Payroll Setup
Payroll setup: what to configure and in what order
The four building blocks of payroll — statutory rules, salary templates, salary assignments and pay groups — and the order to set them up.
- Payroll Admin
- HR Admin
On this page (3 sections)
The building blocks
| Screen | Answers the question |
|---|---|
| Statutory Rule Sets | What are the legal rates, ceilings and slabs — PF, ESI, Professional Tax, TDS (or US federal and state taxes) — and from when? |
| Salary Structure Templates | How is a salary broken into Basic, HRA, allowances, deductions and employer contributions? |
| Salary Structure Assignment | Which template and annual salary does each employee get, from what date? |
| Pay Groups | How often do we pay, and what are the pay periods and pay dates? |
Statutory rules and salaries are effective-dated: a change applies from a date you choose and earlier values are kept, so every pay run uses the values in force for its period.
Your payroll country
Payroll reads your country, currency and financial-year start month from your organisation’s details in Mocha — you don’t choose a country inside payroll. Payroll calculation is available for India and the United States.
| India | United States | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual salary is called | CTC (includes employer contributions) | Annual Base Salary |
| Statutory deductions | PF, ESI, Professional Tax, TDS | Social Security, Medicare, federal and state income tax |
| Attendance affects pay | Yes — salaried pay is prorated | No |
Recommended setup order
Confirm your organisation’s country, currency and financial-year start month.
Review the rates in Statutory Rule Sets.
Build your salary structure templates.
Create a pay group and generate its pay periods.
Assign a salary structure to every employee you pay.
Set up holidays, work schedules and leave so pay is prorated correctly.
Related articles
- Payroll SetupStatutory rule setsReview and update PF, ESI, Professional Tax, TDS and other statutory rates as effective-dated versions — with a source for every number.
- Payroll SetupBuild salary structure templatesDefine how a CTC is split into earnings, deductions and employer contributions using fixed amounts, percentages and a balancing remainder.
- Running Payroll & ComplianceRun a pay runCreate a pay run for one period of a pay group, review totals and payslips, fix employees who couldn’t be calculated, and recalculate.