Not every company pays a fixed monthly salary. Factories pay by piece, stores pay by shift, services pay by the hour. This article shows how to build each model.

Four built-in pay types

Choose the pay type in the Pay type field when creating a payroll template (article B9-04).

Hourly pay

1. In Settings › Salary Grades › Pay Types, on the Hourly pay tab, enter the hourly rate.
2. In the payroll template, select the Hourly pay type.
3. Add a column that pulls hours worked from the Time items variable group.
4. Add a base pay column = hourly rate × hours.
5. Handle overtime hours separately using the variables in the Overtime group, multiplied by the coefficient for each overtime type (article B6-09).

Overtime hours must be separated from regular hours because their coefficients differ. Lumping them together and multiplying by one rate is incorrect and employees will notice immediately.

Per-shift pay

This model is common in F&B and retail: each shift has its own rate, with night and weekend shifts paid more.

1. Set up each shift type as a shift template in the Time & Attendance module (article B7-02).
2. In Salary Grades, enter the rate for each shift type.
3. In the payroll template, add columns that pull the number of shifts of each type from the Shifts variable group.
4. Multiply the number of shifts by the corresponding rate, then add them up.

Piece-rate pay

The system has no built-in piece-rate pay type. The approach is to build it with formulas:

1. In Salary Grades › Other Income, set up a Piece-rate pay item.
2. In the payroll template, add a Product quantity column — this column is entered manually or imported from a file (article B9-09).
3. Add a Unit price per product column.
4. Add a Piece-rate pay column = quantity × unit price.
5. If there is a guaranteed minimum wage, add a comparison column and take the larger value.

Product quantity is data that doesn't live in Tanca — it comes from the production system or the supervisor's tracking sheet. Agree on a fixed data import process for each period, and on one person responsible for signing off before importing.

Combining multiple pay types

Companies that pay fixed salary + piece-rate pay or shift pay + allowances build it by adding columns together. The principle: one column per component, then a total column — don't cram everything into one long formula (article B9-05).

Checklist when using variable pay

• Rates have been updated correctly for the current period.
• Input data (hours, shifts, products) has been confirmed by an authorized person.
• Overtime hours are separated and multiplied by the correct coefficients.
• The result is not lower than the minimum wage applicable to that worker.

The last point is a legal requirement in most countries. Add a check column comparing against the minimum, and manually review any flagged rows before approving the payroll.