ERPNext 🇿🇦 South Africa Payroll, HR & COIDA by Cohenix

Overview

A South African statutory payroll and HR layer for Frappe HRMS. It calculates PAYE, UIF, SDL and ETI, produces the employer declarations SARS expects, and adds the labour-law structures South African employers are held to — BCEA leave and termination, Employment Equity, skills development and COIDA.

Statutory values are never hard-coded. Every rate resolves from an effective-dated, reviewer-approved rate pack in the SA Compliance & VAT foundation app, against the transaction date rather than today's date.

Payroll and statutory

• PAYE — annualised calculation with age-based rebates, medical scheme fees and additional medical expenses tax credits, retirement-fund deduction caps, travel-allowance inclusion percentages, and full-tax treatment for additional earnings such as a 13th cheque.

• UIF and SDL — contribution bases derived from explicit per-component applicability flags, with the statutory ceiling applied per employee.

• Employment Tax Incentive — eligibility, the minimum-wage test, 160-hour gross-up and pro-rata, qualifying months, generated versus utilised ETI, the PAYE-liability cap and carry-forward, with a per-employee audit log.

• Fringe benefits — company car, residential accommodation and low-interest loans as dated, submittable records that feed the slip as taxable rows.

• Payroll frequencies — monthly, plus timesheet and hourly structures, with duplicate-period protection per employee.

• Employer contributions — UIF employer, SDL and COIDA-applicable components posted as a separate, idempotent accrual journal.

• EMP201 — monthly working paper with a database-enforced unique active period key, so a duplicate declaration cannot be created by a race.

• IRP5 / IT3(a) and EMP501 — certificates and reconciliation built from submitted slips, with SARS payroll codes, directive handling and PDF output.

• Payroll payment batch — FNB Online Banking Enterprise CSV, generated from an immutable snapshot with a source hash and control total, attached privately and regenerated idempotently.

Labour and HR

• BCEA leave and termination — opt-in per Leave Type, with sick-leave medical evidence rules, the three-day family-responsibility cap, gender-specific leave, service-based notice, operational-requirements severance and a governed annual-leave payout feeding final settlement.

• Employment Equity — workforce profile, remuneration-proxy, target-plan and movement working papers, with small-cell privacy controls and permission-aware company filtering.

• Skills development — SETA, Skills Development Facilitator, OFO occupation, training provider, Workplace Skills Plan, Annual Training Report and completion records.

• Business trips — date-based allowances, mileage at a governed rate, accommodation and expense totals, with optional draft Expense Claim creation.

COIDA

• Workplace injuries and OID claims — restricted incident records, draft leave and claim creation, one-way claim status transitions, post-submission medical reports and external receipt evidence.

• Return of Earnings — March-to-February return built from the payroll COIDA earnings basis, with per-employee caps, governed rates and minimums, an immutable source snapshot and stale-source detection.

Workspaces

• SA Payroll — PAYE, UIF, SDL, ETI, salary processing, payroll reports, company contributions and accounting integration.

• SA Labour — SETA, bargaining council, sectoral wage, workplace skills, annual training, business trip and employment equity.

• SA COIDA — COIDA settings, industry rates, annual return preparation, workplace injuries and OID claim tracking.

Country scope

Every statutory rule is gated on the company's country. Companies outside South Africa keep stock HRMS behaviour and are never blocked by South African setup they cannot complete.

Filing and banking boundary

This app prepares and evidences declarations and payment files. It does not transmit them. Submission to SARS and release of a payment batch to the bank remain deliberate human acts.

Requirements

Frappe, ERPNext, HRMS, and South Africa Compliance & VAT (za_local_core). The foundation app must be installed first — payroll resolves all statutory rates through it.

Important Compliance and Responsibility Notice

This application is intended to assist with South African localization, statutory configuration, calculation support, reporting, and working-paper preparation inside ERPNext.

Cohenix and EPI-USE do not accept responsibility or liability for incorrect calculations, incorrect configuration, inaccurate statutory submissions, missed deadlines, penalties, losses, or any other consequences arising from the use of this application.

All calculations, reports, statutory values, payroll results, VAT returns, COIDA returns, Employment Equity outputs, and related submissions must be reviewed and validated by a suitably qualified payroll practitioner, accountant, tax practitioner, or responsible employer representative before being used for statutory filing, payment, reporting, or decision-making.

The application does not replace professional judgment, tax advice, payroll review, accounting review, or legal compliance review. Final responsibility for configuration accuracy, calculation validation, legislative interpretation, statutory submissions, and compliance remains with the employer and the appointed practitioner.

Community and Contribution

South African statutory compliance is complex and changes over time.

Cohenix welcomes feedback, testing, issue reports, and contributions from the ERPNext community, payroll practitioners, accountants, and implementation partners to improve the accuracy, coverage, and long-term sustainability of South African localization for ERPNext.