Straight answers about payroll, leave, attendance, roles and employee self-service.
What the product does, signing up and plans.
Payroll by MoneyDash is online payroll and HR software for Indian businesses. It keeps employees, attendance, timesheets, leave, holidays, salary processing, payslips and company policies in one place.
Each business signs up as its own organisation, and everyone in it only ever sees that organisation's data.
Businesses that want to stop running payroll and leave in spreadsheets. It has three areas, and each person lands in the right one when they sign in:
Click Register, enter your organisation's name and your own details, and choose a password. We then send you a verification email; confirm it and you can sign in.
The person who registers becomes the Organisation Admin, with full control of the organisation's account.
Yes, for small teams. The free plan covers up to 10 employees and needs no credit card. Larger teams move to a paid plan — see Pricing for the current plans.
Your plan sets the maximum number of employees. Once you reach it, adding another employee is refused with a message asking you to upgrade. Nothing else is restricted: your existing employees, payroll and leave keep working as before.
Plan changes are handled by the MoneyDash team, so contact us to upgrade.
Each step depends on the ones before it:
No. Every record — employees, payheads, leave, attendance and payslips — belongs to exactly one organisation, and users only ever see their own organisation's data.
Use the contact form and pick the kind of request — a question, a suggestion or a customisation — and the team will get back to you.
Payheads, salary structures, running payroll and payslips.
A payhead is one line on a payslip — for example Basic, HRA, PF or Professional Tax. Each payhead is either an earning or a deduction and has a code that is unique within your organisation.
You define payheads once under Payroll → Payheads and reuse them in salary structures.
Each payhead uses one of four calculation types:
+ - * /, brackets, SALARY, BASIC and other payhead codes, for example BASIC * 40 / 100Formula items are not calculated in payroll yet, so in salary structures use fixed, percentage or slab items.
Every organisation gets a mandatory BASIC payhead automatically. Other payheads can be defined as a percentage of it, so it cannot be deleted and its code and type (earning) cannot be changed. You can still edit how it is calculated.
Payheads provided by MoneyDash are global payheads: every organisation can see and use them, but only MoneyDash can change them. If you need different behaviour, create a payhead of your own.
A salary structure is a reusable salary template, such as Junior Staff or Manager Grade B. Each item in it pairs a payhead with how it is calculated (fixed, percentage, slab or formula), an optional cap, whether it is pro-rated, and a sequence number.
Items are calculated in sequence order, so a percentage item can only be based on a payhead that comes earlier in the sequence. Each employee is assigned one salary structure plus their own base salary.
Go to Payroll → Salary Structures → Create and enter a name and description. The structure starts empty: save it, then open it with Edit and add one item per payhead.
Picking a payhead pre-fills the item from the payhead's own definition, but the values saved on the structure are the ones payroll uses. Payroll will not run for an employee whose structure has no components.
Payroll counts the employee's paid days from attendance against the calendar days in the month, then works through the salary structure in sequence order:
Where an item has a maximum cap, the cap is applied after pro-rating.
Payroll is run by an Organisation Admin or an Accountant:
Not yet. There is no automatic statutory calculation for income tax, PF, ESI or TDS. Set these up as ordinary deduction payheads with your own fixed amounts, percentages or slabs, and payroll applies them like any other deduction.
The Taxable and PF applicable checkboxes on a payhead are labels for your reference; they do not calculate anything on their own.
No attendance has been marked for that employee in that month. Payroll works out paid days from attendance and will not generate a payslip without it. Mark the month's attendance, then generate again.
Salary can only be generated once the employee's month has been signed off under Attendance → Timesheet Approval. An Organisation Admin or HR Manager approves it; an Accountant can see approvals but cannot give them.
The employee's salary structure has no items, so there is nothing to add up. Open Payroll → Salary Structures, edit that structure and add a component for each payhead — for example Basic, HRA and PF — then generate the salary.
