Importing Payslips
The Import Payroll History feature is meant for those clients who have added a new company account on Buddy within the fiscal year. Rather than having to calculate the payslips for the full year on Buddy, one can import any issued payrolls by filling in a spreadsheet template and uploading it into Buddy.
Having the payslip data on Buddy is important for two main reasons:
- For Buddy to calculate the correct taxes for future payslips issued through Buddy
- For you to have FS3s and End-of-Year Tax Documents that include all employees and all payroll periods
Buddy's import payroll process also has SSC and MFC validation inputted. This is done so that the FS3 data is stored accurately on Buddy right away, and this will prevent submission errors you would have otherwise encountered during the end-of-year submission procedure.
Step-by-Step Process
- Go to Payroll History
- On the bottom left, click Import Payroll History
- A box will pop-up, as seen in the screenshot below
- Download Template
- Fill in the data within the template (look below for more information about this)
- Click on Upload File and select your file
- Finally, click on Start Import
Screenshot outlying the pop-up box for downloading the template and uploading the file.
Filling in the Template
Understanding the Rows
Before you start, it's important to note that each note should contain the information of a single payslip.
That means if you are importing 3 payslips worth of data for any employee, there should be three different entries (rows) for that individual.
Personal Details
In the first section, insert either the ID Card (recommended), or the Given and Family Name of each employee.
Pay Period and Basic Data
In the light blue section, insert:
- Pay Schedule (drop-down)
- Pay Period number (e.g. if you are importing Monthly Payroll, January would be 1)
- Year
- Base Salary (Amount) of the payslip
- Basic Hours
- Net Amount that the employee received
- Weekly Wage (optional) to enforce Buddy to use your weekly rate for SSC and FS3 purposes
Allowances and Special Rates
In the light yellow section, fill-in the amounts for each allowance, overtime, and special rate. Note: overtimes should only be inserted in the overtime sections if they are taxed at overtime rates. If they are taxed at main rate, it's recommended to insert these within the pre-tax value.
For items that are not yet created on Buddy or not visible, you can also combine these within the pre-tax and post-tax columns.
For example, the Weekly Allowance (government bonus) can be inserted in the pre-tax section, as shown above.
Taxes and Deductions
In the light red section, insert:
- Employee and Employer SSC deductions
- Income Tax (Main, Overtime, and/or PT)
- Maternity Fund Contributions
- Any number of weeks not worked
Required Fields
- ID Number OR Name
- Pay Schedule
- Pay Period (this is in numerical format)
- Year
- Base Salary
- Basic Hours
- Net Amount
- Employer SSC
- Employee SSC
- Maternity
- Weeks not worked ( if applicable )
Non-Required Fields
Not all fields are required. Fields like the SSC Category and Weekly Wage will be calculated automatically through Buddy, based on the existing settings.
However, if you are having difficulty importing due to validation, you could insert the Weekly Wage to overwrite the one calculated by Buddy.
Several fields, like specific Taxes and Allowances, should be left empty if these were in fact non-utilised.
Overwriting
Do note that when importing, you will overwrite any payslips already imported or issued for that period. Therefore, if you have imported payslips and would like to update these, you can simply re-upload the file to overwrite the previous payslips.
Validation Warnings and Errors
Buddy will do its best to validate the data that you are importing. In case you have any warning or error, please refer to the Validation FAQ here: Validation Errors When Importing Payslips
Special Attention for Overtime Tax
To separate income between main income and overtime income, make sure to input overtime income and tax separately:
- Only include Overtime values if these were taxed at an overtime rate (15%)
- If not, please allocate these to pre-tax
- Insert Overtime Tax if this was deducted
- If not, it is recommended to leave as an empty (blank) value rather than 0