Human Resources · Daily operations · 9 min read

Pay changes and benefit plans

Raise, approve and apply a change to salary, allowance, benefit or loan instalment, including changes that reach back into a closed payroll period.

Before you begin

• Benefit plans must be on in Applications > Employees > Features.
• The whole Pay & benefits area is pay data. You need hr.pay.view to see it, hr.pay.manage to raise, submit, apply and withdraw, and hr.pay.approve to approve or reject.
• The person who writes or submits a pay change cannot approve it.
• The employee must be on probation, active, on notice or suspended, and a contract must cover the effective date.

Pay is never typed over the contract. A change is a request with an effective date; applying it writes a new version and leaves the contract and old payslips alone.

Steps

Raise a change

1. Open Employees > Pay & benefits > Pay changes and select New change.
2. Choose the Employee and What is changing: Salary, Allowance, Benefit, or Loan or advance.
3. Enter Effective from. A date earlier than a payroll period that is already frozen makes the change retroactive.
4. Choose the pay component, benefit plan or loan. The screen shows what is in force on that date.
5. Enter the New monthly amount (or New instalment for a loan). For a benefit, the shares come from the plan; tick End this benefit to end an enrolment.
6. Enter the Reason. You may leave it blank on a draft, but not when you submit.
7. Select Save, then Submit for approval.

Approve and apply

1. A different person with hr.pay.approve opens the change and selects Approve, or Reject with a reason.
2. Someone with hr.pay.manage selects Apply. For a retroactive change, tick the acknowledgement and give a reason in the dialog.

Set up a benefit plan

1. Open Employees > Pay & benefits > Benefit plans and select New plan.
2. Enter the Code, Name, Employee's monthly share, Employer's monthly share, Starts and optionally Ends.
3. Under Who may join, tick the worker classes and set the Minimum months of service. No class ticked means every class.
4. Under Payroll mapping, choose the deduction component that carries the employee's share and the employer-cost component that carries the employer's share.
5. Select Save. Clear Active to stop new enrolments.

What happens next

• Status moves Draft, Submitted, Approved and Applied (or Rejected, or Withdrawn).
• Applying writes a pay version from the effective date and leaves earlier versions untouched. The record shows what was written.
• For a retroactive change, applying queues one adjustment for each frozen period that the date reaches, for the next open payroll run. Frozen payslips are not rewritten.

Worked example. Basic is 9,000.00 and you raise it to 9,900.00 from 1 Aug 2026 with August and September already frozen. The effect card shows 9,000.00 now, 9,900.00 new, difference +900.00. After approval, apply with the acknowledgement. Two adjustments of +900.00 are queued, one for August and one for September, and appear in the next open run.

Good to know

• Nothing to change: 'That is what is already in force from that date; there is nothing to change.'
• A reason is needed to submit: 'A reason is required before a pay change is submitted.'
• One open change per employee and item: 'PCH-0001 is already submitted for this employee and item. Finish or withdraw it first.'
• Stale change: if another change took the item to a new amount first, applying is refused with 'The pay in force from that date has changed since this request was written. Withdraw it and raise a new one.'
• The requester can still withdraw. An Applied change cannot be withdrawn or edited.
• A retroactive apply without the tick is refused with 'This change starts in a period payroll has already frozen. Applying it does not rewrite that pay: it queues adjustments for the next open run. Acknowledge that to continue.' Without a reason: 'Say why a retroactive change is being applied.'
• Approving your own request: 'A pay change is approved by somebody other than whoever wrote or submitted it.'
• Dates: 'A pay change cannot start before the employee joined.' and 'A pay change cannot start more than two years ahead.'
• Salary changes need a line already on the contract: 'This contract has no BASIC line to change. Use an allowance change to add a new pay component.'
• Loan instalments cannot exceed what is still owed: 'The instalment cannot be more than the 4500.00 still owed.'
• Benefit eligibility is checked: 'Plan MED-GOLD is for expatriate staff; this employee's contract is national.' or 'Plan MED-GOLD needs 12 months of service by the effective date; this employee will have 6.' Service months are counted from the difference of calendar months, so a joining day late in the month can pass by a day.
• A plan with history keeps its code: 'A plan with history keeps its code; archive it and create a new one.'
• A share needs its component: 'A share needs the pay component that carries it into payroll.'
• A retroactive benefit with an employer share adjusts only the employee deduction; the employer share is not adjusted.
• Offers and pay changes waiting for approval do not appear in the Approvals inbox. Approvers must open the list.