Payroll you can explain, line by line
The most common payroll question is not 'when will I be paid' but 'why is this number different'. We built the payroll engine so every line can answer that itself.
Explainable payroll means every line on a payslip records how it was calculated: the inputs, the formula and the legal rule it used. RafiqHR calculates in integer halalas, stores rules such as GOSI rates as versioned data with sources, and separates preparing, approving and releasing a run between three people, so any number can be explained.
Ask any payroll officer which questions take the most time and you will hear the same ones. Why is my salary lower this month? Why was GOSI deducted twice? Why is my colleague's housing allowance different? Each answer means opening several spreadsheets and reconstructing what happened.
We designed the RafiqHR payroll engine so that the answer is already there.
Every line carries its arithmetic
When the engine calculates a line on a payslip, it records how: the inputs, the formula and the result. A pro-rata salary for someone who joined on the 10th shows the days counted and the daily rate. A GOSI deduction shows the contributory wage, the rate and the branch. The employee sees a short version on the payslip; HR and finance can open the full one.
Because the explanation is produced by the same calculation, it cannot drift from the number. And when an employee asks Rafiq AI "why is my salary lower this month?", Rafiq AI reads the same explanation instead of guessing.
Money in halalas
All amounts are calculated in integer halalas, not in floating-point riyals. That sounds like a detail until a run of three thousand employees is a few riyals off from the bank file. Rounding happens once, in a defined place, and the rule is recorded.
Rules are data, with sources
GOSI rates, end-of-service fractions and similar rules are not buried in code. They live in a versioned rule pack, and each rule records its value and its legal source. Every payroll run records which rule versions it used. When a rate changes, the change is a reviewed update to the rule pack, and old runs still show the rules they were calculated with.
Before a rule is used for real payment, it has to be signed off by a payroll specialist. Until then, a company can still run payroll in parallel with its current system to compare results, which is how we recommend every migration starts.
Three people, three duties
A payroll run in RafiqHR is prepared by one person, approved by another and released to the bank by a third. Before approval, a variance report compares the run with the previous month and flags the employees whose pay changed. Posted runs are locked. None of this is unusual in a large finance team; we made it the default for everyone.
Read more about payroll in RafiqHR, or how the end-of-service award is calculated.
