Home User Manual Pay & allowances

Payslips, allowance & meals

Where your pay figures come from, how to check them yourself day by day, and how to raise a query in a way that gets answered quickly.

For everyone 8 minute read Varies by company

This chapter describes the machinery, not your company's rates. Which allowances exist, what they are worth and who qualifies are settings your employer decides. Your own figures are on your own screens; for the policy behind them, ask HR.

1. My Payslips

Open My Payslips from your home page. It lists one row per payslip, newest first, and you can filter by year.

ColumnMeaning
PayslipThe payslip's own number. Quote this when raising any query.
Year and MonthThe period being paid — not the date it was paid.
Days PaidThe days you were paid for in that period. Section 2.
GrossEverything earned before anything is taken off.
DeductionsEverything taken off.
Net PayGross minus deductions — what actually reaches you.

The list is yours alone, and it is locked to you at the source rather than by hiding a menu — an administrator opening the same screen sees their own payslips, not yours.

2. Where Days Paid comes from

Payroll does not ask anybody how many days you worked. It reads the attendance and leave records that already exist — the same ones you can see all month on My Attendance.

Broadly, a day counts when you were recorded present, or you were on approved leave, or it was a non-working day. What is left over — a working day with no punch and no approved leave — is what reduces the figure.

This is why the attendance chapter matters more than this one. A missing punch is not a payroll problem in the month it happens; it is an attendance problem that becomes a payroll problem later. Fixed within the week it costs a two-minute conversation. Found on a payslip, it costs a correction, an approval and a wait.

3. Daily allowance

Where your company operates a daily allowance, it is earned per qualifying day rather than as a monthly lump, and My Daily Allowance shows every day it was calculated from.

ColumnMeaning
Date / DayThe day, and which day of the week it was.
In / Out / HoursWhat was recorded that day.
AttendanceThe day's status — the thing that decides whether it qualifies.
SourceWhether the record came from the device or a phone punch.
RateThe rate in force on that date.
DA EarnedWhat that day was worth to you.

Because the calculation is shown per day, you never have to take a monthly total on trust. If the total looks low, sort by DA Earned and the days that earned nothing come straight to the top — and the Attendance column beside them says why.

4. Meals

Where your company runs a subsidised meal, My Meal shows each day it was provided and what your share of it was.

ColumnMeaning
Date / DayThe day the meal relates to.
LocationWhere it was served.
QtyHow many meals were allocated to you that day.
Meal PriceThe full cost of the meal.
My Share %The percentage of that cost you contribute. The rest is the employer's subsidy.
I PayYour actual contribution for that day — this is what reaches your deductions.
StatusWhere the day's record has got to.

Two columns are worth separating in your head: Meal Price is what the meal costs the company, and I Pay is what it costs you. They are not the same number, and only the second one appears in your deductions.

5. Why old months never change

Rates in ZakERP are dated. A rate is recorded as applying from a particular date, and changing it creates a new rate from a new date — it does not overwrite the old one.

The consequence is worth understanding, because it is what makes your own checking trustworthy: changing this month's rate cannot rewrite last year's figures. A payslip from eight months ago still shows what was actually true then, and a report of last year still adds up the way it did last year.

It is also why you may see two different rates within one month's list. That is not an error — it is the day the change took effect, visible.

6. Checking a payslip

Five minutes, once a month, in this order.

  1. Check the period first

    Confirm the Year and Month are the ones you mean. Pay received in one month is usually for the previous one.

  2. Check Days Paid against your own attendance

    Open My Attendance for the same month. If Days Paid is lower than you expect, the explanation is almost always a day showing Absent or Incomplete.

  3. Check the allowance and meal lines against their own screens

    Both show the day-by-day working. A total you cannot explain becomes a specific day you can point at.

  4. Check the deductions

    Anything you do not recognise is worth asking about now, while the month is fresh — not at the end of the year.

  5. Keep a copy

    Export the payslip list once a year and keep it. It takes seconds and it is the easiest evidence to produce later.

7. Raising a query

Pay queries get resolved fastest when they arrive as a specific claim rather than a feeling. Include four things:

  • The payslip number, and the month it covers.
  • The figure you are questioning — the exact column.
  • What you expected, and why.
  • The days you believe are wrong, if you have identified them.

"My net pay is short" starts an investigation. "Payslip PS-00123 for March shows 24 Days Paid, but 12 and 13 March show Absent on my attendance and I was on approved leave" ends one — usually the same day.

Do not save queries up. The evidence for a disputed day is the attendance record, and that is easiest to reconstruct while people still remember the day. A query raised in the same month is a correction; the same query raised in November is an archaeology project.