greytHR · Payroll Guide

How to Run Payroll in greytHR — The Monthly Cycle, Step by Step

A greytHR payroll run is mostly preparation. The processing itself takes minutes; what takes time is making sure attendance is locked, revisions are in, and statutory settings are right before you press the button. Getting the order wrong means reprocessing, and reprocessing after payslips have been released is the situation every payroll administrator wants to avoid. This is the cycle in the order it should actually be done.

Steps

Freeze attendance and leave for the period: Payroll reads attendance and leave data, so nothing should still be changing when you process. Lock the attendance period, chase pending leave approvals, and resolve any unmarked days. Every subsequent problem in a payroll run traces back to attendance that moved after processing started.
Process joiners, exits and salary revisions: Add new joiners with their date of joining and salary structure, mark exits with the last working day so full-and-final can be calculated, and enter any salary revisions with the correct effective date. Arrears calculate automatically from the effective date, which is exactly why entering it wrong is expensive to unwind.
Enter one-off inputs: Bonuses, incentives, reimbursements, loan deductions and any ad-hoc recovery go in now. If you collect variable pay from a sales system or a spreadsheet, import it rather than keying it — the most common payroll error in Indian SMBs is a transposed incentive figure typed manually under time pressure.
Check statutory configuration for the month: Confirm PF wage ceiling handling, ESI eligibility for anyone whose gross has crossed the threshold mid-year, Professional Tax slabs for each state you operate in, and TDS based on employee declarations. PT is the one that catches multi-state employers — the slab differs by state and an employee who relocated needs their state updated.
Run the payroll and review the variance report: Process, then do not go straight to payslips. Compare this month against last month and look at anyone whose net pay moved significantly. A large variance is either a genuine revision or a mistake, and you want to know which before money moves. This single check catches most errors.
Generate the bank transfer file: greytHR produces a bank-format salary file for your bank's bulk transfer facility. Verify the total against the payroll register before uploading. Check that new joiners have bank details on file — a joiner without account details is the usual cause of one person not being paid on payday.
Release payslips and file statutory returns: Publish payslips to the ESS portal so employees can see them. Then generate the statutory outputs: PF ECR file, ESI contribution file, PT challans per state, and Form 24Q data for quarterly TDS. Each has its own due date — missing them costs interest and penalties, not just goodwill.
Close the period: Lock the payroll period once you are satisfied. Locking prevents retrospective edits that would desynchronise your books from your filings. If something genuinely needs correcting afterwards, handle it as an adjustment in the following month rather than reopening a filed period.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can greytHR handle multi-state Professional Tax?

Yes. PT slabs are configured per state and applied based on each employee's work location. The administrative risk is not the software but the data — an employee who transfers between states needs their location updated, or they will be deducted under the wrong slab until someone notices.

Does greytHR generate the PF ECR and ESI files?

Yes. It produces the PF ECR file for EPFO upload and the ESI contribution file in the required format, along with Professional Tax challans and Form 24Q data for quarterly TDS returns. You still file them on the respective portals; greytHR produces the data in the format each expects.

What happens if I need to correct payroll after releasing payslips?

greytHR supports reprocessing, but if payslips are out and money has moved, the cleaner path is an adjustment in the next cycle. Reprocessing a released month creates a mismatch between what employees saw, what the bank paid and what you filed — which is harder to explain than a visible correction next month.

How long does a monthly payroll run take in greytHR?

Processing itself is minutes. The full cycle — attendance lock, revisions, inputs, statutory checks, variance review, bank file and payslip release — typically takes half a day to a day for a 100-200 person company once the process is established. First runs take longer.

Can employees see their own payslips and tax declarations?

Yes, through the Employee Self-Service portal and mobile app. Employees view payslips, submit investment declarations for TDS, apply for leave and check attendance without emailing HR. Turning ESS on properly is the single biggest reduction in HR query volume most companies see.

We are an authorised greytHR partner — implementation, statutory configuration for every state you operate in, and payroll support when a cycle goes sideways.