Payroll foundations

In Vietnam, payroll is still the most manual job in HR: data from many sources, formulas unique to each company, and tax and insurance rules that change every year. Rifena built its payroll foundation so formulas run on the system’s own data, are tested on a sample period and carry versions before they apply. That is how a company leaves spreadsheets behind without losing the flexibility it needs.

At the end of this stage, the organisation has an attendance period, a published payroll template, and enough verified configuration for a draft payroll run after attendance closes.

Before you begin

Owner: the payroll owner, with a second person reviewing the result.

Prepare a representative employee, work schedule, leave types, statutory overtime rules, a payroll approver, pay frequency, earnings, deductions, and bank information if salary payments will be exported.

Create an attendance period

Path: Open payroll-period settings.

1. Choose Create period.
2. Enter the Period name, select the Period type, and enter the Start date and End date.
3. Choose Save period.
4. Confirm the period appears as Attendance open.
5. If future periods are needed, choose Auto-create, review the proposed dates, and only then confirm.

The date range determines which attendance data is handed to payroll. Do not create overlapping periods as a test.

Review payroll policies

Path: Open payroll policies.

Configure only the areas the organisation uses, such as tax, deductions, leave balances that affect pay, and service charge rules where applicable.

For annual data, confirm the effective year before saving. For an employee-level item, confirm the employee, effective dates, and state after saving.

Packages and payroll permissions

Rifena turns features on by module in the company’s service package; inside each module, a user only sees what their role grants. Payroll is made of the modules Payroll (runs, payslips, deductions), Personal income tax, Payments & banking, Insurance, Service charge, Statutory reports and Payroll builder.

When a module is not in the package, its entry disappears from the navigation and a direct link opens an access-denied page. Existing data is never deleted.

Statutory reports (social insurance and personal income tax on the official forms) are in every package. Analytics & reporting (analysis boards, Excel/PDF exports) is included from Professional.

A package’s employee and company counts are what it includes, not a wall: beyond them you can still add employees or companies and the system shows a warning so the Rifena team can talk to you about the package. Only where the contract says so does Rifena block further creation for that company.

Running payroll without the Payroll builder

Without this module, payroll runs are still created and calculated with Rifena’s standard formula:

• Earnings: base salary and allowances from the active contract; approved overtime paid by the hour at each record’s rate (1.5 by default; holiday work has its own rate); bonuses, service charge and holiday premiums when present.
• Deductions: unpaid leave by working day (base salary divided by 22); amounts assigned to the employee such as social, health and unemployment insurance or loans; advance recovery; unwaived attendance fines.
• Personal income tax: from the tax brackets and exemptions in effect for the period.
• Reimbursements: approved expense claims are added to net pay outside taxable income.

You can still shape the outcome through its inputs: contract salary and allowances, the deduction catalogue and per-employee assignments, overtime rates on records, penalty rules, tax brackets and exemptions, service charge. What you cannot do is change the calculation itself: add new components, write your own formulas, or apply different formulas per group or contract type.

With the Payroll builder

This module (included from the Professional package by default) lets you build payroll templates with their own components, formulas, conditions and scope, test them on a representative employee, and publish them with versions. A payroll run picks the matching template for each employee; anyone with no matching template is still calculated with the standard formula. Published templates keep being used even if a later package drops the module, but you can no longer edit them or publish new versions.

If you are unsure which modules your company has, ask whoever manages the service contract.

Create and test a payroll template

Path: Payroll → Open payroll builder.

This step needs the Payroll builder module. If your package does not include it, skip this step: payroll still runs with the standard formula above.

1. Choose Create new template.
2. Enter a clear name, then select the Employee scope and applicable Contract types.
3. Add the required earnings, deductions, tax, and employer contribution components.
4. Open each component and configure its calculation, value, conditions, and relevant attributes.
5. Choose Save draft.
6. In the payroll preview, select one representative employee and period.
7. Reconcile each component, total earnings, total deductions, and net pay with an independently confirmed result.
8. Correct the draft and test at least one materially different employee.
9. Choose Publish, read every warning, and confirm.

A valid template is Active with a Published version. Later draft changes do not alter the published version until you publish again.

Prepare bank accounts and templates when used

Path: System → Settings → Open bank configuration.

Path: System → Settings → Bank accounts & templates.

1. Under Source accounts, choose Add account and enter Bank, Account number, Account holder name, and Branch.
2. Only VCB currently has a built-in format. For another bank, under Bank Excel templates choose Add template.
3. Upload the original file with the intended worksheet first, map unaccented recipient name, recipient account, amount and transfer narrative, then choose Generate test file.
4. Open the test file and verify its headers, column order, and formatting.
5. Choose Save template, then attach the template to the source account.

Avoid real payroll data in the test file unless it is necessary and authorised. The bank setup is ready only after the payment owner can open and verify the generated file.

Result to confirm

• The attendance period shows Attendance open.
• The payroll template is Active with a Published version.
• Preview results for the representative employees have been reconciled.
• If bank payments are used, the source account shows the intended export template.
• Recheck in the Operational readiness hub recognises the payroll foundation.

If publishing is blocked, resolve each visible warning, save the draft, and test again. Do not create another template to avoid a problem in the current draft.

Next step: Complete only the advanced settings the rollout actually needs, then return to operational readiness.

If the payroll run, payslip, or payment does not show the expected result, see Payroll and payment problems.