Payroll

Setting up compensation, running payroll, and payslips.

How payroll works

Payroll in BlueOneHR is organised into sections, each covering a different part of the cycle from setting up how people are paid through to producing payslips.

From contract to payslip: how monthly payroll works

The sections

Section Covers
Overview The payroll dashboard: contracts, payslip counts, and recent payroll runs.
Configuration Contracts, Pay Grades, Pay Components, Salary Templates and Compensation Policies — the setup that decides how someone is paid.
Payroll Operations The Payroll Register (running payroll), Payslips, Allowances, Deductions, Bonus, and Full & Final Settlements.
Employee Compensation An employee's compensation as actually assigned, distinct from the templates and policies that define it.
Finance Where payroll figures meet the organisation's books.
Compliance Statutory obligations that arise from payroll.
Governance Approval and oversight of payroll activity.
Automation Scheduled and automated payroll tasks.

The Payroll overview dashboard: 43 contracts, 101 payslips, contract/payslip status tiles, and recent payroll register runs from April through July 2026

The one fact that explains most payroll questions

Payroll only computes for an employee who has an active contract. An employee can exist in the directory, be assigned a department and a shift, and still not appear in a payroll run — because nobody created their contract, or the contract is still a draft. If an employee is missing from a run, check Contracts before anything else.

Contracts

A contract is what makes an employee payable. It carries the wage, the effective dates, and the department context payroll uses when a run happens — separately from the employee's directory record.

Give an employee a salary: contracts

Before you begin

The employee must already exist in the directory (see Adding an employee). You will need their wage and the date the contract starts.

Steps

  1. Go to Payroll → Configuration → Contract.
  2. Select New Contract.
  3. Choose the employee.
  4. Set the start date, and an end date if the contract is fixed-term. Leave the end date open for an ongoing contract.
  5. Enter the wage.
  6. Save. A new contract is created in Draft status.
  7. When the contract is correct and ready to be used for payroll, change its status to Active.

What happens next

Only Active contracts are picked up when payroll runs. A Draft contract exists in the system but contributes nothing to a payroll run, which is why a newly added employee often needs this step before their first payslip.

The contract list

Each row shows the employee, department, start and end dates, wage and status, with Edit and Delete actions. Statuses seen in practice: Draft, Active, Expired, Terminated.

The Contract list under Payroll → Configuration, showing employees in Draft and Active status with their wage and start date

How the wage itself is built up lives alongside Contract under Payroll → Configuration: Pay Grades, Pay Components, Salary Templates, and Compensation Policies. This guide covers the contract record itself; which of those your organisation actually uses is configuration-specific, so check the linked pages rather than assuming a particular setup.

Troubleshooting

An employee did not appear in a payroll run. Check their contract status first — see How payroll works. A Draft or Expired contract is the most common cause.

Running payroll

A payroll run produces the Payroll Register: one record per employee for a pay period, with gross pay, deductions, net pay, and a status showing how far the run has progressed. This page follows a run from starting it to its approval.

What you see depends on your permissions. A person who can only view payroll sees the list and the run screens but none of the buttons below; the buttons appear for people who are allowed to start, change or validate runs. The person who submits a run cannot be the person who approves it.

Before you begin

Every employee you expect to be paid needs an Active contract covering the pay period (a Draft contract is not included) — see Contracts. Payroll uses the contract's wage and dates; it does not ask you to re-enter pay information at run time. Pay for the month also follows each person's validated attendance and approved leave for the month's working days.

Start a run

  1. Go to Payroll → Payroll Operations → Payroll Register. The list shows every run, newest first, with the number of runs at the top. A company with no runs shows "No payroll register runs yet."
  2. Select Start a new run. The button is shown to people allowed to add payroll runs.
  3. Choose the month and year and select Start run. BlueOneHR calculates every employee's pay for the month and saves it as a Draft. Nothing is paid until the run is approved.

The Payroll Register list: five runs from April through August 2026, each with employee count, gross, net, and an Approved status badge

Review the run

Select a run to open it. The header shows the month and who ran it and when. A progress indicator shows Draft, Pending Approval and Approved (a rejected run shows Rejected at the last step). Four tiles summarise the run: Gross Payout, Deductions, Net Payout and Blocked, bank details (a count of employees whose payment is held up by their bank details; it is a number, not a link). The table below lists each employee with department, gross, deduction and net pay and a status.

