Collaborate without compromising on payroll security using Zoho Payroll

Collaborate without compromising on payroll security using Zoho Payroll


Welcome to the next session of our Community Learning Series

Today we will throw some light on how Zoho Payroll lets you collaborate with your distributed workforce and stay in control of payroll operations without compromising on the security of your employees' data. 

As a Zoho Payroll user, your organisation will possess all the crucial information about your employees like bank account details, personal information, and salary details. Therefore, it is critical that this information stays secure. If it falls into the wrong hands, it can lead to identity theft or worse. This in turn can have adverse effects on your employees' trust and might damage your organisation's reputation. 

To show how you can take control of your payroll operations in a secure way, we'll look at the below organisational hierarchy as an example.

                                        




The following table lists the responsibilities for each role as part of the payroll processing team.  


                                                

From the table above, you can see that only the CEO requires complete access to all the modules. The remaining users need access only to specific modules based on their roles. 

As the payroll admin of the organisation, the CEO can set up multi-level access in Zoho Payroll and allow the users in the organisation to access only selected data and functions. This way the CEO can maintain centralised control yet present the same user interface for all of the staff to get their work done. Distinctive user roles help cross-department staff can work in synergy without compromising the security of payroll data. 

As your organization's CEO or payroll admin, here's how you can assign access for each of your user roles.

Log in to Zoho Payroll.

Under Settings, select Users and Roles


                                                     

Refer to our self-help resources for step-by-step guidance on creating multiple distinct user roles.

Once you have created all the roles within your organisation, let's define the permissions for each of the roles. 

Payroll staff:

Let's assume that the responsibility of your payroll staff will be to maintain and update payroll records, validate payroll inputs, and get the pay run ready. 

Your payroll staff will need to collect employee details and payroll inputs submitted through various sources, and then create a pay run with all the information collected. 

They will need access to the following modules:
  • Employee module to maintain employee records.
  • Pay run module to create and edit pay runs. 
  • Preferences module to collect employee reimbursement and POI data 
   
                                               
   
Here you can allow the payroll staff to only view the basic employee details, but not create or edit them. This will ensure they cannot tamper with the employee data. 

In the pay run module, you can decide that they can only create and edit the pay runs, not approve or pay them. When you move on to setting the permissions for the other roles, you'll probably give the payroll admin approval access for any pay run and give the finance team permission to make payments to the employees. Each role has a unique set of permissions based on its duties and position in the hierarchy. 

                                

Now that the different roles have been set, the admin can invite users into the payroll organisation. 

Select Users under Users and Roles and start adding your employees under the different roles you have curated. All they have to do is accept the invitations they receive via email and create a Zoho account using the same email, and they are good to go.

Here's how the users will be seeing Zoho Payroll based on the roles that they've been assigned. 

HR staff:

Can add new employee details while onboarding new staff to Zoho Payroll.



Payroll staff:

Can enter payroll inputs of employees, create and edit pay runs.



HR manager:

Can approve salary revisions, reimbursements and proof of investments. Has access to all reports.



Finance manager:

Can create, edit and delete employee loans and record salary payments. 



External auditor:

Can access payroll, statutory and tax reports. 




So the roles have been created, the users are added, and the admin knows which actions each user can perform. We haven't mentioned user tracking yet, but that's another kind of accountability that's available. If a discrepancy occurs in the payroll system, the payroll admin can check the activity log report to see exactly which actions each user has performed. All of this helps you keep your payroll data safe with Zoho Payroll.

Do let us know in the comments below how you have customised the roles in your payroll organisation. 

Also, check out our previous post on a checklist to follow before hitting pay run here.

Until next time!







