Close employee and attendance inputs
Collect joiners, exits, approved salary changes and recurring deductions. Ask managers to resolve attendance exceptions and pending leave requests by an internal cutoff. Keep a list of items received late instead of quietly adding them to a workbook that another reviewer already approved.
Review the draft against the previous month
Compare employee count, gross earnings, deductions and net pay. Separate expected movements from unexplained differences. A higher total might reflect new employees, a revision or duplicate inputs; the total alone does not tell you which. Have reviewers inspect a sample of individual records as well as the overall register.
Separate approval from payment
Save the approved version before preparing payment instructions. Reconcile the payment total with approved net pay, document any held records and release payslips through the agreed process. Archive the inputs, calculation output and approval evidence together so the month can be reconstructed later.
Worked example
If net pay rises while headcount is unchanged, group the difference into revisions, variable earnings, attendance changes and deductions. Any residual amount becomes a specific question for the reviewer.
Practical checklist
- Resolve or explicitly hold incomplete employee records.
- Explain material differences before approval.
- Reconcile payment instructions with the approved register.