Base Salary
Change an employee's monthly salary or pay type, and understand when the new figure reaches their payslip
An employee's base salary lives on their profile, not on the payroll run. Payroll reads the figure from the profile each time a payslip is calculated, so a raise is entered once on the employee and every future run picks it up. This guide covers changing the salary, what the effective date does, and what to do when a payroll run has already been created.
Where Base Salary Lives
Base salary is on the employee profile under Pay & tax > Compensation. It is separate from allowances, incentives, and other recurring pay items, which are managed further down the same page.
Salary is not shown or edited on the employee list. Open the person's profile and use Pay & tax > Compensation.
Changing an Employee's Salary
Step 1: Open the employee's Compensation page
Go to Workforce > Employees in the group sidebar (a company's Employees > Directory card takes you to the same list), search for the person, and click their name to open the profile. In the left navigation, under Pay & tax, click Compensation.
The first section is Wages and payment.
Step 2: Check the pay type
Under Pay details, confirm Pay type:
| Pay type | What the employee is paid on |
|---|---|
| Monthly salary | A fixed monthly amount |
| Hourly | An hourly rate against recorded hours |
| Daily | A daily rate |
| Commission | Commission only |
| Mixed | A combination |
The Monthly salary (THB) field only appears when the pay type is Monthly salary or Mixed. If you cannot see the field, the employee is on a different pay type. Changing the pay type clears the rates that no longer apply, so set the pay type first and then enter the amount.
Step 3: Enter the new amount
Type the new figure into Monthly salary (THB). Enter the full monthly amount, not the difference from the old one.
Step 4: Set the effective date
Effective date is the day the new rate starts. It moves to today when you change the amount; set it to the actual start date of the raise if that differs. Payroll uses it to decide which pay periods get the new amount (see below).
Step 5: Save
Click Save. The button stays disabled until something on the form has changed. A confirmation appears once the profile is updated.
What the Effective Date Does
Every salary change you save is recorded on the company's Salary History page (open the company, go to Employees, then the Salary History card) with its effective date: the old amount, the new amount, and the date the new one starts. Payroll reads that history when it calculates a payslip: a pay period uses the salary that was in effect on the period's first day. Periods starting on or after the effective date get the new amount; periods that started before it keep the old one, even if you recalculate them later.
When you edit the amount, the effective date moves to today on its own. Change it if the raise starts on another day: backdate it for a raise agreed earlier, or set it to a future date for one agreed in advance. Each save states the salary from its effective date onward, so a save dated earlier than a change already in history replaces that later change; if you had a future raise entered, enter it again after a backdated correction.
The effective date decides which periods get the new rate. It does not split a period. A raise dated in the middle of a cycle applies to the whole of the next period that starts on or after that date, and to none of the period it falls inside.
If a raise takes effect mid-cycle, you have two clean options:
- Date it from the start of the next cycle, and pay the difference for the part-period as Back pay on that employee's payslip.
- Date it from the start of the current cycle so the whole current period is paid at the new rate, if that is what was agreed.
Proration in Hopshift covers partial employment periods, such as someone hired or terminated mid-cycle. It does not cover a rate change.
Correcting a typo, not giving a raise? Set the effective date to the first day of the earliest period the correct figure should apply to. A correction dated today would leave last month's draft on the wrong figure, because that period started before it.
When the New Figure Reaches the Payslip
This depends on where the payroll run is when you make the change.
| Situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| No run created yet for the period | The run picks up the new salary when it is created. Nothing else to do. |
| A draft run already exists | The payslip already holds the old figure. It keeps that figure until it is rebuilt: see below. |
| The run is finalized | The payslip is locked. Reopen the run, or leave it and pay the difference as back pay in the next cycle. |
Updating a draft run
A draft payslip picks up the salary in effect for its period the next time it is recalculated. (If the effective date is after that period's first day, the draft keeps the old rate on purpose; see the effective date section above.) Recalculation happens on its own whenever something on that payslip changes: an OT approval, an edit to an allowance cell, an import that touches the row. If nothing else is going to change before publishing, force it:
- This month's or last month's draft: Discard is not offered for these two months (they are the live accrual window and recreate themselves). Open the run's detail page (Payroll > company sheet > open run), select the person's row, and use the Reset to calculated bulk action. For a monthly-salary employee that recalculates base pay for that period, so the new salary comes in where it applies, and tax and SSO follow. Hours, overtime, and one-off pay-item lines already on the row are kept.
- An older draft: go to Payroll, open the company's sheet, and use Discard, then create the run again. The new run is calculated from the current profile. Reset to calculated works here too.
The Base column on the payroll sheet is read-only on purpose. Base pay is not typed into the run; it comes from the profile.
Update the salary before the run is created whenever you can. It saves the extra step and keeps the payslip on the engine's own numbers.
Changing Several Salaries at Once
For a group of increases, use the export-and-reimport route rather than opening each profile: Export current employee data, edit the salary column, and upload the file. Leave every identifying column as exported. Rows are matched by Company + email first, then by Employee ID; a row whose email or Employee ID exists only in a different company is treated as a transfer, not a salary update. See Importing Employees.
Who Can Change Salaries
Changing pay requires an access level with payroll permissions. Company and group admins have it; an outlet manager without payroll permissions can open an employee's profile but cannot see or change compensation.
Related
- Employee Management: profiles, statuses, and departments
- Importing Employees: bulk updates by spreadsheet
- Running Payroll: the monthly cycle end to end