Importing Past Payroll Data to StaffAny
Contents of this article are applicable to the following users
Product: Payroll
Platform: Web
Access Level: Owner
If you start using PayrollAny mid year, this article will guide you to prepare the payroll data for IR8A submission. Make sure that you imported all the past payroll data before the IR8A submission period.
Things to prepare:
Refer to troubleshooting calculation variances if you find any discrepancies between your report and PayrollAny calculations.
Monthly or year-to-date payroll reports
To ensure accurate payroll processing and IR8A submission, provide a detailed breakdown of your staff’s earnings and deductions. This includes:
Gross Salary, such as basic pay, overtime pay, weekend pay, event/PH pay, etc.
Allowances and Incentives, such as meal allowance, transport allowance, bonus, sales incentive, etc.
Deductions, such as unpaid leave, advance payment, etc.
Statutory deductions such as CPF, SHG, and SDL.
This level of detail will help accurately map the correct pay items to our system, ensuring correct payroll calculations and tax filings. You may refer to our monthly or year-to-date payroll reports as a template. If you don’t have a report, you can use staff payslips.
Note: While CPF reports are useful for tracking your CPF contributions, they might not be the best choice for importing your past payroll data. CPF reports simplify staff income by categorizing it into just two types: Ordinary Wage (OW) and Additional Wage (AW). This might not accurately represent the different types of IR8A code/category, such as gross salary, bonus, transport allowance, and more. To ensure staff income mapped out correctly, we suggest using payroll reports that can break down your income into its specific components.
Business Entity Setup
To submit your application, some basic information about your business, like your Unique Entity Number (UEN) and business address are required. If you haven't set up your business entity yet, you can follow this article to get started.
Pay Item Setup
If you have additional pay items, you can follow this pay item setup article to properly set up the pay item so later during IR8A submission all amounts will be mapped out properly. Make sure that these 3 setting are properly filled:
Category
CPF Type (only for gross/taxable pay items)
IR8A Code
IR8A Mapping (IR8A Form)
Pay Item - IR8A Code | Pay Item Example | IR8A Form |
Insurance | Life insurance premiums (including group insurance) deduction | Deduction - Life Insurance premiums deducted from salaries |
Gross Salary | Basic pay, Overtime pay, PH pay, Event pay, Back pay or Backdated salary, Unpaid leave deduction | Income (a) Gross Salary, Fees, Leave Pay, Wages, and Overtime Pay |
Bonus | Bonus | Income (b) Bonus |
Director’s Fees | Director’s Fees | Income (c) Director’s Fees |
Gross Commission | Commission (daily/weekly/monthly) | Income (d) 2. Gross Commission |
Pension | Pension | Income (d) 3. Pension |
Transport Allowance | Transport allowance | Income (d) 1. Allowances - Transport |
Entertainment Allowance | Entertainment Allowance | Income (d) 1. Allowances - Entertainment |
Other Allowance | Extra duty allowance, Housing/rental allowance, Meal allowance, Per diem allowance, Festive allowance | Income (d) 1. Allowances - Others |
Gratuity | Gratuity, Gratuity paid for years of service | Income (d) 4. Lump sum payment - (i) Gratuity |
Notice Pay | Salary in lieu, Termination benefits/payment | Income (d) 4. Lump sum payment - (ii) Notice pay |
Ex-gratia Payment | Ex-gratia pay | Income (d) 4. Lump sum payment - (iii) Ex-gratia payment |
Retirement Benefits | Retirement benefits/payment | Income (d) 5. Retirement benefits |
Benefits-in-kind | Benefit childcare/eldercare, dental expenses, gym membership, health screening & vaccinations, holiday expenses, medical expenses, optical expenses, personal insurance, TCM/CHIRO/PHYSIO, Gifts in kind | Income (d) 9. Value of Benefits-in-kind |
Retirement Benefits from 1993 |
| Income (d) 5. Retirement benefits - Amount accrued from 1993 |
Staff Data Setup
Based on IRAS regulations, all employees are required to be included in the submission. However there are 2 cases that staff can be excluded in the submission:
Resignees who are foreigners that already filed for IR21 (refer here)
Part-timers who are categorized as “contract for service”
For those who are eligible for IR8A, you can add their account to your organisation. If you hit the maximum headcount limit, please reach out to customer support to help you temporarily increase the headcount and later you can deactivate those staff.
Next step is to edit staff’s profile manually or use mass editing. Do note that following fields/columns are required so that their payroll can be processed accordingly:
Legal name (as per NRIC/FIN)
Date of birth
Race
Religion
Business entity
Join date
Contract end date (not available in mass edit)
If staff resigned/terminated within the year, this field is mandatory to be filled.Nationality
Citizenship
SG Citizen
Permanent Resident (PR) - PR Effective Date is important for accurate CPF calculations. It helps categorize staff as a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-year Permanent Resident. This categorization determines the specific CPF contribution rates applicable to staff.
