Payroll & Admin

Step 1 -Familiarise yourself with the Payroll Processes

Salary Finance products are deducted from the employees salary. Therefore, to enable Salary Finance to offer our products, we ask the the our clients to perform 3 payroll processes as well as transferring those deductions to our accounts.

Please take some time to familiarise yourself with the processes:

Validation - this is an automated process using the EVA tool where you confirm whether an employee applying for a Salary Finance product is eligible and has provided correct information. Please note that this only takes the user a few minutes to complete and should be completed inline with your starters/leavers process.
- NB: If you are taking Advance, this should be a weekly process
Deductions - here you will download a file from our platform which contains the deductions to be taken in the current pay cycle. We recommend this file is downloaded 2 working days before your payroll cut off.
Confirmation - in this step you will upload a simple report that confirms the deductions that you were successfully able to take. At the same time, this report will notify Salary Finance of any leavers or other unsuccessful deductions. You will need to upload the file 3 working days before payday.

Payment - finally, you will need to transfer the deductions you have made to Salary Finance. The funds must be sent as a bulk payment, one payment per product, per payroll. Salary Finance can receive payment via BACS, CHAPS and Faster Payments.

Important: These payments must credit Salary Finance’s accounts either before or on the same day as your employee payday. This is to ensure there is no delay in crediting your employee’s accounts to avoid any detriment to them.

We have created a video which will show you end-to end how each of these processes works in practice

Step 3 - Implementation Checklist

The checklist below details the steps to launch and things to consider when planning your implementation. The below plan contains the usual considerations for most of our clients.

✅ Previous Legal and Infosec steps have been completed

✅ The Onboarding Form has been submitted

✅ Sign off the Operational Schedule and Payroll Checklist - to be issued once we have received the Onboarding Form and customised your Salary Finance Platform

✅ Setup EVA and build the validation file

✅ Setup your pay elements (or wage types) for each product you are launching with

✅ Setup payments to Salary Finance - details will be shared with you

Your implementation may require different steps to launch but don't worry, we will assign you an Implementation Manager to work through your individual plan.

Can I start any of these checklist points now?

Absolutely! There are a number of checklist points that you can begin straight away, but please ensure you have already completed the Service Agreement and Infosec parts of this website first.

Downloading and setting up EVA

You can download EVA and extract the zip file to your computer

✅ EVA does not require any installation, you simply download a zip file and extract the file to your computer.

✅ To download the zip file, click here and select the 'Windows' version unless you work on Mac OS.

✅ You can find step by step instructions for downloading and extracting the ZIP file here.

You will be able to set up your login details after we have build and customised your Salary Finance platform.

Build the validation file for EVA

This is the input file you will need to load into EVA during the regular process.

✅ The exact data points required will depend on the products you are launching. The file specification document will guide you through building the file.

✅ You can also access an example of the validation file here

✅ Once you have built the file, please send a test file to your Salary Finance Implementation Manager (when assigned), which includes 5 rows of dummy data. This file must include at least 1 example of each payroll name as they appear on your report

Set up the pay elements (wage types)

The pay elements (sometimes referred to as wage types) are configured on your payroll software and this is how the deductions will appear on your employee's pay slips. You need to set up 1 pay element for each product that you wish to launch, meaning a total of 4 pay elements may be required.

Pay Element and Deduction rules:

✅ You should configure 1 pay element for each product you are launching with

✅ All deductions are to be taken from net pay

✅ Deductions should be set up as a temporary or one off deduction, please do not set up recurring deductions or a reducing balance

FAQs

When do we need to run each of the processes?

Salary Finance ask that you run the validation (EVA) process weekly, so that we have latest data available to ensure your employees will have acces to the products they need. The deduction download and confirmation upload processes need to be run once per pay cycle.

For monthly, 4-weekly and fortnightly payrolls...

We recommended you download your deductions file 3 working days before your payroll cut-off so you have the information ready when you close payroll. For your confirmation upload file, we require 3 working days before payday which allows Salary Finance to set up a direct debit for any deductions you are not able to take.

For weekly payrolls...

We recommend you download the deductions file on the first working day after the employee payday. E.g. if employee payday is on a Friday, the deductions file will be available to download on the following Monday. For uploading the confirmation upload file, you can upload the file 2 days for your employee payday.

How long will the payroll processes take?

This depends on the complexity of your payroll, however, each payroll process is designed to be as quick and as light-touch as possible for your teams to administer. In general, the administration of Salary Finance services should take between 1 - 2 hours a month for a complicated payroll monthly payroll configuration and much less if you have a single payroll to complete.

Can we set up deductions as a recurring payment?

Salary Finance do not share the details of a person's product with the employer to protect the employee's privacy. Therefore, we ask that you download the deductions file each pay cycle and treat the deductions as a new file each pay cycle. We ask that you do not set up deductions as a recurring deduction or reducing balance.

Why is payment required on payday?

As Salary Finance is a salary deducted service, payments must be aligned with employee payday. This ensures a seamless, stress-free experience for your employees because in this way their accounts are updated as soon as possible so they are able to access their savings or see their loan repaid on payday at the same time they see it deducted from their pay.

How do we process leavers?

As part of the BAU payroll processes, you will need to upload a confirmation report to our HR portal each cycle. This allows the platform to identify whether any of the requested deductions have not been taken. As part of this process, you will be able to select the reson why a deduction was not taken - either because they are a leaver, they are now on a reduced income or switched onto a new payroll.

What is the process for employees on statutory pay?

Please see the EVA file specification for a full explanation of who should be included in the validation file. If an employee is active with a product, Salary Finance only expect deductions to be taken from salary if:

- the deduction can be netted from their contractual pay and not any statutory pay they may be receiving (e.g. statutory maternity pay, statutory sick pay);

- the person has given consent for the deduction to be taken from their statutory pay

What do we do in the case of a late leaver?

If an employee leaves your organisation after the confirmation upload report has been provided to Salary Finance please contact our Client Operations Team on payroll@salaryfinance.com who will ensure that the system is updated to reflect any late leavers

What happens if an employee has a question?

You can direct them to our Customer Support Team at hello@salaryfinance.com who will be happy to help them. There is a live chat function on the platform where customers can contact our team. We do not ask your teams to answer any questions about Salary Finance products, so please feel free to send them to our Customer Support Team. The only time we would direct a query to your team is in the event that we simply cannot help, e.g. the employee does not know their payroll ID or their information is incorrect on your payroll system.

What happens if there is an issue with a payroll process?

Our dedicated, in-house Client Operations Team are available to you if you have any questions or queries regarding the payroll process and making payments to Salary Finance. If you experience any issues, please contact them at payroll@salaryfinance.com as soon as you can and they will be happy to assist.

Admin & Payroll

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