Record a pay or contract change

What this achieves

A pay change records a new salary, grade, or set of allowances for an employee from a date you set. It is effective-dated rather than immediate, so the record shows what someone was paid at any point rather than only what they are paid now.

Required role: Administrator.

Steps

Open the employee and go to their Compensation tab.
Enter the Base Salary and choose the Currency.
Choose the Pay Frequency.
Set the Effective Date.
Choose the Grade.
Set the Variable Pay Target % if the role carries one.
Under Allowances, select Add Allowance for each, choosing its type and amount.
Save.

Base salary is per pay frequency

The salary you enter is the amount for one period of the pay frequency you choose, not automatically an annual figure. The form annualises it for you before comparing against a grade band — monthly multiplied by twelve, hourly by 2080.

Getting the pairing wrong produces a figure out by a factor of twelve. Read the annualised salary the form shows back before saving.

Example: entering a monthly amount for Priya Raman at HC Corp UK Ltd with the frequency left as annual would record a salary a twelfth of what was intended.

The grade band check, and when it is skipped

Choosing a grade shows its band range and midpoint, and the form warns when the annualised salary falls outside it.

The band check is skipped when the band currency and the salary currency differ, and the form says so rather than checking silently. A salary in one currency against a band in another passes unchecked — the absence of a warning is not confirmation that the figure is in range.

Example: an HC Corp UK Ltd salary in GBP against a band held in another currency is not checked, so the out-of-band warning will not appear even if it is far outside.

Being outside the band is a warning, not a block. It is there so an exception is a decision rather than an accident.

Allowances

Option	Description
Type	Housing, transport, car, phone, education, meal, relocation, or other.
Amount	The value, at a monthly or annual frequency.

The form totals base salary, variable pay target, and allowances into a total cash target, which is the figure to sense-check against what was agreed.

The effective date is what payroll reads

The change applies from the date you set. That is what keeps payslips already issued correct — a rise effective this month does not rewrite last month’s pay.

Set the date the change genuinely takes effect rather than the date you are entering it. Backdating a change into a period already paid does not alter finalised payslips, so a correction to a paid period is a payroll matter rather than a record edit.

What happens next

Payroll reads the salary from the employee record on the next run, applying the version in force for that pay date. The change is recorded in the employee’s compensation history so the sequence of what they were paid remains readable. Merit increases arising from a compensation cycle write back here rather than being entered by hand.