What is a Payroll export?

A Payroll export is a file summarising the values you need to generate payroll. A report is generated based on the data in your Planday, such as approved shifts, assigned pay/salary, pay supplements, breaks and more.

A payroll data export can be generated at any time and done individually per employee or for the entire Department or Employee group. The end of a month or pay period is a typical time to do this but you can export this report anytime as it does not modify or change any data.

How to export a Payroll report

To do this, navigate to Payroll > Payroll export.

Here you can select from a date from payroll interval, select which employees to include in your report and set advance export options to customise your report.

Set Payroll interval data

Select which Pay periods to include in your report. You can choose Monthly, Fortnightly, Weekly or Four-weekly. By default, all will be included in your report.

Note: To use this, you first need to set the employees’ pay periods in their profiles. To learn how to do this, go to How to set a pay period.

Select a period from the Date interval to run your report.

Note: Planday will show a default monthly period. The day in the start date is based on the date you set in the standard settings for payroll report under Settings > Payroll > General.

Under Salaries, select how you want to calculate fixed salaries in the export if the dates do not fit the specified period.
- If you choose the option Calculate salary based on the date interval, the salaried employees' costs will be calculated based on the Date interval chosen and the salary amount set in the employee's profile, under the Employment tab.
- If you choose the option Ignore the date interval and pay salary in full for only one period, the employee’s full salary amount will be displayed on the payroll report, regardless of the Date interval chosen.

Select employees to include in your report

Filter by Departments or Employee types to be considered for the report.
By default, all employees will be part of the report, but you can filter for individual employees by selecting Custom selection of employees > Select employees button. Here you can search for an employee or filter based on Employee groups.

Select optional Advanced export options

Define further export options such as shift status (approved / unapproved / all shifts),
Sorting of the export data (by Employee name, Salary identifier or username)
Set a format to generate the report as a CSV, Microsoft Excel file, or any payroll integration file format.
Select how you would like to preview the file as a PDF or HTML file.

Once you have made your settings, click on Prepare report button in the top right. You will then receive a preview and an option to download the file in your selected file format.

Checking the downloaded payroll data report before processing them in the final payroll is advisable to spot any undesirable data.

See how payroll costs and hours are displayed in the payroll report

PDF file layout

The PDF payroll summary (first page) shows the total of hours and costs per employee group, as well as the total of costs for the monthly salaried employees, including supplements and “various” hours.

Note: “Various” hours correspond to the hours that are paid but that are not counted towards the working hours, like “sick no pay” for example, or “Training/Induction” like in the example below.

The PDF file shows for each employee and for the period chosen:

(1.) a breakdown of the hours worked per day and their cost, and the breaks divided by employee group
- the breaks can be paid paid and unpaid. Learn more in How do the paid and unpaid breaks look like in the payroll report.
(2.) a summary with the total of hours and their cost, and the holiday and their cost and a breakdown of:
- the hours by supplements and meal deductions.
- the hours that are not included in the total of working hours (“various”)
- the hours corresponding to the breaks and their cost
- the hours corresponding to shift types

Note: The hour format is in decimals, not in h:mm. In the example above, the employee has worked 46.5 hours, which corresponds to 46 hours and 30 minutes.

Excel/CSV file:

You can customise your CSV file to your needs by going to Settings > Payroll > Payroll prints > CSV/Excel data fields to create extra columns of information, like the salary code corresponding to different types of hours, for example. Learn more in Customise your Excel/CSV payroll data fields. You can also set default settings for this file format, which will enable you to subdivide the worked hours the way you want for example.

An example of CSV file will look like this:

Note: The hour format is in decimals, not in h:mm.

See related articles:

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How to export a payroll report