A payslip generated as ₹0 earlier is fixed the same way: add the components, then press Recalculate on it, as long as it is not locked or paid.
A salary structure item uses a slab payhead, and none of that payhead's slabs includes the employee's base salary — usually because the salary is above the highest slab's To value. Payroll refuses rather than paying nothing for that line.
Edit the payhead under Payroll → Payheads and add a slab that covers the salary, for example one with an empty To for no upper limit. For a range that really should pay nothing, add a slab worth 0.
Deductions are charged in full every month. Only earnings are pro-rated by attendance.
Yes. From Payroll you can export payroll to CSV and download a bank transfer letter, and each payslip can be downloaded as a PDF.
Leave types, applying for and approving leave, balances and holidays.
Yes. When leave is approved, attendance for those days is filled in automatically, and attendance is what payroll reads. Unpaid leave makes those days unpaid, and once a month's payroll is locked or paid, leave in that month can no longer be applied for, approved or cancelled.
From their own dashboard, under Leave → Apply for Leave. They pick the leave type and dates, and the form shows a live count of the days that will actually be deducted, since holidays and weekly offs are left out. They add a reason and submit.
Half-day leave is available for leave types that allow it, and the request can be followed under Leave → My Leave.
No. The day count skips the public holidays on your organisation's holiday calendar and your weekly offs automatically, so only working days are deducted from the balance.
Organisation Admins and HR Managers can approve leave, and so can a custom role given the leave approval permission, such as one created from the Leave Approver template. Accountants cannot.
Go to Leave → Leave Requests, open the request, and approve it or reject it with a reason. Several pending requests can be approved together.
Submitting a request places a hold on the employee's balance, so two open requests cannot spend the same days. Approving turns the hold into used days and fills in attendance for those dates. Rejecting or cancelling a pending request releases the hold.
A leave type that does not require approval is approved as soon as it is submitted.
Cancel it rather than deleting it. Cancelling an approved request removes the attendance it created and returns the days to the employee's balance. This is not possible once that month's payroll is locked or paid.
Yes, while it is still pending. Once it has been approved, an Organisation Admin or HR Manager can cancel it for them.
There is one balance per employee, per leave type, per leave year:
Available = entitled − used − pending − lapsed
Pending is the hold placed by requests still waiting for a decision. Every allocation, deduction and manual adjustment is recorded, so a balance can always be traced.
Under Leave → Leave Types, each type has:
Unpaid leave types do not use a balance, so they are always available. They cost the employee through attendance instead: the approved days are simply unpaid in that month's salary.
On Leave → Leave Balances you can allocate entitlement to employees in bulk, adjust a single balance by hand, and run carry forward at the end of the leave year. Carry forward moves unused days into the next year up to the limit set on each leave type, and every change is recorded in the employee's balance history.
No. Each organisation can set the month its leave year starts. A leave year is named after the year it begins in, so with an April start, leave year 2026 runs from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027.
That employee's payroll for the month has already been locked or marked paid. Leave in a closed month cannot change, so the salary already worked out stays correct.
Not yet. There is no attachment upload on leave requests, even where a leave type mentions needing a document after a number of days.
Go to Leave → Holiday Calendars → Create, give it a name and year, and tick your weekly off days. After saving you land on that calendar's holiday list.
Each holiday needs a title, a date inside the calendar's year, and a type: public, restricted or optional. To add many at once, paste one YYYY-MM-DD, Title per line into the bulk box — pasting the same lines again is safe. You can also duplicate a whole calendar into another year.
If a calendar's weekly offs have never been set, Sunday is used. An explicitly empty list means a seven-day operation with no weekly off.
If there is no calendar for a year at all, that year has no holidays and no weekly offs, so create a calendar for each year you use.
Yes. Plans differ only in how many employees you can add. Leave management, leave balances and the holiday calendar are available on every plan, including the free one.
Daily attendance, timesheets, week freezes and monthly approval.