While the run is a Draft (or was Rejected), people allowed to change runs also see:

Validate before you submit

Select Run validation (it reads Re-run validation once a validation exists). The checks list their findings by severity: Critical, Warning and Information. Select View exceptions to see them.

Submit and approve

  1. Select Submit for approval. The run becomes Pending Approval. A company must have at least one payroll approver other than the person who submitted, or the submission is refused with a message saying so.
  2. A different person with approval rights opens Approvals in the sidebar, chooses Approve or Reject, and may add a comment. The person who submitted the run cannot approve it.
  3. Approved runs confirm their payslips. A Rejected run goes back to being editable: correct what is wrong, Regenerate if needed, and submit again.

What happens next

An approved run's figures become the basis for payslips — see Payslips. The Payslips screen has its own Generate payslips button and lets you filter payslips by status. The run stays in the Payroll Register as the record of what was paid for that month. Paying employees is a separate step on the payout page, which in a workspace without a payment provider connected runs against a mock and moves no money.

Notes

Troubleshooting

I cannot see Start a new run, Regenerate or Submit for approval. These buttons are shown only to people whose role allows them, and Regenerate and Submit only appear while the run is a Draft or Rejected. Ask your BlueOneHR administrator which payroll permissions your role has.

Submit for approval says it needs an approver. Your company has no payroll approver other than you. Ask your administrator to add one.

A run's totals look wrong. Check contract status, attendance and any allowances or deductions recorded for the affected employees, then Regenerate the draft — see Contracts.

The "Blocked, bank details" tile shows a number above zero. Those employees' bank details need attention before they can be paid. The run screen does not list which employees are counted, so check the bank details held for your employees.

Not confirmed

These points have not been checked against a live workspace for this page, and it does not claim them:

Payslips

Payslips are generated from an approved payroll run, one per employee per pay period.

Open and read your payslip

Steps

  1. Go to Payroll → Payroll Operations → Payslips.
  2. Filter by status or date range if you are looking for a specific period; otherwise the list shows every payslip.
  3. Select Generate Payslips to create payslips from an approved run that does not have them yet.
  4. Each payslip shows the employee, the pay period, and basic pay, gross, deductions and net pay.
  5. Use View to open a payslip on screen, or PDF to download it.
  6. To change several payslips at once — moving a batch from Draft to a later status, for example — select them with the checkboxes, choose the status under Set status to, and select Apply.

The Payslips list for August 2026, showing employees with basic/gross/deduction/net pay columns, Draft status, and View/PDF actions per row

Statuses seen in practice

Draft, Review, Confirmed, Paid — the Payroll overview dashboard counts payslips by each of these. Treat a Draft payslip as provisional: it reflects the run it came from, and is not final until it moves further along.

For employees

An employee's own payslips are available from their own documents area, not from this administrative screen. This page covers issuing and managing payslips as an administrator.

Notes

Payslip PDF generation depends on a PDF rendering component being correctly installed on the server. If PDF downloads stop working across the board rather than for one payslip, that is an infrastructure question for your BlueOneHR operator, not something fixable from this screen.

Troubleshooting

A payslip's numbers don't match what I expected. Payslips reflect the payroll run they were generated from. Check the originating run in the Payroll Register rather than editing the payslip directly.

Pay Grades

A Pay Grade is a named level (e.g. "L1 Associate", "Sr. Executive", "VP") that compensation can be organised around. Found under Payroll → Configuration → Pay Grades. Verified live on demo.blueonehr.com, 2026-09-13.

Set up salary: pay grades, components, templates

What a pay grade carries

Each grade has an order (its rank), a name, a short code, an optional set of bands (a salary range, e.g. "Standard: ₹30000–₹50000"), and a status. On the demo workspace, six grades existed — L1 Associate, Executive, Sr. Executive, Lead, Sr. Manager, and VP — all Active. Only L1 Associate had a band configured (Standard: ₹30,000–₹50,000); the rest showed "No bands", meaning a band is optional, not required, for a grade to exist and be used.

The Pay Grades list: six active grades from L1 Associate to VP, with one band configured on L1 Associate and none on the rest

Pay Components

A Pay Component is a single named line that can appear on a payslip — an allowance or a deduction. Found under Payroll → Configuration → Pay Components. Verified live on demo.blueonehr.com, 2026-09-13.

