Payroll and costing settings

Settings → Payroll & costing sets the rates job costing and profitability run on, and the codes ONYX1's payroll export uses. Only the owner and admins can open it.

Costing defaults

• Overhead per hour ($/hr): your fixed monthly overhead (rent, insurance, admin, vehicles), spread across every labour hour worked on a job.
• Default cost rate ($/hr) and Default charge rate ($/hr): used for any worker who doesn't have their own cost or charge rate set on their Team profile. A worker's own rate always wins over these defaults.

Select Save costing defaults once you've set them.

Job cost terms

On a job, Cost so far is the cost recorded so far. It includes labour, materials, overhead and expenses. Labour counts only from APPROVED timesheets. Submitted, draft or otherwise unapproved hours are not included in Cost so far.

Invoiced (ex GST) is the sum of linked invoices that have been issued, sent or paid. Draft and void invoices do not count. If an invoice came from Xero, ONYX1 uses the Xero amount. If it was created in ONYX1 and pushed to Xero, ONYX1 uses the amount entered in ONYX1.

Owners see Profit and Margin once the job has an invoice. Profit is Invoiced minus Cost so far. Before the first invoice, the job shows Not invoiced yet instead of Invoiced and Profit. Business writers see Invoiced and Costs; field roles do not see job money.

If no overhead rate is set, the Costs block says: No overhead rate set, so costs exclude office, vehicles and software. Set an overhead rate. This note does not stop profit from being calculated.

Labour on-costs

Labour burden, such as KiwiSaver, ACC and leave, is spread across staff cost rates as a blended percentage. Until you itemise anything, ONYX1 uses a default breakdown: annual leave, sick leave, ACC, PPE, fuel and parking, KiwiSaver and public holidays, adding up to roughly a quarter on top of pay.

Add your own on-costs by entering a name and a rate percentage and selecting Add on-cost. As soon as you add even one, your itemised total replaces the whole default for every worker without their own cost rate, so add every on-cost that should apply, not just the one you want to change.

Leave entitlement

Set the Annual leave (days per year) every worker's leave balance starts from. It defaults to 20, the New Zealand statutory four weeks; raise it if your business gives more.

Timesheet pay

ONYX1 sends your payroll categorised hours, ordinary, overtime and penal, so your payroll system can compute the actual pay; ONYX1 doesn't calculate or pay wages itself. Set:

• Overtime threshold (hours / week): worked hours past this each week become overtime (default 40).
• Overtime multiplier: how overtime hours are weighted, such as 1.5 for time-and-a-half.
• Penal multiplier: how hours a worker flags as public-holiday or weekend work are weighted, such as 2.0 for double time.

iPayroll export

Set the Ordinary-time, Overtime and Penal element IDs your iPayroll account uses (they default to T1, T1.5 and T2). Export an actual pay run from the Timesheets approval screen, not from here; set each worker's iPayroll ID on their Team profile.

A Direct API push straight to iPayroll is planned but not connected yet: for now, use the CSV export on the Timesheets approval screen, which carries the same categorised hours.

If something goes wrong

• Settings → Payroll & costing is missing: only the owner and admins can open it.
• A job's cost looks wrong: check the worker's own cost rate on their Team profile first; it always overrides the defaults here.
• The iPayroll file doesn't match what you expect: check the element IDs here match what your iPayroll account uses, and that each worker's iPayroll ID is set on their Team profile.