Foreigner - Work Pass Type is required
Identity type
Identity number
Make sure that there’s no duplicated number as it will result in an error in the submission.Payment method
If you don’t store staff’s bank details, you can set it as “Cash” or “Others”.Bank Account Name
Bank Account Number
Working days per week
Prorate salary based on
Effective pay period
Date should be the same as their join date. If staff joined last/few years ago, you can set it to 1 Jan 2024.User status
If staff resigned/terminated, you can set it as “Inactive” and this will deactivate their account which won’t affect your headcount limit anymore.
If the staff is excluded from SHG, CPF, and SDL, you can toggle these additional settings on their profile:
SHG Contributions - Contribution Amount
If staff are not eligible for SHG, you can set it to “No Contribution”.
Other Statutories
Exclude from SDL
Exclude from CPF
If you encounter any issue when setting up a staff profile, please refer to this troubleshooting article. If the issue still persists, please contact customer support.
Generate Year-to-date Payroll
For more detailed steps on how to run payroll and how to troubleshoot, please refer to this article. After generating the payroll, make sure that the amount for each pay item is tallied with your report. To do bulk editing, you can use mass edit payroll.
Please note that the amount displayed for certain pay items, particularly those based on attendance data, may not be accurate. Especially for staff who lacked timesheet data in the previous month. You can override the amount with the accurate figure from your reports.
Troubleshooting Calculation Variances
To double check on the overall calculation, you can use the monthly or year-to-date payroll report and refer to the “Take Home Pay” row/column.
If you found any variances, check again on staff’s gross salary, net salary, CPF, SHG, and SDL.
To properly check on CPF, SHG, and SDL calculation, please refer to CPFB website:
CPF
On the “citizenship status”, check on staff’s identification information to categorize them properly.Go to My Team > select staff > Singapore Identification Information
To see if staff is a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-year permanent resident, you can click on Singapore Identification Information and a modal will appear.
Refer to the year stated in PR Effective Date
If the staff is a first-month permanent resident, you need to input the prorated Ordinary Wage (OW) & Additional Wage (AW) amount (CPF calculator doesn’t account for this). Learn more here.
If there are differences on the SHG, SDL, and/or CPF, we recommend you to follow CPFB & SSG suggestions below if you under/overpaid on the past payroll:
Variance found | What to do |
SHG |
|
CPF |
|
SDL |
|
However, if you find any incorrect SHG, SDL, or CPF calculation on PayrollAny, please contact our support team.
What if staff members were excluded from SHG, SDL, or CPF for a few months and then included again for the remainder of the month?
If staff’s SHG, SDL, and CPF settings were different in the previous month, you can change their statutory setting. To do so:
Go to My Team > select staff > Statutory & Payment
Change following settings (if applicable):
SHG - Change contribution amount to “No contribution”
SDL - Mark the “exclude” checkbox
CPF - Mark the “exclude” checkbox
Click on Save
💡Tips: You can also make changes even after generating the payroll. However you need to edit the payroll to make it work without restarting the payroll:
Click on Edit Payroll
Look for the staff who had statutory setting changes
Change one of the pay item to different amount and click outside the input field to trigger the auto save
Then change back the amount and click on Save & View Summary
To confirm, locate the staff and check if their SHG, SDL, or CPF are affected
Why are the amounts for staff's SHG, SDL, or CPF showing as $0 when they are supposed to be included (or vice versa)?
Go to staff’s profile under My Team and check for following settings:
SHG
If staff is supposed to belong to a specific SHG group, please verify the following setting:
Race: Chinese (CDAC), Indian (SINDA), or Eurasian (ECF)
Religion: Muslim (MBMF)
If the race and religion settings do not match the above criteria, their SHG result will show as $0.
Additionally, if the settings are correct but the amount still shows as $0, scroll down to Statutory & Payment and check if their contribution setting is marked as "Statutory Default" (included) or "No Contribution" (excluded).
SDL
If staff is excluded from SDL, their payroll will reflect $0. If they should be included in the SDL, simply uncheck the exclusion setting.
CPF
If staff is excluded from CPF, their payroll will also show $0. For those who should be included in the CPF, ensure that the exclusion setting is unchecked.
Additionally, note that foreigners are not required to contribute to CPF, so be sure to check the staff member's citizenship status. Only Singapore citizens and permanent residents are included in CPF.
If all the above settings are correctly configured but the amounts are still incorrect, please contact our customer support for assistance.