Getting started

Welcome. This guide walks you through getting payloop running for your team for the first time. By the end you’ll have an account, an imported roster, and a draft payroll run you can inspect (and run, if you’re ready).

1. Create your account

Sign up at app.payloop.co.za with your work email. We’ll send you a magic link — no passwords to remember, no SSO setup required for your first run.

Once you’re in, you’ll be asked for:

• Your registered company name and registration number.
• Your PAYE reference number (10 digits, starts with 7).
• Your UIF reference number (8 digits, starts with U).
• Your SDL reference number (10 digits, starts with L) if you pay SDL.

You can paste these from SARS eFiling. If you don’t have them to hand, you can skip and add them later.

2. Import your team

You have three ways to bring your employees in. Pick whichever is closest to where your data already lives.

Option A: Live HRIS sync

Connect BambooHR, HiBob, or Sage People. We import every active employee with their salary, banking details, tax thresholds, and medical-aid memberships. Re-sync happens nightly.

Option B: CSV upload

Download the template from Settings → Import → CSV template. Fill in your roster, drop it back in. We’ll validate column-by-column and flag any missing or malformed values before importing.

Option C: Manual entry

Add employees one at a time via Employees → Add employee. Best for teams under ten.

3. Verify everyone is correct

Open the Employees list. For every row, double-check:

• The salary is current.
• The banking details have a universal branch code.
• The tax status reflects whether the employee qualifies for the primary, secondary, or tertiary rebate.
• The medical-aid main member, dependants, and number of additional dependants are correct (if applicable).

This is your source of truth roster. Everything that flows from here uses these details.

4. Create your first run

From the dashboard, click New payroll run. We’ll create a draft for the current month with every active employee. The status will be Compiling — meaning act 1 is in progress.

Step through the run:

1. Compile. Review the roster, add any once-offs (bonuses, deductions, reimbursements). Close act 1 when ready.
2. Calculate. We compute PAYE against the live SARS tax tables, apply UIF and SDL, and surface a prior-month diff if this isn’t your first run. Acknowledge anything that’s moved more than 10%.
3. Export. Download your bank file in your bank’s exact format. Payslips dispatch to employees. EMP201 is staged for SARS.

If you have an existing payroll run from last month in another system, import it via Settings → Import → Last month so the diff has a baseline to compare against.

What to do next

• Add a second user from your finance or HR team and assign them permissions.
• Connect your bank format under Settings → Banking so the export defaults to the right file shape.
• Connect your ledger (Xero or Sage) under Settings → Accounting so journal entries post automatically.

When you’re ready to live-run, the team is one chat-bubble away. Open the assistant from the bottom-right of any page and say hi.