Define Salary Structures And Statutory Rules

A salary is not a single number. It is a gross figure made up of earnings (basic pay, housing, transport) minus deductions (tax, pension, levies). In Veona HR you describe that build-up once as a salary structure with its pay components, then tune the statutory rules — the legally mandated deductions for your country — that the payroll engine applies on top. Get these two screens right and every pay run computes net pay correctly, the same way, every month.

The words you will meet:

• Salary structure — a named template (for example “Clinical Staff Grade A”) that holds a set of pay components and a currency. An employee is later assigned to a structure with their own monthly gross.
• Pay component — one line in the build-up. It is either an Earning (adds to pay) or a Deduction (subtracts), and it is valued either as a Fixed amount or as a Percentage of gross.
• Statutory rule — a deduction (or employer contribution) required by law, such as PAYE (Pay As You Earn income tax), pension, or a housing/social-security levy. Veona ships ready-made country packs for Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Liberia; the rules are data you can tune, not code.
• Minor units — money is stored to the smallest unit (kobo, pesewa, cent) so totals never drift by rounding. You type ordinary amounts; Veona converts at the edge.

Meet Tunde, a Payroll Officer standing up payroll for a Nigerian facility. We will take him from a blank structure to a country statutory pack he understands and can adjust.

Who / when: the HR Manager, Payroll Officer or Administrator — at payroll setup, and any time pay components change or a statutory band is updated by the authorities. Building structures and editing statutory rules both require the structure-manage permission.

Define it, start to finish

1. Payroll Officer — open Human Resources → Payroll & Expenses → Salary Structures. The screen opens on its “Structures” tab. Press “New Structure”, enter a “Name” (for example “Clinical Staff Grade A”) and a 3-letter “Currency” (NGN), then press “Create”.
2. Payroll Officer — find the new structure in the table and press “Components” on its row. The components panel opens. Add your first earning: type a “Component Name” (for example “Basic Salary”), leave “Kind” on “Earning”, choose a “Basis” of “Fixed Amount” or “Percentage Of Gross”, fill the amount or rate, and press “Add Component”. It appears in the list.
3. Payroll Officer — repeat for each earning (housing, transport) and each deduction. To add a deduction, set “Kind” to “Deduction” before pressing “Add Component”. Components stack up in the panel, each showing its kind, basis and value.
4. Payroll Officer — close the panel and open the Statutory Rules screen at Human Resources → Payroll & Expenses → Statutory Rules. The page header names the active country for this facility (for example “NG”) and lists the rules the engine applies — PAYE, pension, housing/social-security levies — each with its kind, who it applies to (Employee, Employer, or both), and whether it is active.
5. Payroll Officer — to tune a rule, press “Edit” on its row. You can change its “Name”, set it Active or Inactive, and adjust its “Rule Parameters” (the band tables and rates, shown as editable JSON). Press “Save”. The payroll engine reads these rows directly, so a change here changes how net pay is calculated on the next run.

Note

Pay components and statutory rules do different jobs. Components are your tenant’s pay design — the allowances and in-house deductions you choose. Statutory rules are the legal deductions for your country, pre-loaded and editable. The payroll engine combines both: it applies your components, then the statutory arithmetic, to reach each payslip’s net.

Tip

A percentage component is calculated against gross at run time, so you do not have to recompute it when someone’s gross changes. Use a fixed amount where the value is the same for everyone on the structure, and a percentage where it should scale with pay.

Other ways this goes

Creating a salary structure

1. Payroll Officer — open Human Resources → Payroll & Expenses → Salary Structures, stay on the “Structures” tab, and press “New Structure”.
2. Enter the “Name” and “Currency” and press “Create”. The structure is now selectable when you assign an employee a salary on the “Assignments” tab.

Adding an earning pay component

1. Payroll Officer — open a structure’s “Components” panel from its row.
2. Enter a “Component Name”, leave “Kind” on “Earning”, pick a “Basis” (Fixed Amount or Percentage Of Gross), supply the amount or rate, and press “Add Component”. The earning is added to the build-up immediately.

Adding a statutory-flagged deduction component

Most legally mandated deductions are handled for you by the Statutory Rules screen, so you usually do not add them by hand. Where you do want a deduction component on a structure, add it as a Deduction so it subtracts from pay.

1. Payroll Officer — in the “Components” panel, set “Kind” to “Deduction”, name the line, choose its basis and value, and press “Add Component”. It joins the list as a deduction.

Editing or deleting a pay component

1. Payroll Officer — open the structure’s “Components” panel.
2. To remove a component, press “Remove” on its row; it is taken off the structure. To change a component’s value, remove it and add the corrected line — the panel always reflects the current set.

Updating a tenant-editable statutory rule (for example a PAYE or pension band)

1. Payroll Officer — open Human Resources → Payroll & Expenses → Statutory Rules and press “Edit” on the rule (for example “PAYE” or “Pension”).
2. Adjust the “Rule Parameters” JSON — the graduated bands, rates, caps or reliefs — keeping it valid JSON. If you paste something malformed, Veona refuses with “The rule parameters must be valid JSON.” and points you back to fix it.
3. Press “Save”. The change shows “Statutory rule updated.” and applies to the next pay run. To suspend a rule entirely, set it Inactive in the same editor rather than deleting it.

Viewing the active statutory country on the overview

1. Payroll Officer — open Human Resources → Payroll & Expenses → Statutory Rules. The header reads “The payroll engine applies these rules for your facility’s country” and names the active country in brackets (NG, GH, KE or LR). That country is set for the facility; the rules listed beneath are its pack, ready to tune.

Blocked: structure-manage permission required

The pay design is a privileged surface. You can view salary structures and statutory rules with ordinary HR read access, but creating a structure, adding or removing a component, and editing a statutory rule all require the structure-manage permission, held by HR Managers and Payroll Officers.

Caution

If your role lacks the structure-manage permission, the create and edit actions are denied by the server even if a button is reachable — deny-by-default. Ask an Administrator to grant the Payroll Officer or HR Manager role before you build structures or change statutory bands. Note too that assigning an employee a salary on the “Assignments” tab is a separate payroll-admin action, kept apart from designing the structure.

What happens next

With structures, components and statutory rules defined, an employee can be assigned to a structure with their monthly gross (on the “Assignments” tab), and the payroll engine has everything it needs to build a pay run: it applies your earnings and deductions, layers on the country’s statutory arithmetic, and produces each payslip’s net pay. The numbers you set here flow straight into every pay run from now on.

Follow the trail

• Previous: Set Up The Organisation Structure
• Next: Build, Approve And Pay A Pay Run
• Related: Set Up The Organisation Structure · Reconcile Timesheets And Approve Overtime · Build, Approve And Pay A Pay Run