Use onboarding to create a local workspace or restore business data from an encrypted backup. A new workspace follows an own-company or bureau path; restore has its own prerequisites.

Before you begin

Check system requirements. Have the organisation identity, pay schedule, statutory information, an owner password, and a secure place outside the computer for the recovery code. For a restore, have the encrypted backup and its password.

Start the workspace

  1. Read the local data notice

    Continue from Welcome to Paydae and acknowledge Your payroll data stays local.

  2. Choose how to start

    Select Create New Workspace or Restore Workspace From Backup. Restore opens its own validation and prerequisite flow; see Restore a workspace during onboarding.

  3. Select the setup mode

    For a new workspace, choose I run payroll for my own company or I manage payroll for multiple clients. This determines the workspace shape.

  4. Establish local entitlement

    Select Local trial or continue with an eligible existing local entitlement. Licence Verification is visible but unavailable in this release. The installation controls trial tier, expiry, and organisation capacity.

  5. Create and recover the owner

    Enter the local workspace and owner details. At Master recovery code, copy the code, store it outside this computer, and confirm that it was saved. Complete recovery setup before continuing.

  6. Complete the selected branch

    For a company, create its profile, configure pay schedule and defaults, confirm the statutory payroll release, choose automatic backup setup, and review. For a bureau, create its profile, optionally add a first client, complete that client’s pay schedule and release, then choose backup setup and review.

The onboarding flow seeds a default transaction catalogue with the payroll setup. Employee records are added in the regular Employees workspace after onboarding. Configure automatic backups captures settings for completion; Remind me later defers them. Manual backup creation is available after the workspace exists.

Before the first pay run

Confirm the selected organisation, setup and statutory readiness, employees, pay schedule, and backup status. Onboarding does not approve statutory registration or payroll results. Follow company onboarding or bureau onboarding for the full branch.