.
- Enter the rate for one period, or for one unit on per-unit work.
- Choose whether they earn all year or in term time only, and for per-unit work, whether a unit is a day or a lesson.
- Set the start date, and an end date if the contract has one.
- Save, then add any standing allowances and deductions beneath.
Only one contract is active at a time. Adding a new one ends the old one automatically — a raise is a new contract, and the old one stays on file because payslips already issued cite it.
Ending a contract
End stops pay runs picking the contract up. Nothing is deleted: the contract and every payslip issued under it stay exactly where they are. Use it when somebody leaves, or before issuing a replacement contract on different terms.
Cost per period
The card totals the rate plus every standing allowance, so before approving a hire or a raise you can see what the person actually costs the school each period. Deductions are not subtracted from it — they come off the person's pay, not the school's bill.