Payroll concepts are the individual components that define how an employee’s salary is structured — including what they earn and what is deducted from their paycheck. For example, fixed monthly salary, meal vouchers and tax deductions. These concepts make it easier to manage and analyse payroll data inside Factorial.
Categories of Payroll concepts
In Factorial, payroll concepts are organised into categories to help structure employee compensation and deductions in a clear, consistent, and analysable way. These categories reflect how different types of payments or deductions impact an employee’s salary and the company’s accounting. Here's a breakdown:
- Earnings – Fixed salary (e.g., monthly wage)
- Earnings – Variable (e.g., sales commissions)
- Earnings – Benefits in kind (e.g., company car)
- Earnings – Others (e.g., bonus or reimbursement)
- Deductions (e.g., taxes or social security)
- Company contributions (e.g., employer-paid benefits)
- Summarised values (totals and summaries for reporting)
Where are Payroll concepts used?
Payroll concepts are used across the platform to ensure consistent salary management. You will find them in:
- Compensation definition: Assign concepts to employee compensation types.
- Payroll results import: Match data from imported payroll documents with concepts.
- Financial workspace: View employee cost breakdowns using payroll concepts.
How can Payroll concepts be managed?
The Compensation module is an add-on, so access to this functionality depends on your subscription plan. To manage payroll concepts through the Compensation settings, this module must be included in your plan.
You can manage payroll concepts in the Compensation settings section.
- In your sidebar, go to Settings
- Access the Compensation section
- Select payroll concepts configuration. Here’s what you can do:
- Click on the + icon to create new payroll concepts to match your company needs
- Click on the arrow next to a concept to edit it if you need to update names or categories
- Enable or disable the concepts you want to use or not
Note: Some payroll concepts come by default in Factorial. You can rename or archive them to match your organisation’s needs.
Set up payroll concepts from your payroll results file with One
Instead of creating and renaming payroll concepts one by one, you can upload the payroll results file from your payroll provider and One will set up every concept the file needs. One matches each line of the file to a Factorial default concept and renames it with the name your file uses. It only creates custom concepts for the lines that no default concept covers.
This feature is available for every company with One and the Compensation module. Setting up payroll concepts counts as product configuration, so it doesn't use your personal One credits.
How to start
You can start the setup in two ways:
- From One: on the home page, ask One to set up your payroll concepts and attach your payroll results file when One asks for it.
- From Settings: go to Settings > Compensation > Payroll concepts and click Upload payroll results in the Set up payroll concepts from your file callout.
How it works
- Choose how to name the concepts: One asks you to choose between code and name (for example, "1 Salario Base") or name only. Your choice is applied to the whole file.
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Step 1 of 2 – Update your default concepts: review the default concepts One renamed to match your file. You can edit the names in the table.
- If you change the unit or category of a default concept, it moves to step 2 as a custom concept.
- Click Skip on a row to leave its default concept as it is.
- Confirm in the One chat to continue.
- Step 2 of 2 – Create your custom concepts: review the name, unit and category of the new concepts and click Remove on any concept you don't want to create. Then confirm in the One chat.
- One saves all the changes. Every line of your file now has a payroll concept, so you can import your payroll results.
Lines in your file that aren't payroll concepts, such as totals or calculation bases, are left out, and One tells you how many lines it skipped.
Nothing is saved until you confirm each step in the One chat.
What does a Payroll concept include?
Each concept contains the following details:
- Category: The group the concept belongs to (e.g., "Earnings - Fixed salary")
- Name: The title of the concept (e.g., "Monthly base salary")
- Custom name: This name will appear wherever this payroll concept is used.
- Unit: What the concept measures (e.g., money, time, quantity)
- Description: A short explanation of the concept (e.g., "Fixed monthly payment agreed in the employee's contract”)
