Employees

The employee record is the foundation of Payroll. Every Payroll run, vacation balance, termination, and décimo partida traces back to an employee — their hire date, active contract salary, and social security number.

Where to find it

Go to Payroll > Employees.

Employees list page in CifraHQ. — Employees list, the master record for everyone on Payroll.

Creating an employee

Option 1 — New Employee wizard

Click New Employee on the list page. The wizard collects all mandatory data in one form and creates the employee record with its first contract.

Fields collected by the wizard:

Field	Notes
Document Type	Cédula, Pasaporte, or RUC
ID Number	The cedula or passport number
Check Digit	Cedula check digit (auto-computed for Panamanian cedulas)
Social Security Number	CSS número de asegurado — required for Payroll deductions
First Name / Middle Name / Last Name / Second Last Name	Full legal name as it appears on CSS documents
Date of Birth	dd/MM/yyyy
Gender	M / F
Marital Status	Single, Married, Divorced, Widowed
Nationality	Free text
Region	Province/region for CSS classification
Hire Date	The date the employment relationship began
Position	Required. The employee's job title, chosen from the list or typed in (see Positions)
Base Salary	Monthly or bi-weekly gross salary per contract
Pay Frequency	Monthly, Bi-weekly, or Weekly
Contract Type	Indefinite, Fixed-term, Probationary
Workday Hours	Standard hours per day (typically 8)
Emergency contact	Optional, on the Contact step. Name, relationship and phone are required as soon as you fill one in; the email is optional. More contacts can be added later. See Emergency Contacts

Option 2 — Direct create on the list

Click New and fill in the detail form manually. The result is the same as the wizard.

Employee detail page

Navigate to Payroll > Employees and click any employee to open the detail view. The page is organized into four tabs.

Identity tab

Displays and edits the employee's personal information and employment metadata.

Personal Information section:

Field	Description
Document Type	Cédula, Pasaporte, or RUC
ID Number	Official document number
Check Digit	Cedula check digit
Social Security Number	CSS asegurado number — must match CSS records exactly
First Name	Legal first name
Middle Name	Optional middle name
Last Name	First (paternal) last name
Second Last Name	Maternal last name
Date of Birth	dd/MM/yyyy
Gender	M / F
Marital Status	Affects ISR personal exemption classification
Nationality	Country of citizenship
Region	Panama province/region
Hire Date	Start of employment relationship
Status	Active, Inactive, or Terminated

Contact Information section (sidebar):

Field	Description
Email	Employee's work or personal email
Phone	Landline
Mobile	Mobile phone
Address Line 1 / 2	Street address
Country	Chosen from the list; Panama by default
Province / District / Township	Chosen from lists that follow the country and each other: pick the province, then its district, then its township (corregimiento). No typing needed.

Emergency Contacts

Who to call if something happens to the employee. An emergency contact does not have to be a dependent: it can be a friend, a parent who is not covered by CSS, anyone. The Emergency Contacts section sits in the sidebar under Contact Information. An employee can have several contacts; they are listed in the order they were added, which is the order to call them.

Field	Description
Name	Required. The person's full name
Relationship	Required. Spouse, Mother, Father, Child, Sibling, Friend or Other
Phone	Required. At least 6 digits. Numbers abroad are fine: `+`, spaces, dashes, dots and parentheses are accepted
Email	Optional. Must be a valid address when given

Click New Emergency Contact to add one, the pencil to change one, and the bin to remove one. The phone and email are links: click the phone on a phone or computer with a calling app to dial, or the email to write.
A contact without a phone number is not saved. CifraHQ asks for it and says what is missing.
When there is no contact the section says No emergency contact on file.
Contacts that were marked as an emergency contact on a dependent before this section existed were copied here with their name and relationship. They show a Phone missing label: edit each one and add the number.

Contracts tab

Lists all contracts associated with this employee. Only one contract can be Active at a time.

Column	Description
Contract Number	Auto-assigned sequential number
Position	The job title on this contract
Contract Type	Indefinite, Fixed-term, or Probationary
Base Salary	Gross salary amount in Balboas (B/.)
Pay Frequency	Monthly, Bi-weekly, Weekly
Start Date	Date the contract took effect
Status	Active or Inactive
Workday Hours	Daily working hours for this contract

The active contract's Base Salary is the figure the Payroll engine uses as the cotizable salary base for CSS and ISR calculations.

The active contract's position also appears in the summary strip at the top of the page and in the Position column of the employee list.

Positions

Every contract must have a Position; the contract cannot be saved without one. The position is printed on the work letter and on the pay stub.

