The AMBA payroll framework.

Payroll is the single largest recurring expenditure for most institutions. It is also the transaction most likely to attract audit attention. And the most damaging when done wrong. AMBA's payroll design prioritises correctness, traceability, and segregation of duties over convenience.

Every step in the payroll workflow has a named accountable role and a named audit artefact. Nothing happens because someone said so verbally. Nothing happens without a database row that says who, when, and why.

The steps in order: (1) Budget Authorisation, (2) Payroll Computation, (3) Budget Validation, (4) Variance Review, (5) Variance Acknowledgement Gate, (6) HR Certification, (7) Authorised Approval, (8) Bank Payment File, (9) Payment Confirmation, (10) Payslip Distribution.

Steps 1, 7, and 9 are Finance-approver actions. Steps 2–6 are HR Admin actions. Step 8 is technical (system generates). Step 10 is automatic (system distributes on step 9 completion). This is the segregation of duties: HR computes, Finance authorises, system distributes.

The competition demo uses a Ghana payroll preset with progressive PAYE bands. Payroll uses the stored bands for the selected period. Review the preset against your organisation's requirements before use; it is not a claim of compliance for every organisation or jurisdiction.

Historical payrolls always use the bands that were in force at the time of the run. An audit of a 2024 payroll uses 2024 rates. The bands table is versioned with an effective_from and effective_to date; the payroll computation picks the band version whose effective range covers the payroll period.

Confirm any required tax reliefs and additional statutory rules before rollout. An editable tax-band table alone does not implement every jurisdiction's payroll requirements.

The current Ghana demo calculation applies 5.5% employee and 13% employer contributions to basic salary. Both amounts are stored on the payroll line. These are the demo's implemented calculations, not universal pension rules.

Review any additional pension schemes, earnings bases and contribution rules required by your organisation. Confirm support before adopting a payroll preset.

Payroll uses the employee's recorded salary components, including basic salary, housing, transport, medical and other allowances. Review these values before generating a run.

The Ghana demo calculation includes employee pension contributions, PAYE, loan and absence deductions. Review each payroll record and supporting information before approval.

After computation, AMBA compares each employee's net pay this period to their net pay last period. Any employee whose net pay changed by more than the configured threshold (default 10%) is flagged for review. The variance report lists the flagged employees, the previous amount, the current amount, and (where available) the root cause.

Common root causes AMBA identifies automatically: added or removed allowance, changed basic salary, added or removed deduction, unpaid leave during the period, overtime worked, one-off bonus. Where AMBA cannot identify the cause, the variance is flagged with "unknown" and the HR Admin must document the reason before acknowledgement.

Acknowledgement is per-employee, not per-batch. Bulk acknowledgement is not permitted. The intent is to force a deliberate decision on each variance, not a rubber-stamp approval of the whole list.

Auditors reviewing a payroll run will expect to see: the budget authorisation record for the period (with authoriser identity and timestamp), the payroll computation output (frozen at computation time), the variance report with per-line acknowledgements, the HR certification record, the authorised approval record, the bank payment file, the payment confirmation with bank reference, and the payslip distribution log.

AMBA produces the full audit pack for a payroll run in one export. A zip file containing every artefact for the run. The pack is generated on demand from the audit log; there is no separate process to prepare it.

Supported banks with pre-configured export formats: GCB Bank, Ecobank, Stanbic Bank, Standard Chartered, Absa Bank, Fidelity Bank. Each bank's format is captured as a template. Column order, delimiter, header row, encoding, filename convention.

Banks not on the pre-configured list can be added by supplying the format specification from the bank. This is a one-time configuration per bank, typically done during implementation.