Proposal: Granular Access Control for the Payroll Module

1

Hello everyone,

I would like to suggest an enhancement to the Payroll module that I believe would improve security and make Manager Cloud more suitable for organizations with stricter confidentiality requirements.

Current Challenge

At the moment, users who are granted access to the Payroll module can generally view salary information for all employees. In many organizations, this is not appropriate.

For example, a payroll accountant may need to process payroll for operational staff but should not be able to view the salaries of:

  • The CEO
  • Senior management
  • Department managers
  • Other payroll staff or colleagues whose compensation should remain confidential

Salary information is among the most sensitive data within a company, and access should follow the principle of least privilege.

Suggested Solution

Implement payroll access restrictions similar to the existing permissions available for Cash Accounts.

For example, just as Manager allows administrators to grant access to specific cash accounts, payroll permissions could allow administrators to grant access only to selected employees or employee groups.

Possible approaches include:

  • Restrict payroll access by individual employee.
  • Restrict payroll access by employee group or department.
  • Allow users to view and process payroll only for employees assigned to them.
  • Permit designated HR or senior management users to retain full payroll visibility.

Benefits

  • Improved confidentiality of employee salary information.
  • Better compliance with internal company policies and privacy requirements.
  • Stronger segregation of duties.
  • More suitable for medium and large organizations where payroll responsibilities are divided.
  • Greater flexibility without affecting existing workflows.

Example

A company has:

  • 200 employees
  • 3 payroll accountants
  • CEO and executive management

Payroll Accountant A should only be able to process payroll for Factory employees.

Payroll Accountant B should only be able to process payroll for Office employees.

Neither accountant should be able to view the salaries of the CEO, Finance Director, or HR Director unless explicitly authorized.

Conclusion

Manager already provides excellent permission controls in areas such as Cash Accounts. Extending this concept to the Payroll module would be a natural enhancement and would significantly strengthen data privacy and access control.

I believe this feature would be valuable for many organizations using Manager , especially those with multiple payroll users or strict confidentiality policies.

I would be interested to hear the thoughts of other users and whether the developers would consider adding this capability in a future release.

2

If a company has 200 employees, then it would be much more efficient to use a separate payroll package to manage all the payroll and human resource administration

Only the weekly or monthly total would be entered in Manager

I would consider that even if there is only a few employees, using a payroll software package, whether online or inhouse, is a much better solution.

Most payroll solution will handle printing pay slips, making payments, tax law modifications, reporting payroll data to tax authorities, manage confidentiality and other essential features of running a payroll system

3

I understand that some larger companies use separate payroll software. However, one of the biggest advantages of Manager is that it allows businesses to manage everything in one place instead of using multiple applications.

My suggestion is not to make the Payroll module more complex. It is simply to add better access control. Just like we can restrict access to specific Cash Accounts, payroll access could also be limited to specific employees or departments.

This would allow companies to keep payroll integrated with their accounting while protecting confidential salary information, reporting. Businesses that need this feature can use it, while those who don’t can continue using Manager as they do today.

I believe this small enhancement would make Manager even more useful for companies of all sizes.