Payroll & HRProduct
Small business payroll in Nefin: draft to payslips
Nefin Team5 min read
Payroll is the same job every month. Work out what each person earns, check it, approve it, pay it, and keep the paperwork for whoever asks later. In a spreadsheet, every one of those steps is a chance to copy a figure wrong. In Nefin it's one payroll run per month, with a payslip for every employee and nothing posted until you approve it.
- A draft payroll run for October 2026 lists three employees with gross salaries of 2,400.00, 1,800.00 and 1,500.00.
- Nefin works out each payslip from the company's rates (5% employee contribution, 5% employer contribution, 10% income tax): net pay of 2,052.00, 1,539.00 and 1,282.50, 4,873.50 in total.
- Approve posts the salary journal: debit salary expense 5,700.00 and employer contribution expense 285.00, credit contributions payable 570.00, income tax withheld 541.50 and net salaries payable 4,873.50.
- Pay salaries from the current account: each employee's net pay is its own bank credit, and each payslip is ticked as paid.
- The payment journal debits net salaries payable 4,873.50, the run turns Paid, and the payslip PDFs are ready.
Before your first run
- Employees: add the people you pay, with their bank details. Payroll only needs a name and a salary; nobody needs a Nefin login to get paid.
- Salaries: give each employee a monthly amount, as gross or as net if the contract states take-home pay. A salary applies from the month you pick until the next change, so a raise in March never rewrites January.
- Rates: in Settings, Payroll, set the employee contribution, employer contribution and income tax percentages. They start at zero. An employee can have their own rates that override the company's.
- Labels and accounts: name the figures the way your payslips should, such as "Social security" or "PAYE", and choose the accounts the salary journal posts to.
| Figure | How Nefin works it out |
|---|---|
| Employee contribution | Gross × the employee rate |
| Employer contribution | Gross × the employer rate, a cost on top of the salary |
| Taxable | Gross − the employee contribution |
| Income tax | Taxable × the income tax rate, or the amount you type |
| Net pay | Taxable − tax, plus or minus any after-tax lines |
For a net salary, Nefin works backwards: it finds the gross that produces that take-home pay with your rates, to the cent.
1. Create the draft
Click New payroll run, pick the salary month and the transaction date the salary journal will carry, and click Create draft. Nefin adds a payslip for every employee who has a salary and was employed that month, and works out each one straight away. There is one run per month, so a month can't be paid twice by accident.
2. Adjust the payslips
Open any payslip in the draft to add extra lines. There are four kinds:
- Before tax, addition: a bonus or overtime. It raises gross, so contributions and tax rise with it.
- Before tax, deduction: unpaid leave. It lowers gross, and contributions and tax fall with it.
- After tax, reimbursement: expenses you pay back, added to net pay untaxed.
- After tax, deduction: an advance or a loan repayment, taken off net pay and credited to the account you choose.
A payslip can also take a different salary for this month only, for someone who started mid-month, without touching their salary history. And you can remove someone from the run altogether.
Lines that repeat belong on the employee instead. Recurring adjustments, such as a meal allowance or a loan repayment, have an optional start and end month, and Nefin copies them onto every draft run in that range. Changed a rate or a salary after creating the draft? Click Recalculate: it re-reads rates and salaries and keeps the lines you added.
3. Approve
When the payslips are right, click Approve, then Approve and post. That posts the salary journal on the transaction date, and from then on the run can't be edited. A later change to an employee's salary or adjustments leaves approved months as they were. If an approved month was wrong, void the run: Nefin reverses what it posted, keeping the original date, and you start the month again.
4. Pay salaries
Click Pay salaries, choose the bank or cash account the money left from and the payment date, and record the payment. By default everyone is paid what they're owed, but you can pay part of a salary, or only some employees. Whatever you leave stays owed, the run shows as Partly paid, and each employee's page lists the months they're still owed, with a Pay button for each.
Paid the wrong amount? Change the payment, or unpay it: the payment is reversed on its own date and the salary is owed again.
Payslips and the payroll register
Each payslip on the run downloads as a PDF to hand to the employee. Export register queues the month's payroll register: every employee's gross, contributions, tax and net pay, with totals, ready to download as Excel, CSV, PDF, HTML or text for your accountant. It's also under Reports for any month.
You choose which figures appear on runs, the register and payslips in Settings, Payroll, so a company with no employer contribution doesn't print an empty column. A hidden figure still shows wherever it has an amount, so a payslip always adds up.
Salaries stay private. Every payroll screen needs a payroll permission on the person's role, and the salary payments in the general ledger name the month, not the employee.
What lands in your books
| When | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Approve | Salary expense (gross), employer contribution expense | Contributions payable, income tax withheld, net salaries payable |
| Pay salaries | Net salaries payable | The bank or cash account, once per employee paid |
The accounts are the ones you chose in Settings, Payroll. After the payment, what remains is what you owe the authorities in contributions and tax, sitting in its own account until you pay it.
Employees and payroll are included from the Professional plan up.
