How to work with Recurring Pay Items

What Is Recurring Pay Items?

Recurring Pay Items lets you attach a pay item to one employee so it is automatically included in future payroll runs.

Typical use cases:

• Regular allowances
• Ongoing deductions
• Repeat salary-based adjustments

Plan Requirement

Recurring Pay Items is a paid Pro feature.

If your plan does not include it, you may see:

• This feature requires an upgraded plan.

Where To Find It

1. Go to People.
2. Open a team member profile.
3. Open the Pay Items step.
4. In Recurring Pay Items, select + Add recurring item.

Add a Recurring Pay Item

1. Select a Pay item.
2. Choose Recurrence as either Unlimited or Fixed number of payrolls.
3. Enter values based on pay item type. For a standard pay item use Amount. For salary pay items use Units/Hours and, where relevant, Rate.
4. Click Save.

Field Rules

• Pay item is required.
• If recurrence is Fixed number of payrolls, Number of payrolls is required and must be greater than 0.
• For salary items, Units/Hours is required.
• For salary items, Rate is required only when the salary pay method is custom.
• You cannot attach the same pay item twice to the same employee.

How Recurrence Works

• Unlimited: continues until you pause or remove it.
• Fixed number of payrolls: stops after the configured count is reached.

In the table you can see:

• Applied Payrolls: how many completed payroll runs have used this recurring item.
• Remaining: how many uses are left for fixed recurrence.

Manage Existing Recurring Items

From the action menu on a recurring row you can:

• Edit recurring item
• Pause recurring item
• Resume recurring item
• Remove recurring item

Important Behaviour After Changes

When you create, edit, pause/resume, or remove recurring items, payroll data may need recalculation.

If prompted, rerun payroll so the latest recurring setup is reflected correctly.

Common Issues and Fixes

"This pay item is already attached to the employee"

Cause:

• The same pay item is already configured as recurring for that employee.

Fix:

• Edit the existing recurring row instead of adding a duplicate.

"Max cannot be lower than the number of already applied payrolls"

Cause:

• You are trying to reduce fixed recurrence below payroll runs already completed.

Fix:

• Set a higher value, or switch to unlimited if appropriate.

"This feature requires an upgraded plan"

Cause:

• Your current subscription does not include Recurring Pay Items.

Fix:

• Upgrade to Pro from Pricing/Subscription.

Best Practice

• Use clear pay item names before setting them as recurring.
• Review recurring rows at the start of each payroll cycle.
• Pause instead of deleting when you may need the setup again later.
• Use fixed recurrence for temporary payments and unlimited for permanent ones.

Updated on: 16/02/2026