Employee advances

The Advances workspace records employee salary advances and their repayment history. A salary advance is money paid to an employee ahead of payroll, later recovered — usually through a payroll deduction.

payIQ records advances; it does not move money

Recording an issuance is a statement that money was already issued outside payIQ. It does not trigger a bank, mobile-money, or cash transfer. Recording a repayment records money already collected. payIQ never transfers funds and never posts to accounting from this screen.

The advance lifecycle

An advance moves through these states:

Status	Meaning
Draft	Created but not yet submitted.
Requested	Submitted and waiting for approval.
Approved	Approved for an amount, but not yet issued.
Issued	Money has been issued (recorded). Repayments can now be recorded or deducted by payroll.
Settled	The outstanding balance has reached exactly zero.
Cancelled	Cancelled before issuance.

Allowed moves: Draft → Requested → Approved → Issued → Settled. An advance can also be cancelled before it is issued. Settled and Cancelled are final.

Once an advance is Issued its financial facts are frozen: the employee, reference, amounts, currency, and purpose can no longer change. Repayments and corrections are added as new events; history is never rewritten.

The advance list

The list shows every advance with its reference, employee, status, requested, approved, issued, repaid, and outstanding amounts, and the issued-versus- requested figure.

You can filter by status, by employee, and by Outstanding only, and select Refresh to reload. Selecting an advance opens its detail.

Creating an advance

Select New advance:

1. Choose the Employee (this sets the currency).
2. Enter the Requested amount and Currency.
3. Optionally record the Purpose, a Payroll deduction per run, and Notes.
4. Select Create advance. The advance starts as Draft.

Working an advance through its lifecycle

The detail screen’s Lifecycle actions card shows only the actions allowed by the advance’s current status and your role:

1. Submit request (Draft) — moves it to Requested.
2. Approve advance (Requested) — enter the Approved amount and submit. An approver cannot be the payroll operator role; approval requires the Approver or Administrator role.
3. Record issuance (Approved) — enter the Issued amount and Issued on date, then submit. The screen reminds you that payIQ does not transfer money.
4. Cancel advance (before issuance) — enter a reason and confirm.

Once issued, the advance can be repaid. When the outstanding balance reaches zero it becomes Settled automatically.

Repayments

A repayment is recorded from the advance detail and appends an immutable event:

• Record repayment (Issued) — enter the Repayment amount, Effective date, and optionally a Reference and Note.

A manual repayment records money collected outside payroll. It cannot exceed the outstanding balance; overpayment is refused rather than creating a credit.

Corrections

Administrators can append a correction when a past event was wrong:

• Record a correction — choose the Correction type (Adjustment or Reversal), the Effect (reduce or increase the balance), an Amount, an Effective date, and a Note.

A correction never edits or deletes the original event. It adds a new event, so the full history remains visible.

Payroll deduction plan

For an advance that is not settled or cancelled, you can set a Payroll deduction per run and select Save deduction plan. This is a plan, not a movement: it schedules how much payroll should recover each run.

How the plan behaves:

• When payroll is calculated, payIQ snapshots at most one eligible advance per employee, capped at the live outstanding balance. Calculation does not change the balance.
• When the run is finalized, the repayment is committed as a payroll repayment event, atomically with the finalized payroll.
• If the live balance changed since calculation, finalization fails closed and you must recalculate rather than commit a stale figure.

The event history

Every financial movement is an immutable event: an issuance, a manual repayment, a payroll repayment, or an administrator correction. Each event records its type, amount, direction, effective date, source, who recorded it, and when.

Events can never be edited or deleted. That is what makes the balance trustworthy: the outstanding balance is simply all increases minus all decreases, derived from events rather than stored as an editable number.

Disbursement preparation

For an Approved advance that has not been issued, the detail offers Prepare disbursement obligation. This creates a payment instruction in the Payments workspace so the disbursement can be tracked and reconciled. It never changes the advance itself.

payIQ shows the advance’s accounting handoff, payment position, and lifecycle as three separate states, because they are independent: an advance can be operationally issued, have a payment instruction, and have an accounting handoff in different states at the same time.

Who can do what here

Action	Roles
View advances and their history	Payroll Operator, Approver, Administrator
Create, submit, issue, cancel, repay, and plan a deduction	Payroll Operator, Administrator
Approve an advance	Approver, Administrator
Record a correction	Administrator

The Payroll Operator role cannot approve, which keeps requesting and approving separate. See Roles & access.