Leave, loans and welfare
Go to HR → Leave.
Leave requests, balances and the planner are available as separate tabs.
A member of staff applies with the leave type, dates and a reason. The application goes to their approver, who approves or declines it with a comment. Approved leave:
- Reduces the entitlement balance for that leave type.
- Shows on the leave calendar, so overlapping absences in one department are visible before they are approved rather than after.
- Feeds staff attendance, so days on approved leave are not counted as absence.
Leave types and entitlements are configured in HR → Settings. Set annual, sick, maternity, paternity and compassionate leave with their entitlements and whether unused days carry forward.
HR → Loans manages staff loans and salary advances.
The loans screen summarises principal, repayments and outstanding balances.
Record the amount, the repayment period and the instalment. The instalment is then deducted automatically in each payroll run until the loan is cleared, and the outstanding balance is tracked on the employee’s record.
Before approving a loan, check what the employee is already repaying. Several small loans running at once is the usual cause of a zero or negative net pay in a run.
Loan approval, repayment, suspension, write-off and cancellation are processed one at a time per loan. If another administrator has already completed the action, refresh the loan instead of repeating it. One approved loan has one instalment row per scheduled month and one payroll repayment per run.
When an employee with an outstanding loan leaves, settle the balance in their final pay before exiting them.
Staff fee deductions
Section titled “Staff fee deductions”HR → Fee Deductions handles staff whose children attend the school and who pay fees from salary.
Linking the deduction here connects two modules: the deduction reduces net pay in payroll, and the corresponding payment is receipted against the student’s fee account. Doing it as an ordinary deduction instead leaves the student showing as a debtor while the money has already been taken.
Welfare
Section titled “Welfare”HR → Welfare runs the staff welfare scheme: contributions collected through payroll, and claims paid out for bereavement, medical and other agreed causes.
Create and maintain staff welfare funds from this screen.
Record contributions as a deduction type and claims as they are paid, so the fund’s balance is visible to the members. A welfare fund with no visible balance is a source of suspicion out of all proportion to the sums involved.
Approvals
Section titled “Approvals”HR → Pending approvals is the decision queue for directors and HR administrators. It includes new employees, employee status changes, pay-component assignments, loans, fee deductions and other HR submissions that need authorisation.
HR data-entry users see HR → My approvals instead. This read-only view contains only their own pending submissions; it does not expose another preparer’s work and does not offer Approve or Reject buttons. A submitted termination, suspension or other status change remains unchanged until a director approves it.
Approvers should work the queue rather than waiting to be asked. An unapproved payroll run on the day salaries are due is the most avoidable crisis in the module.
An approval item can only be decided once, even when two approvers act at nearly the same time. The first committed decision wins; the second approver should refresh the queue to see the completed decision.
Utilities
Section titled “Utilities”HR → Utilities holds bulk operations — applying an across-the-board increment, correcting a field on many records, recalculating a run. These are powerful and hard to undo. Read what a utility will do before running it, and run it on a small selection first where the screen allows.