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Working in Payroll

Use Beam Machine Payroll to manage employee records, run payroll, review leave, monitor anomalies, and handle payroll self-service work.

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Working in Payroll

This page shows you how to run day-to-day payroll work in Beam Machine.

Product: Beam Machine
Module: Payroll
Role: Payroll Administrator, HR Operations User, Finance Reviewer
Difficulty: Beginner to Intermediate
Time: 12 minutes first read
Last Updated: 2026-03-10
Version: Current Beam Machine app build in this repo

Before You Start

  • You should know the active entity.
  • You should know the pay period you are working on.
  • You should know whether your task is employee setup, pay run processing, leave, anomalies, rosters, or self-service case handling.
  • Keep ../15-payroll-audit-controls-and-advisory.md open if you need the wider people and review workflow.

What is Payroll?

This module is the operational payroll workspace. On paper, this would be the employee master file, payroll run workbook, leave records, and exception list.

In Beam Machine, it lives under Payroll.

When do you use this?

Use this module when:

  • a new employee must be added,
  • a pay run must be created,
  • leave or roster data needs review,
  • anomalies need investigation,
  • or an employee payroll query must be handled.

If payroll records are wrong or stale, the pay run becomes a correction exercise instead of a control process.

Where do you find it?

Primary path: HR -> Payroll
Detailed routes:

  • /dashboard/payroll
  • /dashboard/payroll/employees
  • /dashboard/payroll/employees/new
  • /dashboard/payroll/pay-runs
  • /dashboard/payroll/pay-runs/new
  • /dashboard/payroll/leave
  • /dashboard/payroll/anomalies
  • /dashboard/payroll/rosters
  • /dashboard/payroll/self-service
  • /dashboard/payroll/preclearance

How to work in Payroll

Review the payroll dashboard

  1. Open Payroll.
  2. Review the cards for employees, pay runs, and active staff.
  3. Decide whether your next step is Employees, Pay Runs, Leave, or Anomaly Detection.

Add or review employees

  1. Open Payroll -> Employees.
  2. Review the employee list.
  3. Open Add Employee when a new employee must be registered.
  4. Save the employee record before using that person in payroll work.

Create a pay run

  1. Open Payroll -> Pay Runs.
  2. Start the pay run creation flow.
  3. Select the pay frequency:
    • monthly
    • bi-weekly
    • weekly
  4. Enter the period start and period end.
  5. Create the pay run.

āœ… Checkpoint: You should now have a pay run for the correct period. If not, check the period dates and required data.

Review leave, anomalies, rosters, and self-service

  1. Open Leave to review leave balances and requests.
  2. Open Anomaly Detection to review irregularities and fraud indicators.
  3. Open Payroll Rosters to manage planned vs actual hours where roster control is used.
  4. Open Payroll Self-Service to handle employee payroll queries, corrections, and case status.

Common Questions & Issues

"The pay run will not look right"

Why this happens: Employee master data or period selection is wrong.

Fix: Review Employees, then recreate or correct the pay run period settings before relying on the output.

"Anomaly alerts keep appearing"

Why this happens: The page is detecting irregularities or risk indicators in pay data.

Fix: Review the anomalies instead of ignoring them. They exist to stop bad payroll from going out.

"The employee raised a payroll issue"

Why this happens: The employee needs correction, explanation, or escalation.

Fix: Use Payroll Self-Service to manage the case instead of handling it only in email.

What's Next

Related Pages

SA Compliance Reference

  • Follow your payroll, PAYE, UIF, SDL, and internal pay-release policy for final payroll signoff.

Still Stuck?

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