Hello! Cloud user here!
I have the same issue. I read through the posts and answers and still don’t really understand what I need to do.
I have a payslip deduction item called “Loan repayment” that is put under account “debtor/loan” which is an asset account. But this still doesn’t affect the employees balance. It just looks like they got paid less.
I apologize for my stupidity. I have read the posts and the guides, but I can’t wrap my head around it.
Here is an example:
Salary advance has been entered as a payment towards that employees clearing account. So they have a debt towards the company. When I deduct 50,000 as a loan repayment on the payslip this doesn’t register on the employees balance.
Employee deducted 50,000, but manager just treats it as any other deduction and considers it as part of the salary rather than putting the balance to 0.
That is because you defined it as a deduction.
Yes, because it says that’s how deductions to salary advances should be put in the guide. So I assume for now I shouldn’t put it on the payslip and just do a seperate line when doing the salary payments and add a negative amount for the payback amount.
Edit: The annoying thing with this is that I can’t use the manager payslips to print for the staff as the deduction of the salary advance has to be put as a seperate transactions in order to properly show the employees balance.
I am sorry, but I cannot follow your explanation.
Don’t be sorry, I can’t explain it 
The guide says a repayment of a salary advance should be put on the payslip as a deduction.
Employee took a salary advance of 100. Employees salary is 1,000.
Balance for that employee shows as -100.
New payslip is entered with the salary advance deduction as per the guide: 900.
Employee gets paid 900.
Balance remains -100.
I can make another entry for the repayment, but then it won’t show on the salary slip.
This explanation was not very good either, but it’s the best I can do. Anyhow I don’t think manager works the way I expected in this case and I think it should be improved.
Edit: It seems right now I can either.
This is nowhere in the Guides. A salary advance is similar to the salary itself, i.e. an earning item. Please check example below how you best can treat advances based on the advise given by @Tut that these are earning items.
Create expense accounts of employee expenses in the Chart of Accounts, 1 for Salaries and 1 for Salary advances as for example in image below (where I grouped them under Employment Expenses group:
Create Payslip Earning items in settings, as for example in screenshots below:
Create a Payslip with both a Salary and a Salary Advance, see example:
View the Payslip and click on New Payment and complete as in screenshot:
The Summary screen will now show:
Now create a new Payslip for the Employee as follows and enter -500 (minus 500) in the Salary advance earnings field (this is what @Tut referred to as “negative earnings”. I also changed the descriptions, i.e. August Salary and Deduction on August salary advance in below screenshot.
View this payslip and click on New Payment and enter as below:
The Summary screen now shows 4,000 salary paid and no longer any advances open.
That’s all!
Ok, maybe I got it wrong. But I will not be able to use the individual balance for the employee? If you go to “Employees” you can see if they have received an advance or if all is cool, but like this I wouldn’t right?
Why not just create a test business and set it up as I showed you. Then play around with it, you will see that for example it is much easier to track all the advances paid or open from the Salary Advances expenses (Summary screen, click on amount or - (when all setteled) and you would see a screen like below:
Hmm, thank you for this! I will have a closer look at this.
That sounds like you entered the advance twice. Your description is still confusing. @eko has given you a thorough explanation and been kind enough to create an extensive example. You need to follow through. I am withdrawing from this discussion, as I have nothing else to add.
I don’t think I get it.
If I do it that way I assume I won’t know the balance for the individual staff members?
Sorry but I gave the best possible instructions and it functions as expected. If you are not capable of following my steps then maybe you should ask a college or friend to sit with you and together you implement the steps. There is nothing I can add to this discussion beyond what I already did and similar to @Tut will not further participate as it is not needed.
Hello, yes I understand that. I followed the steps, but I guess I’m missing something.
Or it’s not working how I would like it to work.
My brain seems to lack the ability to make sense of this.
I don’t think the above example is what I want though. When I try on my business, the debt the employee has towards the company doesn’t change.
All the current salary advances would be on the “Salary advance” account but the individual balance of the employee is 0 regardless if they have taken an advance or not.
Yes, hence my advise to ask someone to sit with you and create a test business and go through the steps. You may have overlooked something, did not setup all the necessary Payroll accounts, etc. There is nothing to add then to completely follow each step in the different guides and the steps I provided.
100% agree. I don’t have that option though, you are all I have 
I can’t even explain what is so confusing, that is the level of confusion this causes me.
Is it because previously if we did a salary advance we would do a payment to that employee via the employee clearing account and there would be no payslip associated with the advance.
Before we didn’t use the payslip functionality on manager. Anyhow I will let this stew in my head and perhaps one day the seed will be ripe.
Thank you for your patience!
Hello again!
I have let it simmer a bit.
In this case. The employee got an advance of 1,000,000. On the next salary payment the employee gets their usual salary of 500,000 and reimburses 100,000 from the salary advance.
The balance in my opinion should be 900,000, but it’s 0. Of course if I go to the salary advance account I can search for that employee and see what their actual balance is like, but that is not very smooth.
Am I doing something wrong here or that is how it would work in your example @eko ?
Salary advance:
Payment for salary advance:
Payday! 
Salary payment:
Employee balance says 0 although still has 900,000 left to repay on the advance.
As mentioned if I go on the Salary advance account I can search through there, but everyone will be bunched together.
