Exporting attendance to payroll

What a clean month-end attendance close looks like

A clean month-end close means that by the time payroll starts, every employee's attendance for the period is final, approved and locked, and payroll receives one agreed set of numbers instead of a register full of question marks. When that happens, salary processing becomes a calculation. When it does not, payroll becomes a week of phone calls to branch managers.

This checklist is for HR executives and accountants who prepare salaries from attendance data each month, whether the payroll is run in-house, by a CA firm or in payroll software. It follows the order the work should happen in: fix the cut-off, clear exceptions, reconcile leave, approve overtime, lock the month, export, and check. It assumes punches are already being captured; how devices are chosen and connected is covered in other articles.

Fix the attendance cut-off date and tell everyone

The cut-off is the last day whose attendance counts in this month's salary. Some organisations use the calendar month, closing on the 30th or 31st. Others close on a fixed date such as the 25th, so HR has a few working days to finish the close before salaries are due, and the last days of the month roll into the next cycle.

Choose one, write it down and share it with managers along with two deadlines: the date by which employees must raise regularisation requests, and the date by which managers must approve them. Anything raised after those dates goes to the next month as an adjustment, not into a reopened register.

Changing the cut-off date in the middle of the year creates a short or long cycle for that month. Plan the switch with payroll so nobody is paid for too few or too many days.

Clear missing punches and regularisation requests

Before anything is summarised, run an exception report: every day for every employee where the status is not clear. Each exception needs an owner and an outcome, and the outcome should be recorded as an approved regularisation with a reason rather than a silent edit.

Clear exceptions weekly during the month if you can. Leaving them all for the last two days is the single biggest reason month-end closing runs late.

Reconcile leave before you freeze attendance

Attendance and leave have to agree before payroll sees them. Go through four checks. First, pending leave requests: approve or reject every one, because a pending request means payroll does not know whether the day is paid. Second, leave without balance: if someone took leave they did not have, decide whether it becomes loss of pay. Third, compensatory offs: make sure comp-offs taken this month match comp-offs earned. Fourth, joiners and leavers: their payable days start and end on specific dates, and days outside those dates must not count as absent.

Also check how your policy treats weekly offs and holidays next to an absence. If the policy says a holiday between two unpaid days is also unpaid, make sure the summary reflects it for everyone, not only for the cases someone happened to notice.

Approve overtime and late deductions before export

Overtime calculated from punches is a claim until it is approved. Ask each manager to approve or reduce the overtime for their team before the cut-off deadline, and export only approved hours. The same applies to deductions for late marks or early exits: if your policy converts a number of late marks into a half day, review the list before it becomes a salary deduction.

If your overtime and late rules themselves are unclear, fix them at source; our guide to configuring shift rules, grace time and overtime walks through writing them. Month end is the wrong time to debate policy.

Locking attendance for the month

Once exceptions, leave and overtime are settled, lock (freeze) the month. Locking means nobody can change that period's attendance unless an authorised person deliberately reopens it. It protects payroll from a manager who edits a register after salaries have been calculated, and it gives auditors a clear point at which the data became final.

• Decide who may lock a month and who may reopen it. These are usually the HR head and one senior backup, not every HR user.
• Record a reason whenever a locked month is reopened, and reprocess payroll for the affected employees.
• Keep a copy of the locked monthly register and the payroll sheet together, so a salary query months later can be answered from the same numbers.

Handing data to payroll: export file or direct integration

There are two ways to get locked attendance into salary processing. The first is an export: the attendance system produces a payroll-ready sheet, usually in Excel, which is imported into payroll software or sent to the accountant. The second is integration, where attendance and payroll share data directly so no file changes hands.

For an export, agree the column layout with whoever runs payroll and keep it fixed. A typical payroll-ready sheet has one row per employee and these columns:

• Employee code and name, matching payroll exactly.
• Days in the pay period and payable days.
• Present days, weekly offs and holidays.
• Paid leave by type and loss-of-pay days.
• Approved overtime hours.
• Late marks or deductions as per policy, if payroll applies them.

Integration removes the file and the risk of importing last month's sheet by mistake, but it still depends on matching employee codes and on attendance being locked before payroll runs. Either way, statutory deductions such as PF and ESI are worked out in payroll, not in attendance; our article on PF and ESI basics in payroll explains those concepts.

Checks to run before salaries are processed

A few minutes of checking at this stage prevents most salary corrections. Run these on the export or the integrated data before payroll is processed:

1. Headcount: the number of rows equals active employees for the period, including leavers who worked part of the month.
2. Day totals: for each employee, payable days plus loss-of-pay days add up to the days in the period.
3. Loss-of-pay list: read every name with loss of pay and confirm each one is genuine.
4. Overtime outliers: look at the highest overtime figures and confirm they were approved.
5. Joiners and leavers: check that their first and last dates are reflected correctly.
6. Month-on-month comparison: compare total payable days and overtime with last month and ask about large changes.

For a wider list of payroll mistakes and the controls that prevent them, see common payroll errors and how to avoid them.

Where MATROP fits in this routine

Our attendance and biometric software supports each step above. Manager approvals and the employee self portal handle regularisation and leave requests, leave management tracks balances with an approval flow and a holiday calendar, and the reports module produces daily and monthly registers, late, overtime and absent reports, and a payroll-ready sheet in Excel or PDF. Report locking and role-based access control who can change data after the close.

If you run salaries in MATROP payroll software, attendance and leave can feed salary processing directly, with biometric integration available as an option, and Excel import if attendance comes from elsewhere. Payroll can be locked once processed, with reprocessing under audit and approval offered as an option. Salary registers and bank transfer sheets come from the same data.

If you have a small team, one shift and an accountant who is comfortable working from a monthly Excel register, a disciplined version of this checklist may be all you need for now. Software helps most when exceptions, approvals and branches make the manual close take days rather than hours.

Questions people ask

How is a payroll-ready attendance sheet different from a monthly attendance register?

The register shows each day's status for each employee, which is what managers read. The payroll-ready sheet summarises the month into the counts payroll needs, such as payable days, loss-of-pay days, paid leave and approved overtime hours, one row per employee.

Can attendance be changed after it has been exported to payroll?

It should not be edited quietly. Either an authorised person reopens the month with a recorded reason and payroll is reprocessed, or the correction is carried to next month as an arrears or recovery adjustment.

Is a calendar-month cut-off better than a mid-month cut-off such as the 25th?

A calendar month is easier to explain, while a mid-month cut-off gives HR time to close attendance before salaries are due. Either works if it is written down and the last few days are carried into the next cycle consistently.

Do attendance and payroll need to use the same employee codes?

Yes. If the codes differ, someone has to match rows by name every month, which is slow and causes salaries to land against the wrong person.