What a component carries

Each component has a name, a short code, a type (Deduction or, presumably, Allowance — only Deduction-type components were visible in the first page of results), a calculation method (e.g. Flat Amount), whether it is Taxable, whether it is Statutory, and a status. Real components seen on the demo workspace include Flexible Benefits Plan Deduction, Income Tax (194J/C), L.I.C, and LWF Arrears — all Deductions, all Flat Amount, all non-taxable and non-statutory as configured here.

The Pay Components list: Flexible Benefits Plan Deduction, Income Tax (194J/C), L.I.C, and LWF Arrears, each Flat Amount, non-taxable, non-statutory

Not the same as statutory deductions in the payslip engine

None of the components observed here were marked Statutory, and the underlying payslip engine's own PF/ESI/PT/TDS statutory calculations are documented separately as part of the platform's compliance engine, not as Pay Components. Do not assume every deduction on a payslip traces back to a row in this screen — some are computed by the statutory engine directly. This distinction was not fully explored in this pass and deserves a closer look before being stated more precisely.

Salary Templates

A Salary Template bundles Pay Components together against a Pay Grade, so a contract can be built from a reusable template rather than assembled by hand every time. Found under Payroll → Configuration → Salary Templates. Verified live on demo.blueonehr.com, 2026-09-13.

What a template carries

Each template has a name, an optional Pay Grade it is tied to, whether it is the Default template, a status, and a Manage Components action that opens its component list. On the demo workspace, six templates existed: Executive — Standard, Lead — Standard, Sr. Executive — Standard, Sr. Manager — Standard, VP — Standard (each tied to the matching Pay Grade), and Standard L1 — the one marked Default, with no Pay Grade attached.

The Salary Templates list: six templates, five tied to a matching Pay Grade and one — Standard L1 — marked Default with no grade

The default template has no grade

Standard L1 is the Default template and is the only one without a Pay Grade — worth noting precisely because it means "default" and "has a grade" are independent properties here, not the same thing. Do not assume a default template must correspond to an entry-level grade; on this workspace it deliberately did not carry one at all.

Compensation Policies

A Compensation Policy puts a Salary Template into effect over a scope and a date range. Found under Payroll → Configuration → Compensation Policies. Verified live on demo.blueonehr.com, 2026-09-13.

What a policy carries

Each policy has a scope (e.g. Company-wide), the Salary Template it applies, an optional Pay Grade, an effective-from date, an optional effective-to date, and a status. On the demo workspace, one policy existed: Company-wide, applying the Standard L1 template, no Pay Grade, effective from 1 January 2026, no end date, Active.

Compensation Policies: one Company-wide policy applying the Standard L1 template from 1 January 2026, no end date, Active

Only one policy was observed

With a single, company-wide, still-open policy on this workspace, this pass could not observe how multiple overlapping policies (e.g. a company-wide default alongside a grade-specific override) are prioritised, or what happens at the boundary when one policy's effective-to date is reached. Both would need a workspace with more than one configured policy to verify properly — do not describe policy precedence rules that were not actually observed.

Allowances, deductions and bonuses

Allowances, Deductions and Bonus are three lists under Payroll → Payroll Operations, in the row of links beside Payroll Register and Payslips. On the Payroll overview, the Allowances card reads "Fixed/condition-based allowance rules", the Deductions card reads "Fixed/condition-based deduction rules", and the Bonus card reads "Statutory bonus computation and payout".

This page describes what each list shows. It is a read-only description: the screens were read, and nothing was created, approved or deleted while writing it.

Allowances, deductions and bonuses: a read-only tour

Allowances

The list has the columns Title, Basis, Amount, Taxable and Fixed. Above it are a search box and three filters, for taxable, for fixed, and for basis. The basis filter offers Basic Pay, Children, Overtime, Shift, Work Type and Attendance. Each row has Edit (classic), Edit and Delete buttons, and a + New Allowance button sits at the top right.

Deductions

The Deductions list has the same layout, with the columns Title, Basis, Amount, Pre-tax and Fixed, a search box, filters for pre-tax, fixed and basis, and a + New Deduction button. On the workspace where this was read, it showed "No deductions yet".

Bonus

Bonus opens on a financial year (for example 2026-27), which can be changed in a text box at the top, and has a Run Bonus button at the top right. Three tiles count Total Records, Eligible and Total Bonus. The table lists each employee with Eligible, Wages Considered, Bonus Amount and Status. Status read Computed or Paid; a Computed row has an Approve button.

Not confirmed