Getting ready for real payrolls
August was the busiest month of 2021, and the reason is simple: the software was about to be used for real. In mid-August the version number moved from 0.89 to 0.93 over three days, and the team prepared the first production configurations, with a demo environment alongside them.
Going live brings different priorities. Sign-in was set up so the separate front end could authenticate through the same API, users could stay signed in across sessions, and real-time updates were configured for the production setup. Seeding was adjusted so that live environments were prepared correctly from the start.
Naming things properly
One of the more satisfying changes was a large rename. Some figures had names that made sense to us but not to a payroll officer. The clearest example was a value called taxable that actually held total gross pay. Across several commits these were renamed to match what they meant, older names were dropped, and every deduction and allowance gained a stable short identifier.
Clear names are not cosmetic in payroll. When a payslip, an export and a calculation all use the same term for the same number, it is much easier to check the figures and explain them.
Allowances and year-to-date
We added an internet and phone allowance, a running total for non-taxable allowances, a None option for insurance as the default, and weekly and fortnightly versions of the exports. Changing an employee's payment preference now triggers a recalculation automatically. Work also began on a year-to-date export, which became a theme for the autumn.
This article was written from Mintage Payroll’s commit history for August 2021. See Mintage Payroll today