Piece Work Log — MBS Attendance Docs

What Is Piece Work?

Piece Work is a pay model where an employee earns a variable amount each day based on output, tasks completed, or a negotiated daily figure — rather than a fixed hourly rate. Because the earnings differ every day, there is no hourly rate stored on the employee record. Instead, you enter the rand amount they earned each working day directly into the Piece Work Log.

Piece work employees still clock in and out for legal compliance (BCEA), but clockings do not drive the payslip calculation. The log entries do.

The Piece Work Log Page

The page is split into two sections:

Unpaid Entries — all logged days that have not yet been included in a generated payslip.
Add Entry — the form to record a new day's earnings.

Filtering Unpaid Entries

If you have piece work employees across multiple departments, a Department dropdown appears above the unpaid entries list. Select a department to narrow the list to that team only. Then use the Employee dropdown to focus on a specific person. You can also filter by date range.

💡 Tip

The department filter only appears when piece work employees span more than one department. If all your piece workers are in the same department, the filter is hidden automatically to keep the page clean.

Adding an Entry

In the Add Entry section, select the Department (if shown) to narrow the employee list.
Select the Employee from the dropdown.
Enter the Date the work was performed.
Enter the Amount earned that day in rand.
Optionally add a Note describing the work (e.g. "50 units @ R4 each").
Click Save Entry.

Entries appear immediately in the Unpaid Entries list. You can add multiple entries for the same employee on the same day if needed (e.g. separate morning and afternoon tasks).

Editing or Deleting an Entry

Each entry in the Unpaid Entries list has Edit and Delete icons. You can correct an amount or date at any time before the payslip is generated. Once a payslip is generated and the entries are marked as paid, they move off this list and cannot be edited here — correct them by regenerating the payslip if necessary.

Generating a Payslip from Log Entries

Piece work payslips are generated on demand, per employee, from the log entries:

Ensure all entries for the period are correct in the Unpaid Entries list.
Select the entries you want to include using the checkboxes (or select all for a given employee).
Click Generate Payslip.
Confirm the employee, period start, and period end shown in the confirmation dialog.
Click Confirm. The system totals the selected entries, adds any applicable pay components (allowances/deductions), calculates PAYE and UIF, and creates the payslip.

The generated payslip appears on the Payslips page and the included entries are marked as paid — they no longer appear in the Unpaid Entries list.

⚠️ Gotcha — Select entries for one employee at a time

The Generate Payslip action creates one payslip per employee. If you select entries from multiple employees, the system will prompt you to select only one employee's entries at a time. It is safest to filter by employee first, select all, then generate.

Zero-Entry Days

If an employee worked but earned nothing on a particular day (e.g. a training day where no piece rate applies), add an entry with an amount of R0 and a note explaining it. This creates a paper trail and ensures the day is accounted for without inflating earnings.

PAYE and UIF on Piece Work

Piece work payslips calculate PAYE and UIF the same way as any other pay type — on the gross total of the period's entries. If an employee works across multiple short periods in a month, each payslip is taxed independently based on its own gross. There is no annualisation across separate piece work payslips.