Payroll Will Not Calculate, or the Totals Look Wrong
The run refuses to calculate, somebody is absent from the period, or the payslips come out as zeros.
Run the readiness check on the payroll screen before anything else. It names the four faults that cause nearly every bad run: no Nepal tax brackets installed (tax is then skipped entirely rather than miscalculated), no statutory salary components assigned (so there is nothing to deduct), employees with a blank basic salary (which produces zero gross and cascades into zero everything), and employees with no salary components at all (who get basic and nothing else). Each of those has a one-click fix. A run that refuses outright is a different thing: the message names the wizard steps that are unfinished.
What the message on your screen means
These are the strings NepalHRM shows, word for word. Find yours and read across.
No Nepal tax brackets configured
- What it means
- The workspace has no bracket set, so the calculator has nothing to tax against and leaves tax out completely.
- What to do
- Install the Nepal defaults from the payroll settings. Then confirm the fiscal year on the settings names the year you are running.
Missing statutory salary components
- What it means
- PF, tax or the other statutory component types are not set up, so there are no rows for the calculator to deduct.
- What to do
- Install the defaults, then apply the standard structure to all employees so each person carries the components.
employees without a basic salary
- What it means
- Those employees have no salary figure, which produces zero gross and therefore zero on every other line.
- What to do
- Open each named employee and set the salary on their work information.
have no salary components
- What it means
- They will be paid basic only. No PF, no allowances. This is a warning rather than a blocker, because it is occasionally intended.
- What to do
- Bulk assign, or apply the standard structure to all employees.
Cannot edit a paid/locked period
- What it means
- The period has been marked paid and is frozen.
- What to do
- Reopen it. The reopen is recorded with who did it and why, and after two reopens it takes a super admin.
Work through these in order
Cheapest first. Each step says what you should see if it worked, so you can stop as soon as it does.
Run the readiness check
It is a pre-flight list, and it is specific: it names counts and employees rather than saying something went wrong. Start here even when you think you know the cause.
You have a list of concrete faults with a fix against each.
Install the Nepal defaults if brackets or components are missing
Missing brackets and missing statutory components are the two faults that produce silently wrong output rather than an error, so they are worth clearing first.
Tax and statutory deductions start appearing on the payslips.
Fill in blank salaries
An employee with no salary figure cannot be priced. They either show zero or drop out of the run entirely.
The readiness check stops naming them.
Check the fiscal year on the payroll settings
Bracket sets are held per fiscal year. If the workspace still names last year, the run finds no matching brackets and the result looks like a tax exemption.
The current fiscal year is selected and a bracket set exists for it.
Decide whether attendance should affect pay
Attendance impact is a setting and it is off by default. With it off, payslips use the flat monthly salary whatever the attendance sheet says, which is correct for some companies and a bug report from others.
Absences either reduce gross pay or do not, deliberately.
Open one payslip and expand the line items
Every earning, deduction and contribution is listed individually. Compare that against the rates on the payroll settings, not against another employee's payslip.
You can name the line that is wrong instead of describing the total.
Check the salary structure before blaming an overtime rate
Overtime is priced off the basic component, not off gross. If basic and allowances are not separated on the structure, overtime is wrong even when the multiplier is right.
The structure separates basic from allowances and the overtime line moves.
Look for a double-counted reimbursement
A reimbursement set to pay out with payroll is added to the payslip automatically. Entering it again as an adjustment pays it twice.
The reimbursement appears once.
What the system does
- Wizard steps
- sixeach finished or explicitly skipped
- Period ladder
- Draft, Reviewed, Approved, Paidonly an approved period can be marked paid
- Reopening a paid period
- twiceafter that it needs a super admin, and the reason is recorded
- Attendance effect on pay
- off unless enabledwithout it, payslips carry the flat monthly salary
- Tax brackets
- one set per fiscal yearwith none installed, tax is skipped rather than estimated
Still stuck? Send us this
Include all of it in the first message and the first reply back is usually a fix rather than a question.
- The period name, and whether it is Draft, Reviewed, Approved or Paid.
- The readiness check output, copied rather than described.
- One employee name whose payslip is wrong, with the line item and the figure you expected.
- Whether attendance impact is on for the workspace.
Asked most often
Usually because no salary is set on their record, since payroll cannot price somebody it has no figure for. The readiness check counts them for you. After that, compare their hire date and employment status against the period dates.
Almost always blank basic salaries, or no salary components assigned to anyone. Both are named by the readiness check, and both have a bulk fix: set the salaries, then apply the standard structure to all employees.
Check whether tax brackets are installed at all, then check the fiscal year on the payroll settings. With no matching bracket set the calculator skips tax rather than guessing, so the payslip looks like an exemption instead of a misconfiguration.
Only if you meant it to. Attendance impact on pay is a setting and it is off by default. Turn it on if unpaid leave and absent days should cut pay.
Reopen it first. Reopening records who did it and why, and a period can be reopened twice before it needs a super admin. That ceiling exists so a period that keeps reopening becomes a conversation rather than a habit.
Recomputing attendance inside a closed period does not reissue payslips. Reopen the period so payroll recalculates against the corrected days.
Screens, labels and limits change between releases. If something here does not match what you see, tell us and we will correct the page.
Related guides
- A Payslip Is Missing, Wrong or Will Not DownloadA month is absent from your payslip list, the download opens a print dialog or nothing at all, or the figures do not match what you expected.
- Attendance Is Missing or WrongA day is marked absent when the person was at work, or the in and out times do not match reality.
- A Leave Balance Is Zero or the Wrong NumberAn employee cannot see a leave type, or the days available do not match the policy you configured.
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