The Payroll generator (Compensation Management > Payroll generator) calculates verified net pay using each employee's country's statutory tax rules, then produces a payment file for Paystack or Flutterwave. Rules are versioned and DB-driven, not hardcoded, so they can be updated as tax law changes without a code release.
How the calculation works
- Start from gross pay (basic salary + allowances + bonus, minus unpaid-leave deductions for the month)
- Apply pre-tax statutory deductions (pension, social security, housing levies, etc. depending on country)
- Apply the country's progressive income tax brackets to the remaining taxable amount
- Apply any post-tax rebates (e.g. personal relief) to get net pay
Countries currently supported Nigeria (PAYE under the Nigeria Tax Act 2025), Kenya (PAYE with NSSF/SHIF/AHL), Ghana (PAYE with SSNIT), South Africa (PAYE), Rwanda (PAYE with RSSB), Cote d'Ivoire (unified ITS), Uganda (PAYE with NSSF), and Senegal (IRPP with family parts). Each country's brackets, deduction rates, and effective dates are shown in full on the Payroll generator page under "How we calculate payroll for [country]" so nothing is a black box.
Where the numbers come from Every payroll run reads live from the employee's approved compensation proposal (basic pay, allowances) and any declared inputs like annual rent (used for Nigeria's rent relief) or family parts (used for Senegal's quotient familial). Tax rules are reviewed quarterly and the last-reviewed date is shown on the page.
Best Practices
- Confirm each employee's country and compensation proposal are correct before generating payroll
- Review the bracket/deduction breakdown for a country the first time you run payroll there
- Re-run payroll for a period if compensation data changes after the first run