Attendance is the only thing payroll reads to work out paid days. There is one attendance record per employee per date, marked present, absent, half day, leave, holiday or week off.
For a date with no record, the status is decided in this order: a holiday on the calendar, then a weekly off, otherwise absent.
Under Attendance → Attendance you can add and edit records one at a time or mark many employees at once, and Attendance → Calendar View lets you work through a month. Approved leave fills in its own days automatically.
No. The hours logged are not used to calculate any payslip amount. There is one indirect effect: saving a timesheet marks that day present in attendance, unless the day is already covered by approved leave.
No timesheet categories have been created for your organisation yet — there are no defaults. An Organisation Admin creates them under Attendance → Timesheet Categories. A sub-category is created the same way, by choosing a parent category.
Under Attendance → Timesheet Freezes, click Freeze a Week and pick any day: the whole Monday-to-Sunday week containing it is locked, and employees can no longer add or edit timesheets in it. Unfreeze reopens the week, and employees are notified both ways.
Freezing does not affect attendance, timesheet approval or payroll. Organisation Admins and HR Managers can freeze weeks; Accountants cannot.
It is the monthly sign-off, per employee, that the month's attendance is correct. Payroll will not generate salary for an employee without an approved timesheet for that month. It lives under Attendance → Timesheet Approval, where you can approve, reject or reopen, including in bulk.
A month cannot be reopened once salary has been generated for it; that salary payment has to be deleted first.
Yes. Employees pick the date on the Log Time form, so a missed day can be filled in. Any day up to today is allowed, except one in a frozen week, in a month whose timesheet is already approved for them, or in a month whose salary has been generated — the form says which applies.
There is one entry per day, so logging time again for the same day replaces the earlier entry, after a warning.
Setting up and running your organisation.
Everything within their own organisation:
An Organisation Admin never sees another organisation's data.
Go to Organization → Employees → Create Employee. You need at least one department first.
Enter the employee code, first and last name, email, department, joining date and a login password of at least 8 characters. Date of birth, salary structure and base salary are optional.
Saving creates the employee record and their login together. Share the email and password with the employee — they can sign in straight away and change the password later.
Not yet. There is no bulk import, so employees are added one at a time under Organization → Employees.
Go to Organization → Company and edit your company. Alongside the name, GST, PAN and address are the salary slip header and salary slip footer fields, which appear on the payslip PDF. Only an Organisation Admin can edit these; HR Managers can view them.
A department is your org chart: each employee belongs to one, and policies and announcements can be aimed at departments.
A team is a grouping used for access and can span departments. It has two lists — the people who operate the team, where a lead flag gives authority, and the employees whose records the team covers.
There is no general report builder. You can export payroll, leave requests and leave balances to CSV, download payslip PDFs and the bank transfer letter, and view an acceptance report for each company policy.
Not at the moment. There is no screen to create or assign designations, and no job title field on the employee form. Use departments to group people.
Self-service for staff: payslips, leave, attendance and policies.
Yes. Every employee gets their own login and a self-service dashboard where they can download payslips, apply for and follow leave, see their leave balance and the holiday calendar, check their attendance, log timesheets, and read and acknowledge company policies. They never see anyone else's records.
Your employer creates it when they add you as an employee, using your email address and a password they set. Ask them for those details. You can change the password afterwards from My Profile.
Click Forgot password? on the sign-in page and enter your email address. We will email you a link to set a new password.
Go to Pay → My Payslips. A payslip appears once your organisation has generated payroll for the month and marked it paid, and you can download it as a PDF. You also get a notification when it is ready.
Go to Leave → Leave Balance. It shows what is available for each leave type, along with the history of allocations, leave taken and adjustments.
Go to Leave → Apply for Leave, choose the leave type and dates, add a reason and submit. The form shows exactly how many days will be deducted before you send it.
Follow the request under Leave → My Leave, and cancel it there while it is still pending.
