Salary Components
Every payslip is built from small, reusable pieces: a basic salary, a housing allowance, a tax, an overtime line, an insurance deduction. In Nama, each of those pieces exists at two levels — a Salary Component Type, which defines the kind of pay or deduction and the rules that apply to it, and a Salary Component, the actual priced element that gets attached to an employee. A Salary Component Group exists purely to keep a long component list organized. This page covers all three; how a component's value is calculated when it isn't a flat number is the subject of Salary Calculation Formulas.
Salary Component Type — the kind of pay or deduction
Found at Payroll > Salary Configurations > Salary Component Type, a component type is the category — Basic, Housing, Transportation, a tax, an insurance share — and it carries flags that every component created under it inherits.
| Field (English) | Arabic label | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Code / Group / Arabic Name / English Name | الكود / المجموعة / الاسم العربي / الاسم الإنجليزي | Identification. |
| Active From / Active To | فعّال من / فعّال إلى | The date range during which the type itself is in effect. |
| Component Effect Type | نوع التأثير | Whether components of this type add to, subtract from, or sit outside net pay — see table below. |
| Classification | التصنيف | A finer categorization used by specific payroll rules — see table below. |
| Component Order | ترتيب المفرد | The calculation sequence. Load-bearing: a component that is a percentage of another must be ordered after the component it depends on. |
| Default Calendar | التقويم الافتراضى | The HR Calendar components of this type use unless overridden. |
| Issuance | الصرفية | Ties this component type to a payroll stream, so it only feeds its own salary run. |
Component Effect Type decides what a component actually does to the payslip:
| Effect Type | Arabic | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Addition | إضافة | Increases the salary — basic pay, allowances, overtime. |
| Deduction | إستقطاع | Reduces the salary — tax, insurance, penalties, installments. |
| Other | أخري | Informational only. Recorded, but never added to or subtracted from net pay. |
Classification narrows the type further, and several of its values have special behavior baked into the payroll engine:
| Classification | Arabic | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | عادية | An ordinary pay or deduction element. |
| Basic Salary | الراتب الأساسى | The base figure many percentage-based formulas key off. |
| Housing Allowance | بدل سكن | Only pays out for an employee whose own HR Information record has the housing switch turned on — the type alone is not enough. |
| Transportation Allowance | بدل مواصلات | Same rule as housing: gated by the employee's own record. |
| Work End | نهاية خدمة | Deliberately zero in an ordinary monthly salary; this classification only carries value inside end-of-service settlement documents. |
| Installment | قسط | Also deliberately zero in a normal salary run; installment recovery happens through its own loan documents, not the monthly component machinery. |
Why a component sometimes looks like it's "not working"
If a component always computes to zero, check its classification and its tax/insurance flags before assuming something is broken. Other-effect components are zero by design; Work End and Installment classifications are zero outside their dedicated documents; and Housing/Transportation allowances need the switch enabled on the employee, not just a component definition. See How Salary Is Calculated for the full list of self-zeroing causes.
The type also decides whether its components count toward the fixed insurance base, the variable insurance base, and the tax base — three independent yes/no flags — and owns two embedded lists for reference: the Salary Components built under it, and the Component Calc Formulas associated with it.
Salary Component — the priced element
Found at Payroll > Salary Configurations > Salary Component, this is the record that actually gets attached to an employee, either directly on their HR Information or through a Salary Structure. Its most important choice is the value method:
| Value Method | Arabic | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Constant Value | قيمة ثابتة | A fixed literal number — e.g. a housing allowance of 1,000. |
| Variable Value | متغير | Driven by a Component Calculation Formula, so the amount is recalculated from its inputs every period. |
A component also carries its own Component Order and Priority (used when several components could apply and only one should win), plus a set of flags that fine-tune its behavior: whether editing its value on a generated salary document is even allowed (Prevent Updating In Component Value), whether regenerating a salary sheet should leave manually-edited values alone (Do Not Override After Regenerate), whether negative values are permitted, and the same fixed-insurance / variable-insurance / tax-base flags seen on the type (a component can narrow what its type allows, never widen it).
Who it applies to
On the Apply Scope tab, a component can be restricted with an Employee Criteria and an HR Info Criteria (free-form filters over the employee's master file and HR information), plus explicit From/To ranges on legal entity, branch, department, sector, analysis set, employee, employee department, job position, nationality, and group. Leaving these open applies the component broadly; narrowing them lets one component type carry several differently-scoped components — for example, a transportation allowance that only applies to a particular branch.
Where it posts — account lines
A component carries its own debit account lines and credit account lines, each with a percentage share and a fully configurable account source (a fixed account, an account read from a reference field, or one selected from a currency-aware "bag" of accounts) plus a narration template. This is exactly what lets a salary document post to the general ledger: the document itself carries no accounting logic of its own — it simply totals up its component lines and posts through each component's account lines. A simpler Detail Accounts group (Main Account plus five numbered fallback accounts) is also available for components that don't need the full debit/credit configuration.
Salary Component Group — organization only
A Salary Component Group (مجموعة مفردات راتب, Payroll > Salary Configurations > Salary Component Group) simply bundles related components together for filtering and reporting. It has no effect whatsoever on how a component is calculated or where it posts — pure organization, nothing more.
Related pages
- Salary Calculation Formulas — how a Variable Value component gets its number.
- Salary Structures — reusable templates that assign components to groups of employees.
- How Salary Is Calculated — the full five-step pipeline these entities sit inside.
- Employee HR Information — where an employee's own component lines live, and where the Housing/Transportation switches are turned on.