    Access your files securely from anywhere







                            Zoho Developer Community




                                                  • Desk Community Learning Series


                                                  • Digest


                                                  • Functions


                                                  • Meetups


                                                  • Kbase


                                                  • Resources


                                                  • Glossary


                                                  • Desk Marketplace


                                                  • MVP Corner


                                                  • Word of the Day


                                                  • Ask the Experts





                                                            Manage your brands on social media



                                                                  Zoho TeamInbox Resources



                                                                      Zoho CRM Plus Resources

                                                                        Zoho Books Resources


                                                                          Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                                                                            Zoho Projects Resources


                                                                              Zoho Sprints Resources


                                                                                Qntrl Resources


                                                                                  Zoho Creator Resources



                                                                                      Zoho CRM Resources

                                                                                      • CRM Community Learning Series

                                                                                        CRM Community Learning Series


                                                                                      • Kaizen

                                                                                        Kaizen

                                                                                      • Functions

                                                                                        Functions

                                                                                      • Meetups

                                                                                        Meetups

                                                                                      • Kbase

                                                                                        Kbase

                                                                                      • Resources

                                                                                        Resources

                                                                                      • Digest

                                                                                        Digest

                                                                                      • CRM Marketplace

                                                                                        CRM Marketplace

                                                                                      • MVP Corner

                                                                                        MVP Corner









                                                                                          Design. Discuss. Deliver.

                                                                                          Create visually engaging stories with Zoho Show.

                                                                                          Get Started Now


                                                                                            Zoho Show Resources

                                                                                              Zoho Writer

                                                                                              Get Started. Write Away!

                                                                                              Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                                                                                                Zoho CRM コンテンツ



                                                                                                  Nederlandse Hulpbronnen


                                                                                                      ご検討中の方




                                                                                                              • Recent Topics

                                                                                                              • PDF Annotation is here - Mark Up PDFs Your Way!

                                                                                                                Reviewing PDFs just got a whole lot easier. You can now annotate PDFs directly in Zoho Notebook. Highlight important sections, add text, insert images, apply watermarks, and mark up documents in detail without leaving your notes. No app switching. No
                                                                                                              • Bulk update Profile Permissions

                                                                                                                Dears, What should we do if we add new forms or reports and need to update more than 20 permissions? Updating them one by one feels pretty harsh, doesn’t it?
                                                                                                              • Feature Request - Ability to Customise Contact Info Card on Ticket Details View

                                                                                                                Hi Desk Team, I've added a "Contact Priority" and "Account Prioirty" field and it would be very useful to agents if they could see that information in the Contact Info card on the Ticket Details view. It would be great if we could choose some fields to
                                                                                                              • Customizable UI components in pages | Theme builder

                                                                                                                Anyone know when these roadmap items are scheduled for release? They were originally scheduled for Q4 2025. https://www.zoho.com/creator/product-roadmap.html
                                                                                                              • Feature Requests - Contact Coloured Picklist Visibility & Field Visibility During Ticket Creation

                                                                                                                Hi Desk Team, I have 2 feature requests for you. Since Coloured Picklists are now available in Desk, It would be great if the colours were visible on the Related Details (Contact Information) when creating a ticket. In the screenshot below, I have 2 fields
                                                                                                              • Unify Overlapping Functionalities Across Zoho Products

                                                                                                                Hi Zoho One Team, We would like to raise a concern about the current overlap of core functionalities across various Zoho applications. While Zoho offers a rich suite of tools, many applications include similar or identical features—such as shift management,
                                                                                                              • Filter in fields from Jira extension

                                                                                                                We have installed the Jira extension so we can maken Jira issues from Zoho desk. In Zoho desk I can also see the Jira issue status for example but I can not filter on this field. I would like to setup an filter showing me the closed Jira issues. How can
                                                                                                              • text length in list report mobile/tablet

                                                                                                                Is there a way to make the full text of a text field appear in the list report on mobile and tablet? With custom layouts, the text is always truncated after a certain number of characters.
                                                                                                              • Zoho Creator customer portal limitation | Zoho One

                                                                                                                I'm asking you all for any feedback as to the logic or reasoning behind drastically limiting portal users when Zoho already meters based on number of records. I'm a single-seat, Zoho One Enterprise license holder. If my portal users are going to add records, wouldn't that increase revenue for Zoho as that is how Creator is monetized? Why limit my customer portal to only THREE external users when more users would equate to more records being entered into the database?!? (See help ticket reply below.)
                                                                                                              • Link Contacts to Billed Accounts

                                                                                                                Hello, I want to do a survey on all my customers of 2025. For that I want to select all contacts linked to accounts who where billed in 2025. How to I create this link to I can then use Zoho Survey with this database of contacts?
                                                                                                              • Export all of our manuals from Zoho Learn in one go

