What's New in Zoho Payroll [India Edition]: December 2021

Hello everyone,

We are excited to bring you all the new features and enhancements we've rolled out in Zoho Payroll last month. Here are the major updates:

Authenticate your email address domain in Zoho Payroll

In Zoho Payroll, you can configure the email address your organisation uses to send reminder emails, payslips, and portal invitations. When you send these emails using email addresses with unauthenticated domains, they may end up in the recipient's spam folder. This means your employees may miss out on important reminders, or it may pave the way for hackers to phish your employees easily. To avoid this, we have introduced an option to authenticate your email address domain by adding the domain's SPF and DKIM records.
Here’s how:

Go to Settings > Preferences > Sender Email Preferences.

Click Authenticate Now → next to the domain that you want to authenticate.

Now, copy the SPF record from the pop-up that follows and add it to the DNS settings of your domain name provider (e.g. GoDaddy).

Next, copy the Host Name and Value for the DKIM record and add it to the DNS settings of your domain name provider.
Once you’ve added both the SPF and DKIM records, click Validate.

Note: It will take a while for your newly added records to reflect on the DNS server. If your validation fails, wait for a while and try again. Also, you can continue to use Zoho Payroll while the records are being validated.

To learn more about sender email preferences, visit our help documentation.

Withhold salary for employees

We have introduced a salary withhold feature, which enables you to halt an employee's pay for a particular duration. This feature would be especially useful when you have a new employee who has joined in the last week of the payroll month and you want to process their pay along with the next month's salary. When you withhold your employee's salary, they will be skipped from the current payroll cycle and their earnings will be paid as arrears when they are released in the subsequent months.
Here's how you can withhold and release an employee's salary in Zoho Payroll:

Go to the Pay Runs module.
Click Create Pay Run.
In the pay run draft, click the Overflow icon (…) next to the employee’s name and click Withhold Salary.

Enter the reason for withholding the salary and click Proceed.
Once you’ve added all the inputs, click the Submit and Approve button in the top-right corner of the page.
If you have enabled the Zoho Books integration, you can choose to post the journal entry for the payroll transaction in Books. The transaction will be recorded under the account you had configured while setting up the integration.
After the pay run is approved, you can record payment on or after the payday.

The withheld salary can then be released in subsequent pay runs.

Note: All the statutory components such as EPF, ESI, etc. will be calculated and deducted from the employee's salary. Only the Net Pay will be withheld when you use the salary withhold feature.

View reports based on approved pay runs

You can now generate reports based on your approved pay runs. Based on these reports, you can analyse your statutory costs and other payroll expenses for the month before you even pay your employees. You can filter and view approved pay run based reports in the Reports module. This option is available only for the reports under Payroll Overview (except Employees' Pay Summary), Statutory Reports, and Deduction Reports.

To view approved pay run reports:

Go to the Pay Runs tab on the left sidebar.
Click Create Pay Run or View Details if you already have a pay run drafted.
Once you’ve added all the inputs, click the Submit and Approve button in the top-right corner of the page.
Next, go to the Reports module on the left sidebar.
Choose a report from Payroll Overview (except Employees' Pay Summary), Statutory Reports, or Deduction Reports.
Click Customise Report on top of the page.
Select Approved as the Pay Run Status.

Click Run Report.

Your report will be generated based on the approved pay runs in the selected date range.

New enhancements introduced on the Zoho People integration page

You can now export the errors that occur during the Zoho People – Zoho Payroll data synchronisation to resolve multiple "data missing" errors. Using the error report, you will be able to map the missing data to the employees in an excel sheet and then import the details to Zoho Payroll.

To view the synchronisation errors:

Click the Settings icon in the top right corner of the home page.
Go to Zoho Apps.
Click View Details next to Zoho People.
On the Integration Details page, you will find the option to view sync errors. Click View Details.

On the next page you will find all the errors that occurred during the synchronisation process.

Click Export Data in the top right corner of the page.

On the next page you will find all the errors that occurred during the synchronisation process.
Click Export Data in the top right corner of the page.

You can access this page under Settings > Zoho Apps > Zoho People.

Give these features a try and let us know your feedback in the comments below.
If you need any assistance, you can write to us at support@zohopayroll.com and we will get back to you. Check out all our updates on our What's New timeline.

Season's Greetings!

Regards,
Supriya A

The Zoho Payroll Team

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