Payroll reports to send clients each month
Which payroll reports a bureau should send its clients each month, what each one shows, and how to explain the change from last month's figures.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Accountants & audit firms in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Most payroll clients judge their bureau on one thing: whether staff were paid correctly and on time. The second thing they notice, usually when something surprises them, is whether they understood what they were paying for. A wage bill that jumps without warning, a tax payment nobody expected, or a bank file total that does not match the figure in the owner's head will cost the bureau more goodwill than any calculation error.
A short, consistent monthly pack prevents most of those conversations. It tells the client what the payroll cost, who joined and left, what must be paid to whom and by when, and why this month differs from last. This article sets out what belongs in that pack and where each piece comes from in Achekam.
Cost, headcount and staff movements
Achekam's payroll reports show cost, headcount and staff movements by month and by department. Those three views answer the questions owners actually ask:
- What did staff cost us this month? Cost by department shows where the money went, not just the total.
- How many people do we employ? Headcount by department, month by month, shows growth or shrinkage at a glance.
- Who came and went? Staff movements list starters and leavers, which explain most changes in cost.
Send these by department where the client has departments, even small ones. A restaurant owner who sees the kitchen's cost separately from front-of-house will ask better questions than one who sees a single line.
The payment schedule
Each approved run has a payment schedule, downloadable as CSV, listing what is to be paid to each employee. Marking it paid only records the fact: Achekam moves no money.
For South African employers, the bureau can also produce a bank payment file for an approved run, either in FNB's CSV template or as a CSV in a column order the firm has set up for the client's bank, for the client to import into its own online banking. Achekam does not pay anyone.
Include a one-line summary in the pack: number of payments, total, and the payday. The client's bookkeeper or owner should be able to compare that total with what the bank shows before releasing the payments. If they differ, nothing should be released until someone has found out why.
Amounts owed to authorities and funds
Net pay is only part of what the client owes. The rest goes to tax authorities and funds, and these payments are the ones clients most often forget or mistime.
When an approved run is posted to the client's ledger as a wages journal, the amounts owed to the tax authority and funds are recorded as liabilities. The statutory documents give the detail:
| Country | What Achekam prepares from approved runs |
|---|---|
| South Africa | The monthly EMP201 figures and PDF, which a person files on SARS eFiling, recording the reference in Achekam |
| Nigeria | Monthly schedules for PAYE per State, pension per pension fund administrator, NHF and NSITF |
| Kenya | The P10, SHIF, NSSF and NITA schedules |
Nigerian and Kenyan schedules download only as Achekam's own CSV layout and a PDF, not in each authority's upload template, so someone transfers the figures into each authority's channel.
In the pack, list each amount, the body it is owed to and the date it is due. Clients rarely object to paying statutory amounts; they object to discovering them late.
Explaining the change from last month
A pack that only reports this month invites the question "why is it higher?" Answer it before it is asked. A simple movement schedule, in words or in a small table, takes last month's total cost to this month's:
- Last month's total cost.
- Add new starters, less leavers.
- Add or deduct changes in pay rates or salaries.
- Add or deduct the change in variable pay: overtime, commission, allowances.
- Add or deduct one-off items: bonuses, final pay, back pay.
- This month's total cost.
If the movement does not reconcile, the unexplained difference is itself a finding, and the bureau should find it before the client does. Auditors use the same kind of month-on-month analysis when they test payroll: ACCA's article on the audit of wages explains how wages and salaries are tested, from controls testing at the interim audit to substantive and analytical procedures. A bureau that already reconciles each month gives the client's auditor much less to query at year end.
A monthly pack the client will read
Keep the pack short and in the same order every month, so the client learns where to look:
- Cover note: payday, total cost, total net pay, and one or two sentences on anything unusual.
- Cost, headcount and movements by department.
- Movement from last month, reconciled.
- Payment summary: count and total of payments, with the schedule or bank file attached.
- Statutory amounts due, each with its body and due date.
- Exceptions: anything the client must act on, such as missing employee details, a payment left out because an account was not yet verified, or an input the bureau queried.
Send it to the person the client named in writing as entitled to see salary information, not to a general mailbox. A payroll pack contains every employee's pay, and the wrong recipient is a confidentiality breach, however well meant.
At year end, the same reports feed the employee cost note in the client's financial statements; see the staff costs note from payroll. Payslips to the employees themselves are a separate delivery with their own record, covered in getting payslips to a client's employees.
Draft the cover note template once, agree it with your three largest payroll clients, and use the same structure for every client from next month.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