                                                                                                                Hi, I know there's a way to export manuals in Zoho Learn, but I want to export everything in one go so it won't take so long. I can't see a way to do this, can I get some assistance or is this a feature in the pipeline? Thanks, Hannah
                                                                                                              • Bring Zoho Shifts Capabilities into Zoho People Shift Module

                                                                                                                Hello Zoho People Product Team, After a deep review of the Zoho People Shift module and a direct comparison with Zoho Shifts, we would like to raise a feature request and serious concern regarding the current state of shift management in Zoho People.
                                                                                                              • Historical Sales Info - Blend with Finance Invoice Line Items, Access in CRM and Desk

                                                                                                                My company has been using Zoho One since 2021, with sales data going back through 2020. However, we have been in business much longer, and we have historical sales information that we want to have at our fingertips when talking with customers (usually
                                                                                                              • Is there API Doc for Zoho Survey?

                                                                                                                Hi everyone, Is there API doc for Zoho Survey? Currently evaluating a solution - use case to automate survey administration especially for internal use. But after a brief search, I couldn't find API doc for this. So I thought I should ask here. Than
                                                                                                              • Pre-Zoho Sales Info - Best Way to Add to Desk / CRM

                                                                                                                My company has been using Zoho One since 2021, with sales data going back through 2020. However, we have been in business much longer, and we have historical sales information that we want to have at our fingertips when talking with customers (usually
                                                                                                              • Shift-Centric View for Assigning and Managing Shifts in Zoho People

                                                                                                                Hello Zoho People Product Team, Greetings and hope you are doing well. This feature request is related to Zoho People - please don't move it to zoho one! We would like to submit a feature request regarding the shift assignment and management view in Zoho
                                                                                                              • CRM function REST API response format

                                                                                                                Is there a way to control the JSON response returned by the CRM function REST API? If I call a function using either OAuth or an API key it returns a 200 OK response with a string in the format shown below. I am using a particular feature of an external
                                                                                                              • Add Employee Availability Functionality to Zoho People Shift Module

                                                                                                                Hello Zoho People Product Team, Greetings and hope you are doing well. We would like to submit a feature request to enhance the Zoho People Shift module by adding employee availability management, similar to the functionality available in Zoho Shifts.
                                                                                                              • Using MPN across multiple SKUs and inventory tracking

                                                                                                                I have several different SKU's that share a common MPN and would like to track inventory by MPN. SKU1 has MPN1 assigned SKU2 has MPN1 assigned Here is an example If I start with 5 of MPN 1 in stock I want each SKU1 and SKU2 to show as 5 in stock, If I
                                                                                                              • Unable to Access Application:

                                                                                                                Whenever I try to access my application from the desktop, say I am editing it and want to test something in the desktop environment I get: An error has occurred. An internal error has occurred. Please check the URL , or try refreshing the page I can edit
                                                                                                              • CRM gets location smart with the all new Map View: visualize records, locate records within any radius, and more

                                                                                                                Hello all, We've introduced a new way to work with location data in Zoho CRM: the Map View. Instead of scrolling through endless lists, your records now appear as pins on a map. Built on top of the all-new address field and powered by Mappls (MapMyIndia),
                                                                                                              • Cannot see Application from Lookup field

                                                                                                                Hi all, I am trying to access data for an application on our account via a lookup field; however, the application doesn't appear in the dropdown at all. Can anyone shed any light on this, please? I have asked Zoho support; however, they're just as confused,
                                                                                                              • Cannot see correct DNS config for mail after moving domain to another provider

                                                                                                                I have moved my domain from one provider to another and after that zoho mail stopped working (expected). Problem is, zoho mail admin panel still shows (10 hours after move) that all records are correct while I haven't changed anything in my domain DNS
                                                                                                              • Zoho CRM Meetings Module Issues

                                                                                                                We have a use-case that is very common in today's world, but won't work in Zoho CRM. We have an SDR (Sales Development Rep) who makes many calls per day to Leads and Contacts, and schedules meetings for our primary Sales Reps. He does this by logging
                                                                                                              • Zoho Books integration sync from Zoho CRM does not work