Pick from the list. Every company starts with 25 common Panamanian job titles, such as General Manager, Accountant, Cashier, Sales Associate, Warehouse Worker, Driver, Receptionist, Collections Officer and Security Guard.
Type a new one. If the title is not in the list, type it in the Position field and save the contract; the new position is added to the list for everyone. If you type a title that already exists, in English or Spanish, the existing position is used instead of creating a duplicate.
Your language. Each position has an English and a Spanish title. Users working in English see the English title; Users working in Spanish see the Spanish one. The Spanish documents (pay stub, work letter) print the Spanish title, and the English paragraph of the work letter prints the English title. A position typed in only one language shows that title in both.
Trust Positions. Picking a manager-level position (Manager, General Manager, Human Resources Manager) ticks the contract's Trust Position box; you can still change it.
Amending a contract keeps its position unless you change it.

Department and work schedule

Each contract also records its Department and its Work schedule. The schedule has one row per day: tick the days the employee works and set that day's start time, end time and lunch break. Days can differ, so the usual Panamanian week (Monday to Friday full days plus a Saturday half-day, for example 08:00 to 12:00) is entered exactly as worked. The weekly hours are calculated from the schedule and shown under it. New contracts start with Monday to Friday 08:00 to 17:00 with a 60-minute lunch, and Saturday 08:00 to 12:00 (44 hours); adjust it per employee.

Amending a contract keeps its department and schedule unless you change them.

Bank tab

Lists bank accounts for ACH Payroll disbursement.

Column	Description
Account Number	Full bank account number
Bank	Bank code (BAC, Banistmo, Banco Nacional, etc.)
Account Type	Savings or Checking
Primary Account	Checked if this is the primary disbursement account

If an employee has no bank accounts, the ACH export will omit them and flag the missing record.

Dependents tab

Tracks family members for insurance and CSS beneficiary designation. Emergency contacts are kept separately on the Identity tab (see Emergency Contacts), because an emergency contact is not always a dependent.

Column	Description
Relationship	Spouse, Child, Parent, Sibling, etc.
First Name / Last Name	Dependent's legal name
Date of Birth	dd/MM/yyyy
Beneficiary	Marked as a CSS life insurance beneficiary

Employee status

Status	Meaning
Active	Currently employed; appears in Payroll runs
Inactive	Suspended or on leave; excluded from automatic Payroll runs
Terminated	Employment ended; record locked; excluded from all runs

Termination is handled through the dedicated Termination wizard — do not manually set status to Terminated. The wizard updates the status, computes the liquidación, and stamps the termination date automatically.

Employment Contract

On the Contracts tab, click Contract on any contract to download the employment contract as a Word document you can review, edit and print. The text follows the contract type: indefinite-term (tiempo indefinido), fixed-term (tiempo definido), specific work (obra determinada) or temporary. Fixed-term and temporary contracts print the contract's end date; the duration, the cause and, for specific work, the description of the work print as [___] for you to complete.

The contract is filled in from CifraHQ:

The company: name, address, and the legal representative and Public Registry (ficha/folio) number from Settings > Business > Employment contracts. Fill those in once; every contract uses them.
The employee: full name, nationality, cédula or passport, and address.
The contract: position (in Spanish), department, start date, salary and pay frequency, payment method (bank transfer when the employee has a bank account, otherwise cheque), and the work schedule in words, for example "de lunes a viernes de 08:00 a 17:00, con 60 minutos de descanso para almuerzo, y el sábado de 08:00 a 12:00", with the weekly hours.
The signing date: the day you download it.

Anything CifraHQ does not have prints as [___], ready for you to complete in Word. The document ends with signature lines for the employer, the employee and two witnesses.

Have the contract text reviewed by a Panamanian labor lawyer before using it with employees.

Work Letter (Constancia Laboral)

Click Work Letter on any employee's detail page to download a PDF constancia laboral. The document contains:

Full legal name and cedula
Hire date and years of service
Current position and department
Base salary (in words and digits)
Company letterhead and authorized signature area

The constancia is generated immediately; no additional data entry is required.

Tips

Social Security Number is required before the Payroll engine can calculate CSS deductions. An employee without an SSN will generate a validation error when the period is calculated.
The active contract salary drives everything. If you change an employee's salary mid-period, update the contract before running the calculation — the engine reads the contract at calculation time.
Hire Date affects décimo and vacation. Accrual of vacation rights (Art. 76 CT) begins after 11 months of service; the hire date is the reference point.

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