Settings

Settings holds the organization-wide defaults SolaHR uses everywhere: the company details printed on HR documents, the payroll defaults that turn a monthly salary into daily and hourly rates, the attendance rules that decide who was late or worked overtime, and the employee numbering sequence.

Use it once when you set up SolaHR, and again whenever your working hours, overtime multipliers or numbering policy change. It is normally used by the organization Owner or a SolaHR Administrator; some older roles can open it read-only.

Settings is not where you decide who works with which employees (that is Team access), who has a SolaHR account (Admin Users), or detailed payroll rules such as tax rules and compensation components (that is Payroll & Compensation → Payroll Settings, see Payroll).

Where to find it

Who can do what

Scoped roles work in their own focused workspace and never see the System pages. See Team access.

The Preview Renumbering and Apply Renumbering buttons are visible to everyone who can open the page, but both are checked on the server and need Manage HR settings. A view-only user who clicks Preview Renumbering gets no preview.

Screen tour

• Header: Settings — "Configure company, payroll, attendance, and employee numbering". There are no header buttons.
• Tabs (left to right): Company Information, Payroll Defaults (only if your plan includes payroll), Attendance Defaults (only if your plan includes attendance and you can view settings), Employee Numbering (hidden while the workspace is still in its first-time review, see Workspace setup). Opening /settings?tab=payroll (or company, attendance, numbering) lands on that tab.
• Introduction line under the header that changes with the tab, for example "Review the pay cycle, currency and working time before preparing payroll. Changes apply according to existing payroll rules.". While the first-time review is pending, a badge Setup review required and a button Back to setup appear too.
• Card: the fields of the selected tab.
• Save button at the bottom of the card on the first three tabs (only when you have Manage HR settings). The Employee Numbering tab has its own buttons instead.

How saving works:

• Save saves only the tab you are on. Switching tabs does not save. Save each tab before you move on.
• When the save works you see Updated successfully and, on the card, "Settings saved successfully."
• When something is wrong, the message "Your settings could not be saved. Review the highlighted fields and try again." appears with each field's own message under the field. Nothing on that tab is saved until every problem is fixed.
• Without Manage HR settings the fields are read-only and there is no Save button.

Labels are the ones on screen, for example Working days per month.

Company Information

The first block is the Organization logo: "This is the organization logo used across your applications and HR documents." It shows the current logo or "No organization logo". If you are the organization owner (and have Manage HR settings) you can Choose a logo (PNG, JPEG or WebP, up to 600 KB) and click Upload logo (Change logo when one exists): "Organization logo updated." Other users see the logo but not the upload controls ("Only an organization owner can change the shared logo."). The logo is the same one shown in the Solavel Portal and your other apps, and it is printed on payslips, vouchers and other HR documents (see Documents and printing). It also appears next to the organization name in the top bar.

Below it the card Organization details — "Keep your organization identity and contact details current. Your shared logo also appears on HR documents."

These fields are your organization's profile in Solavel. SolaHR reads and writes the same record, so a change here also changes the organization details your other apps show.

Update company information

1. Go to System → Settings. The Company Information tab is open.
2. Change the fields you need.
3. Click Save.

Result: Updated successfully. Clearing a field and saving clears the stored value.

Payroll Defaults

The introduction reads "Review the pay cycle, currency and working time before preparing payroll. Changes apply according to existing payroll rules." The tab has four groups.

If this is a brand-new workspace, a notice Confirm payroll currency before finishing setup appears at the top (see Payroll Settings).

Pay cycle

Working time

Overtime

These values are shared with Payroll & Compensation → Payroll Settings: changing them here changes them there, and the other way round. A field you leave empty keeps its stored value.

How payroll uses these values

When a payroll run is calculated for an employee:

• Daily rate = monthly base salary ÷ working days per month.
• Hourly rate = daily rate ÷ working hours per day.
• Overtime pay = weekday overtime hours × hourly rate × overtime rate (normal days) + holiday overtime hours × hourly rate × overtime rate (holidays). Only approved overtime counts (see Payroll).
• First month: if the employee started after the 1st of the run's month, the days before the start date are deducted. With 30 working days, someone who starts on the 11th is paid for 20 days.
• Attendance amounts proposed in Attendance review use the same daily and hourly rates.

