💸 What is the Allowance module?
The Allowance module lets you record one-off, monthly extras that are paid on top of an employee’s base salary — commission, travel allowance, and bonus / ex-gratia. Each row in the module belongs to a single Month + Year + Employee. When you generate salary for that month, the allowance values flow straight into the salary slip and are pro-rated automatically for mid-month joiners or exits.
🎯 When to use it
- Pay sales commission based on closures of the previous month.
- Reimburse travel on a fixed monthly amount.
- Award a bonus or ex-gratia for special projects, festival, or year-end.
Use the Allowance module before generating salary — it is the cleanest workflow.
🧾 Step-by-step: add or update allowances
📍 Screen: HRM → Allowance → click the green Add button at the top right. The Allowance dialog opens — that dialog is the screen where you fill in everything below.
1️⃣ Pick the Month and Year
- At the top of the dialog, pick the Month and Year for which you are recording allowances. Both are mandatory.
- The instant a valid combination is picked, the dialog loads every employee active that month and shows them in a single table.
⚠️ Important: if the wrong month / year is picked, the values will not flow into the intended salary cycle. Double-check before saving.
2️⃣ Review the employee table
Each row represents one employee for the chosen month. The table shows:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Employee | Avatar with the employee’s full name and Employee Code underneath. |
| Commission | Editable rupee field. Defaults to blank for first-time entry. |
| Travel Allowance | Editable rupee field. |
| Bonus / Ex-Gracia | Editable rupee field. |
| Status | Paid chip (green) once salary has been generated and paid for that month, Unpaid chip (amber) otherwise. |
3️⃣ Type in the amounts
- Click into any of the three rupee fields and type the amount.
- Decimals are accepted (e.g.
1500.50). - Repeat for each employee you want to give an allowance to. Leave the rest blank — blank means no allowance for that head.
- You can enter values for one, two, or all three columns — they are independent.
4️⃣ Save
- Click Submit in the dialog footer to store every row.
- Click Close to exit without saving.
🔒 What happens after salary is generated?
Once you generate salary for a given month, the allowance row for that month becomes a read-only audit record:
- The Status column flips to Paid.
- The three rupee fields go grey and cannot be edited from the Allowance module any more.
- The Edit action is also withdrawn from the row in the Allowance list — you will not see a pencil button on rows whose salary cycle has already run.
🔄 Need to amend a paid month? Open the relevant Salary record from the Salary module and update the allowance there. The change automatically propagates back to the Allowance row, keeping both views in sync.
📥 Bulk import (optional)
If you have many rows to enter every month, the Allowance list also offers a bulk import:
- Open the Actions menu (top-right of the Allowance list) → Import.
- Click Download Sample File. Sample foreign-key columns (e.g. employee code) list the valid values so you can copy them across.
- Fill the sheet with one row per employee for the target month / year.
- Upload the sheet from the same dialog and click Import.
- If validation fails, no records are saved — you can download an error report, fix the issues, and re-upload.
⚙️ Permissions
| Permission | Effect |
|---|---|
| Read | See the Allowance list and open rows. |
| Create | Add allowance values for any month / year that has not already been salaried. |
| Print Record | Export the list as a spreadsheet. |
📌 Update is intentionally not a permission on this module any more. Once salary is generated for a month, allowance values for that month can only be amended by editing the corresponding salary record in the Salary module — this keeps the allowance / salary numbers in lock-step and preserves the audit trail.
✅ Tips for clean records
- Enter early: always enter allowances before generating salary for the month. It avoids round-tripping through the Salary module.
- Be consistent: employees in the same role / grade should usually have similar allowances; flag exceptions clearly in your internal notes.
- Double-check: review every amount before clicking Submit — a typo here directly inflates or shrinks net pay.
- Pro-rated automatically: for mid-month joiners or exits, the salary engine pro-rates the entered allowance — you do not need to compute the ratio yourself.
- Old months stay forever: historic Allowance rows are kept even after the employee leaves, so audits and back-period queries always succeed.
⚠️ Warnings
- Putting the wrong amount here directly affects pay-day — this is a money field, treat it carefully.
- Allowances added after salary generation must be entered through the Salary module — you will not see an editable cell in the Allowance dialog any more.
- Make sure the Month and Year match the cycle you intend to pay; rows for the wrong month do nothing useful and just clutter the list.