Paying somebody is not the same as transferring money to them. The moment you have an employee, payroll becomes a monthly obligation with deductions, registrations, records and deadlines attached — and most of the difficulty is in setting it up once, correctly.
Register first
Before the first payment, you need to be registered as an employer with SARS so you can deduct and pay over employees' tax, and registered for UIF. If you have not done this, do it before the first payday rather than after — backdating creates penalties and reconciliations you do not want to spend your time on.
Register with the Compensation Fund as well. It covers workplace injury, and the letter of good standing it produces is something larger customers and site operators ask for routinely.
What comes off a salary
Broadly: employees' tax deducted according to the tax tables, the employee's UIF contribution, plus your matching UIF contribution paid by the company. Depending on your sector and your own arrangements there may be a skills development levy, a provident or pension contribution, a medical scheme contribution, and bargaining council levies.
The distinction to hold onto is between what is deducted from the employee and what is paid by the company. Deducted money is not yours at any point. It is withheld on somebody else's behalf and passed on, and treating it as available cash is the mistake that reaches directors personally.
Gross, cost to company, and take-home
Three different numbers and a frequent source of misunderstanding at offer stage.
Gross is the salary before deductions. Take-home is what lands in their account. Cost to company is gross plus everything the company pays on top — your UIF, the Compensation Fund, any contribution you make to a fund or scheme.
Be explicit about which one you are quoting when you make an offer. An employee who understood the number as take-home and receives noticeably less has a legitimate grievance on day one.
Do it monthly, on a date
Pick a pay date and hold it. Late salaries damage trust faster than almost anything else an employer does, and they are usually a symptom of running payroll out of whatever is in the account rather than planning for it.
The submissions have their own deadlines, monthly and at intervals through the year for reconciliation. Put every one of them in a calendar the month you register.
Doing it yourself or not
For one or two employees, payroll software or a bookkeeper is inexpensive and takes the calculations, the payslips and the submissions off your desk entirely. For most owners this is worth it immediately — not because the arithmetic is hard, but because the deadlines are unforgiving and the penalties compound.
If you do it yourself, use software rather than a spreadsheet. Tax tables change, and a spreadsheet that was right last year is quietly wrong this year.
Keep the records
Payslips, the register of what was paid and deducted, leave taken, and the submissions made. There are retention periods, and these are the first documents requested in any dispute, inspection or audit.
General guidance, not tax or legal advice. Rates, thresholds, tables and deadlines change every year; confirm the current position with SARS or a payroll professional.