A compliant New Zealand pay run is more than calculating net pay. Each cycle you confirm employee changes, apply the right tax codes, and run the numbers for PAYE, KiwiSaver, ESCT, student loan, and child support before any money moves. Then comes payday filing: an Employment Information return has to reach Inland Revenue within two working days of payday, and the deductions owed to IRD fall due by the 20th of the following month (or twice monthly for large employers). Accuracy and timing both matter, because a wrong tax code or a late EI return creates rework, employee queries, and potential penalties.
When the process lives in one person’s head, the gaps show up fast: a new starter’s KiwiSaver enrolment gets missed, a draft pay run goes out without client sign-off, or the payday filing slips past the deadline during a busy week. A repeatable workflow keeps every run consistent, so the same checks happen whether it is a quiet fortnight or month-end.
When to run a New Zealand pay run
Run this job every pay cycle (weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, depending on the client). The same template works for each frequency because the steps do not change, only the schedule does. Assign an owner who is responsible for processing, obtaining client approval, and filing on time, with a reviewer where you want a second set of eyes before finalising.
How to run it in Tidyflow
Set this up once as a reusable job template. Each step in the checklist becomes a subtask your team ticks off in order, so reviewing employee changes, processing the run, reviewing for accuracy, and filing the EI return all happen the same way every time. Because payroll repeats on a fixed schedule, you can run the template as a recurring job per pay cycle, so the next run is created automatically rather than relying on memory. Tidyflow’s workflow management keeps every active and upcoming run visible to the whole team.
What you need from the client goes out as items in their portal. Confirming new or terminated employees, uploading approved timesheets, and approving the payroll total before you file all happen through client requests, so signed IR330 forms and timesheets land in one place instead of scattered email threads. Pay run summaries, backup files, and payday filing confirmations sit alongside them in document management, so the full record for each cycle stays together for recordkeeping.
Common pitfalls
- Filing the payday filing (EI) return late: it is due within two working days of payday, not monthly with the deductions.
- Using an outdated or missing tax code because the IR330 was never collected, which throws out PAYE and student loan calculations.
- Forgetting to enrol new starters in KiwiSaver or apply the correct ESCT rate, leaving employer contributions wrong.
- Processing the run before the client has approved the draft, then having to reverse and refile.
- Defaulting to the 20th-only payment date when the client is a large employer (gross annual PAYE and ESCT over $500,000), who must pay twice monthly: by the 20th for the 1st to 15th, and by the 5th of the next month for the 16th to month-end.
- Getting leave and holiday pay wrong under the Holidays Act, the most common NZ payroll error: annual leave should be the greater of ordinary weekly pay or average weekly earnings, and the 8% pay-as-you-go applies only to eligible casual or fixed-term staff.
- Leaving the payroll clearing account unreconciled, so payment errors go unnoticed until the next cycle.