Once you know how to move around SmoothPay, the next step is understanding how the main screens are organised and what they do. This makes it easier to know where to go when you need to set something up, process payroll, review information, or retrieve outputs.

This guide explains the structure and purpose of the main screens in SmoothPay at a high level.

The Dashboard is the general starting point for day-to-day activity in SmoothPay.

This area is commonly used for:

This is the first screen seen after logging in.

The Staff screen is where employee records are created, maintained, and reviewed.

This screen is usually organised with:

The Staff screen contains the following tabs:

Both the Contract & Leave tabs contain nested tabs that categorise options further

Used for general employee details and identifying information.

Used for employment-related setup, such as work pattern, wage or salary settings, contract type, overtime or TOIL settings, timesheet-related settings, and other contract options.

Used for the employee’s payment of NET pay.

Used to view payroll history for the selected employee. Can also be used to make manual history-related adjustments in some circumstances.

Used to manage leave entitlements, view leave history and make adjustments to leave balances for the selected employee.

Used for employee-specific superannuation settings. Naming convention can vary by jurisdiction e.g. Kiwisaver for New Zealand.

Used for recurring payment or deduction setup that belongs to the selected employee.

Used for employee-specific notes, reminders, or attached information, such as employment agreements, qualifications. It acts as a light HR feature.

Used for employee tax setup and tax-related controls relative to your jurisdiction.

The Staff screen is one of the main working areas in SmoothPay. It houses the employee records and all of their relative relative information. If you need to make changes to your employee record, it will likely need to be done via one of the tabs in the Staff screen.

The Codes screen is where the code structures used by payroll are maintained.

This screen is usually organised around a data column of code categories or code records, with a detail area for the selected item.

The Codes screen contains these categories:

Each category houses a different type of component, most are used for pay inputs, some are used as costing categories and others are used in relation to HR features.

Used for ordinary time, overtime, and other work-related payroll inputs. These type of codes are for paying employees per hour for being at work. They are paid time directly.

Used for leave types and the way leave transactions behave, they are also paid time directly.

Used for payment of all other earnings types. It is not paid time.

Used for deductions and related deduction behaviour.

Used for receiving entities linked to deductions or contributions of superannuation.

Used for costing and analysis structures.

Used for grouping and analysis structures where applicable.

Used for advanced costing features, for non-paid amounts.

The Codes screen controls the components of what makes up an employee's pay and how those components behave, in terms of tax calculations, superannuation and accrual methods and more.

Each individual deployment for a country we provide, has what is needed on a basic level to fulfil standard types of payment for employees, but the flexibility is there to set up anything you need for more complex business operations.

The Settings screen is where company-level defaults and configuration are maintained.

Unlike many other screens, Settings is not usually organised around a data column. Instead, it is typically organised into tabs, with each tab controlling a different part of system-wide behaviour.

Settings tabs includes:

Used for company identity and contact details. Can contain miscellaneous options for some countries

Determines where NET pays will be paid from. Used for bank file output format and related banking setup.

Used for payslip formatting, delivery settings, and defaults for particular pay code types.

Used for ledger setup, account mapping, costing defaults, and accounting output preferences.

Used for company-level default provider and contribution settings.

Used for default settings related to imports that come from specific 3rd party time and attendance systems. As well as some options related to SmoothPay's built in Timesheet option.

Used for broader system defaults such as TOIL, automatic overtime, standard work pattern, and certain general preferences.

If a setting affects the whole company rather than one employee, it will usually be found in Settings.

The Pay dates option is used to manage the period end and payday of the current pay process. Although these need to be set initially, the dates should work intuitively once the dates have been set.

The Payrun screen is where payroll is prepared, reviewed, and finalised.

This is one of the main operational screens in SmoothPay. It is where employee setup, code setup, and company settings come together to produce a payroll.

