Payroll

Stokly's Payroll module is fully compliant with South African tax and labour law. It handles PAYE, UIF, SDL, age-based rebates, medical credits, and generates SARS-ready IRP5 and EMP201 forms.

Set up before your first payroll run

1. Departments — create departments under HR & Payroll → Departments. Departments can have concurrent-leave rules ("max 2 people on leave at once").
2. Employees — add each employee (HR & Payroll → Employees → Create). SA ID numbers are validated with the Luhn checksum, and date of birth + gender are auto-filled from the ID.
3. Salaries — assign each employee a salary with an effective date. Salary changes are versioned — history is preserved.
4. Employee Portal access (optional) — create a login for each employee so they can view payslips and request leave.

Running a payroll period

1. Go to HR & Payroll → Payroll Periods → Create.
2. Select the period (month), pay date, and the employees to include.
3. Click Calculate — Stokly computes gross, PAYE, UIF, SDL, net pay, and deductions for every employee.
4. Review each payslip; adjust overtime, bonuses, or reimbursements as needed.
5. Click Process to finalise and generate PDFs.
6. Click Email Payslips to send individual PDFs to each employee.

Tax calculations

• PAYE is calculated using the latest SARS tax tables (2025/2026 and 2026/2027 seeded, with fallback to the latest available year).
• Rebates applied automatically based on employee age (primary, secondary 65+, tertiary 75+).
• Medical aid credits applied based on dependents declared on the employee record.
• UIF capped at the statutory monthly maximum (R17,712.00 basis).
• SDL at 1% of total earnings, skipped if your total annual payroll is below the threshold.

Leave management (BCEA-compliant)

Stokly uses progressive accrual from each employee's start date:

Employees request leave through the Employee Portal; managers approve. Approved leave automatically reduces the balance.

IRP5 and EMP201

• IRP5 (Employee Tax Certificate) — generated per employee at year-end, with SARS source codes populated (including 3606 for crypto remuneration).
• EMP201 (Monthly Employer Declaration) — auto-aggregated for each pay month, showing PAYE, SDL, and UIF payable to SARS.

Both are exportable as PDF and ready for SARS e@syFile upload.

Crypto allowances

If you pay part of a salary in cryptocurrency:

1. Record the employee's wallet address on the Employee Details page.
2. Add a Crypto Allowance on the Salary record.
3. Process payroll as usual — PAYE/UIF/SDL are calculated on the full earnings (including crypto).
4. The journal entry automatically splits the net pay between cash and crypto asset accounts.

Standalone Payroll

You don't need Bookkeeping to use Payroll. The PayrollOnly plan (R149/month) provides full payroll functionality without the general ledger — journal entries simply aren't created. Upgrade later when you're ready.