Holidays and weekly offs inside those dates are not counted, so only working days are deducted from your balance.
The day is in a week your organisation has frozen, in a month whose timesheet has already been approved for you, or in a month whose salary has been generated. The Log Time form tells you which one applies.
Open Company → Pending Policies, read the policy, then accept it, or reject it with a reason. Your response is recorded with the date and time, and the policies assigned to you stay available under Company → Policies.
Yes, if you also have an employee record. Self-service is open to anyone whose login is linked to an employee record, whatever their role — so an Organisation Admin, HR Manager or Accountant who is on the payroll can apply for leave and see their own payslips there.
Go to Notifications → Preferences and choose what you want to be notified about. For example, turning off announcements from your organisation stops in-app copies of them.
Logins, built-in roles, custom roles and permissions.
A User is a login: an email, a password and a role that decides what the person can do. An Employee is a payroll record: an employee code, joining date, department, salary structure and base salary.
Attendance, leave, payslips and policy acknowledgements all belong to the Employee. Admins, HR and accountants often have a User with no Employee record, while every employee gets their own login when they are added.
There is also a Super Admin role, used only by the MoneyDash team to run the platform.
No. HR Managers hold no payroll permissions, so payheads, salary structures, payroll and payslip downloads are closed to them. Payroll is run by an Organisation Admin or an Accountant.
HR Managers also cannot delete users or employees, change departments, delete teams, edit roles or delete policies.
Accountants run payroll but are read-only on people. They cannot open the Users screen, create or edit employees, mark attendance, approve or reject leave, manage leave types or balances, approve timesheets, send announcements, or open company policies.
Admins, HR staff and accountants who are not employees get a login under Organization → Users, with the role they need. They have no employee record, so no payslips or leave of their own.
Yes, under Access Control → Roles. A role is a set of permissions, and you can only include permissions you hold yourself. You can also start from a ready-made template under Access Control → Role Templates, such as Leave Approver or Read-Only Auditor.
A role created from a template is a copy, so later changes to the template do not change it. Limiting a role to one team's records is not enforced yet: a custom role still sees the whole organisation's records.
No. Permissions belong to roles, never to individual people. Change the person's role, or edit the role they hold — which changes it for everyone holding that role.
Edit their login under Organization → Users. An employee record cannot be switched to a different login, because that would hand their payslips, leave history and policy acknowledgements to someone else.
Permissions are cached for a short while. Ask the user to sign out and back in, or try again a little later.
Check the account's status. An account that is not active — a suspended one, for example — holds no permissions at all, whatever its role.
Your role does not include the permission that screen needs — HR Managers see this on payroll screens, for example, and Accountants on the Users screen. Ask your Organisation Admin to change your role if you need access.
Company policies, acknowledgements and announcements.
Go to Compliance → Company Policies → Create and enter the title, content, version and effective date. Then assign it to employees or departments and publish it. Employees see it in their own Policies screen and accept or reject it.
Organisation Admins and HR Managers can publish policies.
Each policy has an acceptance report showing who has accepted or rejected it and the acceptance rate. Every response is recorded with the date, time and IP address.
No. Assigning to a department assigns the policy to everyone in that department at that moment; it is not a standing rule, so assign it again after new people join. Only people who were not already assigned are notified, and only once the policy is published.
Go to Notifications → Send Announcement, enter a title (up to 150 characters) and a message (up to 1,000), and choose Everyone or Selected departments. Before you send, the screen shows how many people it will reach and a preview.
Organisation Admins and HR Managers can send announcements; Accountants cannot.
If an announcement would reach nobody, the screen says so rather than reporting it as sent.
Recipients see announcements in their notification bell and inbox. Email copies go out only when email notifications are enabled.
Yes. Sent announcements, on the same screen, lists each one with how many people it was delivered to and how many have seen it. Those figures are kept for 90 days; after that only the number of people it was sent to is shown.
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