Payroll pressure often comes from the days before it is due. HR is confirming attendance corrections, managers are approving late leave requests, finance is asking for employee changes, and someone is trying to work out which spreadsheet contains the latest numbers.
A dependable month-end process does not remove the need for professional payroll review. It gives HR and finance a clean, approved set of inputs to review. This checklist is for Nepal teams that want a more orderly handoff from people operations to payroll preparation.
Set one cut-off date and make it visible
Choose a cut-off date for attendance corrections, leave approvals, shift changes and employee updates. Tell managers and employees when the period closes and what happens after that date. Without a shared cut-off, every payroll cycle becomes a series of urgent exceptions.
The aim is not to reject genuine corrections. It is to record them properly, assign an owner and make it clear whether they affect the current period or the next review. This is much fairer than accepting changes informally until the last minute.
Review employee changes first
Start the payroll-preparation checklist with the people record. Check new joiners, departures, role or salary changes, bank details where relevant, changes in work arrangement, and any approved one-off items. Confirm the effective date of each change and keep an authorised source for it.
When employee details live in a shared core HR record, HR and finance are less likely to work from different versions of the same information. Restrict sensitive information to the people who need it for their role.
Close attendance and shift exceptions
Next, review the time records that affect the period. Look for missing check-ins, unapproved corrections, late or early attendance that needs explanation, overtime requests, changed shifts and incomplete manager approvals. Do not ask payroll to decide whether a time record is valid; resolve it with the responsible manager before the handoff.
Hajiri’s attendance workflow keeps corrections and approval history close to the original record. That makes it easier to answer the simple but important question: “Which version was approved for this period?”
Confirm approved leave and absences
Review pending leave requests and any manual absence records. Approved leave should be reflected consistently between the leave record, attendance record and the payroll input. If a leave balance is adjusted, record the reason and the person who approved it. A clear adjustment history prevents the same question returning later.
For a practical process, see our leave-management setup checklist for Nepal teams. The detail matters most when a manager, employee and payroll reviewer need to understand the same period differently.
Prepare, review and approve the payroll input
Once the people, attendance and leave inputs are settled, prepare a review summary for the authorised payroll reviewer. The summary should make unusual items visible: new joiners, final settlements, overtime, unpaid absence, manual adjustments or any exception that needs confirmation. A reviewer should not need to search through chat messages to identify them.
Use an approval step before final processing. Different organisations will have different responsibilities, but the principle is consistent: the person preparing the records and the person approving the result should be able to see the same source information.
Keep a secure, useful record
Retain the approved inputs, necessary approvals and final payroll record according to your organisation’s policy and applicable obligations. Limit access to people with a genuine payroll or HR responsibility. Payroll files contain sensitive information, so convenience should never override access control.
When a question comes up later, the record should answer what was changed, who approved it and when it was included. That is the operational benefit of a connected HRMS: not more screens, but fewer unanswered questions.
Monthly payroll preparation checklist
- Publish and enforce the attendance, leave and employee-change cut-off.
- Confirm joiners, leavers and approved employee-record changes.
- Resolve attendance, shift and overtime exceptions with managers.
- Confirm approved leave and documented balance adjustments.
- Prepare a review summary that highlights unusual items.
- Obtain authorised review before final payroll processing.
- Store the approved records securely with appropriate access controls.
Hajiri helps teams connect the inputs that payroll preparation depends on: employee records, attendance, leave, approvals and project time where applicable. Start free for up to 10 people and use a real pay-period workflow to test the process with your team.
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