- The eleven steps from close to payout
- How an early mistake spreads
- Why each deduction has its own basis
- Why the same number should be entered once
The short answer
Payroll is a sequence, not a subtraction. Each step's result becomes the next step's input, so one wrong number early on moves every figure after it. That is why the source data — attendance and employee records — matters more than the formulas.
The usual order
- Close attendance for the month
- Check the actual hours (worked, absent, paid leave, overtime, late night)
- Calculate gross pay (base pay, allowances, overtime)
- Deduct social insurance (health, child and child-rearing support levy, long-term care, pension)
- Deduct employment insurance
- Withhold income tax
- Deduct resident tax
- Other deductions set by company rules
- Net pay
- Payslips
- Bank transfer
The order is deliberate. Income tax, for example, is read from the withholding tables using pay *after* social insurance has been deducted, so a wrong premium means wrong tax too.
How an early mistake spreads
Attendance has the widest reach. Get one overtime hour wrong and overtime pay changes, then gross pay, then employment insurance and income tax, then net pay — four or five figures from one error.
Social insurance premiums are not recalculated from each month's pay; they use a fixed *standard monthly remuneration*. Employment insurance, by contrast, is the actual wages paid times the rate. Both are "premiums", but treating them the same way leads to mistakes.
Income tax and resident tax differ as well: income tax is calculated by the employer from the tables, while resident tax is a fixed amount notified by the municipality.
Fix the data, not the formula
Most monthly errors come from the inputs:
- Attendance edited after the close, but not passed on
- Joiners, leavers and dependant changes not reaching payroll
- Rates and tax tables not switched to the new year
- The same number typed into attendance and payroll, then corrected in only one place
The last one is the easiest to prevent and the most common.
Never type the same number twice
When confirmed attendance flows straight into payroll, there is nothing to re-key and nothing to mistype. APOUL KINTAI aims to run from clock-in to month-end close in one flow and hand the confirmed figures on. The key is to freeze the numbers at the close, and to keep a record whenever they are changed afterwards.
Summary
Run payroll in a fixed order, keep the source data right, treat each deduction by its own basis, and never enter the same figure twice. Rates and tax tables can change every year, so check the primary sources whenever they switch.
APOUL KINTAI