Payroll settings are kept with dates: a run for an earlier month uses the values that were in force then.

Lateness deduction rule

Under the working-time groups (and linked from the Attendance Defaults tab with Review lateness rule in Payroll Defaults) a separate section decides how lateness is priced. It has its own button because it belongs to attendance: Save lateness rule ("Save this rule separately from the payroll defaults above."). Saving it does not touch your attendance calendars or the other payroll values.

The notes under the form explain the maths: "Normal hourly pay = monthly-equivalent salary ÷ saved working days per month (for example 30) ÷ saved working hours per day (for example 8). Save payroll defaults first if you change those values." and the example "normal hourly pay 10, multiplier 1, and 30 minutes late gives a deduction of 5. Multiplier 2 gives 10." The grace period is a threshold: lateness within it has no deduction, but once it is exceeded the full late time from the scheduled start is counted, not only the excess. The rule "calculates attendance review items. Existing approval rules still apply; saving it does not recalculate attendance actions or issued payroll." Organizations that already had a fixed per-hour amount keep it: the method opens as Fixed amount (existing rule) until they choose the hourly method.

Attendance Defaults

The introduction reads "Set working times, grace periods and non-working days. Payroll uses the saved attendance rules." These settings define the Main work schedule (see Work schedules) and decide how punches are judged. The tab shows these fields:

Below the fields a hint says "Overtime is paid with the weekday and holiday multipliers in Payroll settings. Change them there." The overtime rates that used to live on this tab are no longer used here: attendance overtime is priced with the Overtime rate fields on the Payroll Defaults tab.

If your plan has no payroll, the lateness rule section appears here instead of on the Payroll Defaults tab.

New organizations start with 08:00–17:00, 15 grace minutes and 4 half-day hours.

Where these rules apply

• Late and on-time: SolaHR looks for working hours in this order: the employee's own work schedule, then the Main work schedule (which mirrors this tab), then the Friday–Saturday weekend if nothing is saved. If you use Work schedules, the employee's schedule wins.

• Review items: when attendance is processed, SolaHR creates pending items in Attendance review. Nothing is deducted until someone approves them:

  Situation	Proposed amount
  Missing punch approved as absence	Monthly salary ÷ Working days per month
  Late arrival	Hours × the lateness rule above
  Early leave	Hours rounded up × hourly pay
  Overtime	Hours × hourly pay × the matching Overtime rate

  Days marked as holiday or leave never get these items, and neither does a holiday for the person's department.

Update attendance defaults

1. Open the Attendance Defaults tab.
2. Type times in 24-hour format, for example 08:00 and 17:00.
3. Tick or untick the rules and choose the non-working days.
4. Click Save. You see Updated successfully, and the Main work schedule is updated to match.

Employee Numbering

Every employee has an employee number. It appears on the employee list, payslips, contracts and exports. This tab sets the number the sequence starts from and lets you renumber everyone in one go.

How numbers are given out

• A new workspace starts at 1978 unless you change it.
• By default SolaHR keeps employee numbers in start-date order: when you add an employee, or change someone's start date, everyone is renumbered so the earliest starter has the starting number and the rest follow. Employees who started on the same day keep the order they were added.
• If your organization switched this automatic renumbering off on the older settings screen, new employees simply get the highest existing number + 1, and nobody is renumbered.

Renumber all employees

1. Open the Employee Numbering tab.
2. Enter Starting Number (a whole number, 1 or more).
3. Click Preview Renumbering. A table appears with every employee and the columns Employee, Current and Proposed. Nothing has changed yet.
4. Check the proposed numbers.
5. Click Apply Renumbering under the table.
6. A confirmation dialog Apply Renumbering opens — "Renumber employees as shown in the preview?" — with the buttons Cancel and Apply Renumbering. Click Apply Renumbering to confirm. Click Cancel to stop.

