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Opening balances mid tax year

If you start using E·BIZI Pay partway through the tax year, the months you already paid people happened somewhere else. E·BIZI Pay asks you for those totals so PAYE comes out right, and it calls them prior-period balances.

Why PAYE needs the earlier months​

PAYE is not worked out month by month in isolation. It is worked out on what someone has earned so far in the tax year, so a person who earned R180 000 between March and July is taxed differently from someone starting fresh in August.

E·BIZI Pay only knows about the months it ran. Give it the earlier totals and the tax is right from your first payroll run. Skip them and PAYE is worked out as though the person started working in the month you added them. That understates their taxable income, so the deductions come out wrong. For how the tax itself works, see how PAYE works.

When the section appears​

Open an employee from the Employees list, choose the edit pencil, and scroll to Prior-period balances. It sits between Employment and Address.

It only appears for someone whose start date is before the open payroll month, and only when you added them in a later month than they started. Someone you added in the same month their contract began has no earlier months to account for, so E·BIZI Pay does not ask.

An amber banner names the person and the exact span it wants, which runs from the later of 1 March and the first of their start month, up to the end of the month before the one you have open. Add someone in August 2026 whose contract started in January 2026, and E·BIZI Pay asks for 1 March 2026 to 31 July 2026: the tax year, not the whole contract.

What to enter​

Cumulative totals for that span, not monthly figures. Five months of salary is one number, not five.

Gross salary (cumulative) and Net salary (cumulative) are under Salary balances. Leave days accrued is the leave they had built up and not taken. Under Statutory contributions: PAYE withheld, UIF (employee), UIF (employer) and SDL (employer).

Take them off your old payroll's year-to-date report, or off the last payslip you issued if it carries year-to-date columns.

Only gross is required, once you start​

You can leave the whole section blank and save the employee. E·BIZI Pay does not force it.

The moment you enter anything in it, Gross salary (cumulative) becomes required and has to be more than zero. Net salary cannot exceed gross, and PAYE withheld cannot exceed gross either. The rest are optional, so enter what you have and leave what you do not.

Save it with the employee​

There is no separate save. Choose Save at the foot of the employee form and the balances go with the rest of their details.

E·BIZI Pay flags incomplete balances​

On the Employees list, anyone who needs balances and has not got them carries an orange line: "Farouk Adams is missing prior-period balances information. Update now."

On the employee's own page, Prior-period balances shows a Captured or Not captured tag. Once captured, it shows the gross, net and leave figures back to you.

Get them in before you confirm the month​

The balances feed the tax calculation, and a confirmed month is locked. Capture them before you confirm your first payroll rather than after, or the first month's PAYE is wrong in a period you can no longer fix. See close a payroll period.