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Pay Item Cost Report in Indigo

Learn how to generate a Pay Item Cost report and what you'll find in it

Written by Serena Santamaria

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Pay Item Cost Report helps companies understand their payroll expenses more clearly, by separating debit and credit values and showing the Alternate Code of each pay item. Since these codes often match ledger accounts, the report makes it easier for finance teams to post payroll costs into the correct accounts without manual checking. This reduces reconciliation time and helps maintain accurate financial records.

⚠️ Important: to access this report, assign the HR_PayItemCostReport permission to the relevant users in your company.

To run the report, navigate to Payroll & Leave > Reporting > Pay Item Cost Report.

Before Generating the Report

  1. You can refine the report using the following tabs. Use the checkboxes to filter the values you want to report on.
    From left to right:

    • Payroll Company

    • Pay Roll

    • Employee

    • Cost Centre

    • Pay Item

  2. You can then apply optional settings:

    • Active Pay Items Only: excludes inactive pay items.

    • Show Totals: displays aggregated debit and credit totals.

    • Show 0-value pay items: when enabled (default), it displays all active applicable pay items and shows unused ones with 0 values, and excludes archived ones.

  3. Choose to group the data in the report by Company, Employee, Cost Centre. You can have up to three grouping levels using the corresponding dropdown fields.

    • Grouping Level 1

    • Grouping Level 2

    • Grouping Level 3

  4. Pick a Template option. Only 'Standard' is available for this report.

  5. Tick the Remember generated report settings at the bottom of the report setup panel for Indigo to remember the settings for this report for future use.
    ​

Generating the Report

There are several options to generate a report. You can access them in the bottom right corner:

  • Clicking the Generate PDF. It opens a PDF of the report in a separate browser tab. Or;

  • Selecting the arrow next to the Generate PDF button. You can choose between options:

    • Generate Report Viewer: generates and views the report in an online viewer. It will split the report into separate pages.

    • Generate Merged: generates and views the report in an online viewer merged into a single, continuous document.

    • Generate Data Only As Excel: generates the report as an Excel sheet.

Sending the Report via Email

You can use the Send Report at the bottom-right corner of the screen to open the Send Report window. Once there:

  1. Enter an email address into the Email To field, and modify the Subject and Additional Message, if needed.

  2. Select one of the following options to send the report in different formats:

    • Send Report Link: a link to the report is attached to the email.

    • Send Report as Excel Attachment: the report in Excel format is attached to the email.

    • Send Report as PDF Attachment: the report in Excel format is attached to the email.

  • Both the Excel and PDF versions preserve the debit and credit distinction and follow the same structure shown inside Indigo.

  • If you group by employee, the Excel sheet will include a Grand Total column.

The Result (click to expand)

The report contains the following information:

  • Company

  • Company Code

  • Cost Centre

  • Alternate Code

  • Debit amount (positive amounts such as salaries, allowances, overtime)

  • Credit amount (negative amounts such as deductions)

  • Description

  • Pay Date

  • Period

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