Result: the starting number is saved, every employee is renumbered, the preview closes and you see Updated successfully. The change is recorded in the Audit Log.

Things to know before you apply:

• Renumbering cannot be undone. Anything already printed or exported (payslips, contracts, ID cards) keeps the old number.
• Order: the preview lists employees in the order they were added. The applied numbers follow start date (earliest first). If employees were added out of start-date order, their final number can differ from the preview. Check the employee list afterwards.
• If automatic renumbering is switched off for your organization, Apply Renumbering only saves the new starting number. Existing employees keep their numbers and the next new employee gets the highest number + 1.

Statuses and lifecycle

Settings have no statuses. Each tab is a single record per organization: it is created with defaults the first time it is opened and then only updated. There is nothing to delete or archive.

Worked examples

Quick example: change working hours for Ramadan

Al Noor Trading LLC shortens the working day during Ramadan.

1. The owner opens System → Settings → Attendance Defaults.
2. They change Work start time to 09:00 and Work end time to 15:00, and keep Late grace period (minutes) at 15.
3. They click Save and see Updated successfully. On Work Schedules the Main work schedule now shows 09:00 - 15:00.

Sara Khan has no personal work schedule, so a 09:14 check-in is on time and 09:16 is late. Omar Haddad is on the "Warehouse shift" work schedule, so his hours do not change until that schedule itself is edited. After Ramadan the owner sets the times back to 08:00 and 17:00.

Full example: setting up a new workspace

Al Noor Trading LLC, Dubai, sets up SolaHR before its first payroll.

1. Company Information: Choose a logo al-noor.png (180 KB) and Upload logo; Company name Al Noor Trading LLC, Company address Office 1204, Al Habtoor Business Tower, Dubai, Company phone +971 4 555 0142, Company email hr@alnoortrading.ae, Company website https://alnoortrading.ae, Commercial registration number CN-1048821, Time zone Asia/Dubai. Save → Updated successfully. The same details now show in the organization profile in Solavel and the logo appears on payslips.

2. Payroll Defaults: Pay frequency Monthly, Payroll preparation deadline 25, Payroll currency AED — UAE Dirham (the only choice in a new workspace, because Finance uses AED), Working days per month 30, Working hours per day 8, Overtime rate (normal days) 1.25, Overtime rate (holidays) 1.5. Save.

   For Omar Haddad on AED 9,000 a month: daily rate AED 300, hourly rate AED 37.50. Six hours of approved weekday overtime in March pay 6 × 37.50 × 1.25 = AED 281.25. Sara Khan starts on 11 March on AED 6,000: her March run pays 20 days × AED 200 = AED 4,000.

3. Lateness deduction rule (same tab): Deduct pay for lateness ticked, Calculation method Employee hourly pay × multiplier, Hourly pay multiplier 1, Round late time up to the full hour ticked. Save lateness rule → "Lateness rule saved."

4. Attendance Defaults: Work start time 08:00, Work end time 17:00, Late grace period (minutes) 10, Half-day hours 4, Non-working days Saturday and Sunday ticked. Save.

   Omar checks in at 08:25 one morning. He is 25 minutes late (counted from 08:00), rounded up to 1 hour, multiplier 1, so SolaHR proposes a pending deduction of 9,000 ÷ 30 ÷ 8 = AED 37.50 in Attendance review. The HR manager reviews it there before it reaches payroll.

5. Employee Numbering: the 40 imported staff have mixed numbers (E-7, 112, …). The owner enters 1001, clicks Preview Renumbering and checks the table, clicks Apply Renumbering, then Apply Renumbering again in the confirmation. Omar Haddad, the earliest starter, becomes 1001; the next starters follow. The next person hired gets the next number in start-date order.

How it connects

Messages you may see

Tips and common problems

Related

• Team access
• Admin Users
• Audit Log
• Getting started
• Attendance
• Work schedules
• Attendance review
• Workspace setup
• Documents and printing
• Payroll
• Employees
• Team (Solavel)