                                                                                                                Hi Zoho Community & Zoho Support We just tried to get a sync some products into Zoho Books from CRM using the native sync and we're getting an error: "It looks like some mandatory fields you're trying to map are empty. Please provide valid field names
                                                                                                              • P & L Sub-categorized accounts

                                                                                                                How can I show sub-categorized Income and Expense accounts on the P & L report?
                                                                                                              • Report showing Bill Details with Project and Sales Invoice Number

                                                                                                                Hi There, I am hoping that someone can help, I am looking for report that can show the bill and expense details along with project its as assigned to and the invoice number that the sales has been raised in. The goal is I can filter a customer/project
                                                                                                              • Advanced Payment for Inventory Items with serial numbers

                                                                                                                Hello, We sell equipment that we track the unique serial numbers on using Sales Orders. We can charge the customers an advanced payment, then the balance on delivery. We cannot figure out a way to do this in Books/Inventory: - Cannot part invoice a SO
                                                                                                              • Is it possible to restrict ZCRM user to see only custom views created by administrator

                                                                                                                I have segmented data in my CRM and I want to allow different users to be able to see only parts of it based on some criteria. I've tried to create and share a custom view, but then there is always an option for user to see all open lead for example.
                                                                                                              • Issues Logging into ZOHO

                                                                                                                Hello, one of my coworkers is having issues logging into ZOHO, she has requested a code when entering and the email is correct but she has not received the code. can you help us with this?
                                                                                                              • Google Fonts Integration in Pagesense Popup Editor

                                                                                                                Hello Zoho Pagesense Team, We hope you're doing well. We’d like to submit a feature request to enhance Zoho Pagesense’s popup editor with Google Fonts support. Current Limitation: Currently, Pagesense offers a limited set of default fonts. Google Fonts
                                                                                                              • Add Popup Rejection Metrics to Reports

                                                                                                                Hello Zoho PageSense Team, We would like to request improved reporting for popup interactions. Current Limitation: PageSense currently provides conversion data, but there is no clear visibility into: Popup rejections Popup closes (✕ button clicks) Dismissals
                                                                                                              • Ability to Reset / Reinitialize Popup Cookies

                                                                                                                Hello Zoho PageSense Team, We would like to request the ability to manually reset popup cookies. Current Limitation: At the moment, it is not possible to initiate a new popup cookie from the our side. Visitors who rejected or closed a popup will not see
                                                                                                              • Control Popup Cookie Expiration Duration

                                                                                                                Hello Zoho PageSense Team, We would like to request an enhancement related to popup cookie management. Current Limitation: Currently, PageSense popup cookies remain active for 365 days, and this duration cannot be modified by us. If a visitor closes or
                                                                                                              • Clone / Export Popup Design Across PageSense Projects

                                                                                                                Hello Zoho PageSense Team, We hope you’re doing well. We would like to request an enhancement that allows popup designs to be reused across different PageSense projects. Problem Statement: Currently, Zoho PageSense allows popups to be duplicated only
                                                                                                              • Are there settings for hyperlinks?

                                                                                                                Clicking a hyperlinked cell in Sheet creates this little pop-up with the actual hyperlink inside. Is it possible to have a 1-click link where if you click the cell it opens the link directly with no pop-up?
                                                                                                              • Automatically include all ticket attachments in the ticket resolution email

                                                                                                                Hello Zoho Community, We are implementing Zoho Desk in a real customer-facing production environment and have run into a limitation that is becoming a blocking requirement for our clients. The problem When a ticket is closed or resolved, Zoho Desk sends
                                                                                                              • adding several team members to an Opportunity

                                                                                                                How can we add several team members to one opportunity for collaboration? I have researched and only found something called Deal Team which I cannot find in my CRM to configure.
                                                                                                              • Finding text within a ticket: Expand All or Search this Ticket

                                                                                                                The auto-collapse feature within a ticket is nice for screen scrolling, however it makes it difficult to find text within the ticket if the email is collapsed. In fact you cannot find text if it is collapsed. I would like to propose a feature that allows
                                                                                                              • Books & Desk. Client mapping

                                                                                                                Hi, I’ve been using Zoho Books for several years and am now looking to improve my customer service. I'm experimenting with Zoho Desk and want to sync and map my client data from Zoho Books. However, it seems that mapping requires both contacts to have
                                                                                                              • Next Page