Basic Info
This screen is where you will enter most of the employee’s details such as their name, address, identification numbers, and relevant dates. It is the second step in adding a new employee but can also be accessed at any time by going to the employee’s profile and clicking on Edit Info > Basic Info.
Most of the fields in the Essentials section are compulsory for the setup process and are explained briefly below:
The Pay Frequency is how often they are paid, e.g. weekly or monthly. You would have set up at least one pay frequency as part of adding the company, and all available pay frequencies will appear in the drop-down menu. If the frequency you need isn’t there – for example, if you’ve always had weekly-paid employees and are now adding someone who is paid monthly – you will need to add this new pay frequency first. This process is explained in the following related article:
The employee’s First Names (including all middle names) and Last Name should be entered in full and as they appear on their identification documents.
You will need to enter a PPSN for the employee if you have it. Employees without a PPSN will not be able to retrieve an RPN and will be taxed on an Emergency basis for the current tax year and employment. More information on the various tax bases is available in the following section:
Please note: Ensure that, when adding a new employee or updating the PPSN of an active employee, there is no other active employee with the same PPSN.
The employee’s Date of Birth and Date of Appointment can be captured by selecting them from the calendar or by typing them in. Please ensure that the Date of Appointment is the date the employee was first employed, or leave cycles will be incorrect.
PRSI Class will be set to “A” by default and can be changed using the drop-down menu if necessary. Please ensure that this is correct as it will impact the calculation of PRSI contributions.
The PRSI Exempt checkbox indicates whether the employee is exempt from paying PRSI.
Please note: There is a difference between employees who are PRSI Exempt and employees who do not contribute PRSI as they are in PRSI Class M. Do not mark an employee as PRSI Exempt if they have been assigned a PRSI class. An employee cannot belong to a PRSI class and also be PRSI Exempt. Please refer to the following article for more information:
The PRSI Exemption reason field will appear if the PRSI Exempt checkbox is selected. As part of PAYE Modernisation, it is mandatory to provide a reason if an employee is set as PRSI Exempt.
The Director field is used to provide information to Revenue on the employee’s directorship status. For PAYE Modernisation, all employees must be set as either a “Non-director”, “Non-proprietary director” or “Proprietary director”.
Please note: If you select “Proprietary director”, the PRSI class must be set as class S or class M in accordance with the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (
Where “EFT” is selected as the Payment Method, the employee’s bank details must be entered. If you are going to be paying the employee by EFT but do not have their bank details yet, you can select “Cash”. You will, however, need to ensure that their bank details have been entered before creating your first pay run in order to use our EFT export file to pay this employee.
The employee’s Address(es) and Income Tax Number are not compulsory during setup but are required for filing with Revenue, so we recommend entering them at the outset where possible.
Certain information, such as a Pay Point or Job Grade, requires additional setup before it can be entered. Please see the following articles on these aspects:
If you are adding an employee who is engaged in dual employment, tick Allow Multiple Employment under Additional Statutory Info (see below).
If you are adding a new employee and have captured all of the necessary information in this section, you can move on to the final step: capturing their Regular Hours.
Dual Employment¶
Dual employment occurs when:
- You have an employee on your payroll with two active employments; AND
- You want to keep the two sets of pay separate on your payroll records.
Allowing dual employment on the system will assign different Employment Identifiers to the employee, ensuring that submissions to Revenue are reported correctly. You can read more about Employment Identifiers here.
If you do not tick this box, you will not be able to add two employees with the same PPSN. This is to prevent the accidental duplication of employees who are not engaged in dual employment.
Employees without a PPSN¶
When an employee without a PPSN is added to the system, SimplePay will automatically create an Employer Reference Number for that employee.
This ID is referred to as the Employment ID / Reference. This reference number will be submitted to Revenue when completing submissions. Revenue will use this reference number to identify a specific employee whilst that employee tries to get a PPSN.
This allows Revenue to identify the tax deducted for that specific employee. Once the employee finally receives their PPSN, you will need to update the employee’s profile on SimplePay with the PPSN.
When the next submission has been completed, Revenue will see the PPSN as well as the Employer Reference Number and associate the two. The tax credits will then be assigned accordingly.