Payrun control bar containing the main payrun actions

A data column of employees loaded into the current payrun

A set of transaction tabs used for creating different types of pay inputs

A data column of transactions relative to the currently selected transaction tab

A transaction detail panel for the selected employee, tab and transaction

The Payrun control bar sits near the top of the Payrun screen, just below the navigation bar and contains the main actions used to build, review, and finalise payroll.

The visible options are grouped by function by their use cases.

These can include:

Used to bring pay-related data into the current payrun, as well as some other miscellaneous options

Used to control which employees are loaded into the current payrun.

Used to review the current payrun through audit and report outputs before payroll is finalised.

Used to finalise the payrun and turn the drafted payroll into completed payroll history.

Used to store template/default pay entries for the selected employee.

Used to enter or review work code inputs for the selected employee.

Used to preview the selected employee's payslip.

Used to review the selected employee’s overall pay summary and certain payrun-related override fields.

Used as a quick-access path to the selected employee’s contact settings.

Used as a quick-access path to the selected employee’s superannuation settings.

Used as a quick-access path to the selected employee’s tax settings.

Used for final pay and termination calculation and processing.

Used to provide dates for public holidays local to your country's jurisdiction

Used to review leave balance information.

Used to finalise payroll immediately using a reduced process path compared with the standard Process Pays workflow. Not generally recommended.

The employee data column shows the employees currently loaded into the payrun.

They can only be loaded into the Payrun screen via the Who to pay, + button at the bottom of the employee data column (which loads the Who to pay modal), or via an import using the Import button.

Once one of the above methods has been used, SmoothPay loads the employee into the employee data column.

The Payrun screen uses transaction tabs to separate different kinds of payroll entries.

Each tab relates to it's counterpart from the codes screen.

The tabs include:

Each tab shows the transactions for the selected employee that belong to that category.

The main transaction area shows the payroll entries for the selected employee and selected tab.

The transaction data column remains static, but the results displayed in it always correspond to the currently selected tab.

This is where drafted pay lines are entered, reviewed and maintained before payroll is processed.

Some Payrun behaviour, especially around leave handling, summaries, and country-specific payroll rules, can vary between deployments. The overall structure of the Payrun screen is consistent, but some options, fields, and workflows may differ by country.

The Reports screen is the main place where reports are produced from.

This screen is organised by report category. Within each category, a set of reports is available for selection.

Report categories include:

The options within the categories are mainly consistent across jurisdictions, but different options do exist across the board; the biggest differences will always be Tax and Super, as they are directly engineered for fulfilling obligations relative to the payroll's jurisdiction.

Employee detail, contract, leave, and employee-related reports.

Payroll value, costing, payslip, allowance, deduction, and pay-summary reports.

Tax reporting, tax reconciliation, and tax-related outputs.

Contribution schedules, member lists, and related reports and outputs.

Summary analysis and higher-level payroll trend reports.

Audit report for analysing changes in the software.

The Reports screen is for generating outputs from the current state of payroll data at the time the report is run. It only produces data based on completed pay processes.

The Print screen stores previously produced report-style outputs.

This screen is usually organised as a retained output list, where earlier report outputs can be reopened, printed again, or exported.

Users commonly use this screen to:

The Files screen stores generated files for later retrieval.

This area is generally used for retrieving outputs used externally to the system, but does also store some reports which are generated automatically via completion of a pay process.

Depending on the deployment and workflow, Files may contain things such as:

If the system has produced a file that needs to be downloaded later, it will usually appear here.

The Tools option provides access to utility functions and support tools.

This is not a standard screen in the same way as Staff, Payrun, or Settings. It is more of a utility and launcher area.

It generally includes actions such as:

But there are differences between jurisdiction.

The Resources screen is a company-level reference area.

This screen is used to store and access supporting documents and reference material related to payroll or employing staff.

It is not part of payroll calculation or pay processing itself. It is more like an internal document and reference library. Some countries come pre-loaded with useful documents here, such as an IR330 for NZ, but you are able to upload your own documents to this area.

The Help option provides access to support and documentation resources.

Now that you have an understanding of what different areas of the software are for, you should review the Before you process your first pay guide