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Phoenix Payroll Users Manual

Getting Started

Installing Phoenix Payroll

Depending on your company’s requirement or preference, Phoenix Payroll may be installed either as a standalone program on a regular or independent workstation (see Stand-Alone Installation instructions below), or on a workstation that belongs to your Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network (WAN) (see Client Installation and Network Server Installation below). As a guide to assist you determine what type of installation you require, try to answer the following questions:

  • Are your office computers interconnected in LAN or WAN?
  • Will more than one person need simultaneous access to any of the payroll features (i.e. employee 201 file records, employee loans/allowances information, employee time and attendance, etc.)?

Note for Windows Vista users:  The program directory (“C:\Program Files\Phoenix\ Payroll”) and the corresponding data directory (“C:\Program Files\Phoenix\Payroll”) must be configured for read-write access for the current user for Phoenix Payroll to function properly under Windows Vista.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

Phoenix Payroll requires that your PC and Operating System meets the following minimum requirements:

Client Workstations:  

  • Pentium IV, 1GHz or higher, 1GB RAM, 60GB Hard Disk, Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) 
  • Windows XP or later

Web Server:

  • Intel Core i5, 1.8GHz or higher, 4GB RAM, 60GB Hard Disk, Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) 
  • Apache 2.4 (IIS or Equivalent), PHP 5.4, MySQL 5.5

Database Server:

  • Intel Core i5, 1.8GHz or higher, 4GB RAM, 60GB Hard Disk, Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse, Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
  • Apache 2.4 (IIS or Equivalent), PHP 5.4, MySQL 5.5

(Web Server and Database Server can be installed and operated on a single machine with minimal performance degradation)

Stand-Alone Installation

Installing Phoenix Payroll in Stand-Alone mode means that it will be installed only on one machine within your company.  This means that both database and the program itself will reside on your machine.

To install Phoenix Payroll, follow the following simple steps:

Step 1: Double click on the file Phoenix Installer.exe. Upon executing the installation package, you are brought to the introductory screen:

You can click Cancel to stop the installation process.
Select Phoenix Payroll vX.XX (where vX.XX is the version of your installation package)

Step 2: Select Server and Click Next to proceed to the next screen.  You are now ready to begin the installation process.

Step 3: Click Finish to finalize the installation.

Network Server Installation

The following section is recommended for System Administrators only. 

Before you install Phoenix Payroll, make sure that:

  • MySQL 5 database server is installed on the server (or workstation you wish to use as a database server).  Install the database server by running Phoenix Installer.exe.
  • Client users are able to ping the database server (or workstation to be used as database server).

Client Installation

The following section is recommended for System Administrators only. 

Please be sure that the “Network Server Installation” section above has been completed prior to installing Phoenix Payroll on a Client machine. 

To install Phoenix Payroll as a client machine, simply follow the following steps:

Step 1:  Install the Phoenix Installer.exe and select Client in Select Installation Type Window

Step 2:  Configure the Database Connection Settings:

a) Go to Start->All Programs-> Phoenix Payroll and run Database Connection String, setting the Hostname parameter to the server name.  Leave all other settings as is.

b) After setting the correct parameters click Save & Close to apply connection settings. Running Phoenix Payroll for the First Time

License Registration

When running Phoenix Payroll for the first time (or when running a fresh installation on a new machine), you will be brought to the Phoenix Payroll Registration page.  This page asks you to supply your Company Name and Serial Number:

Company Name field in this page are case sensitive.  Be sure to input the correct company name here as you will not be able to change it later on.  If you are running a licensed copy, you will have to register the Company Name and Product Key (be sure to copy both Company Name and Product Key exactly as they appear) with iSoftware Support (call +63 2 8742006 or email support@phoenix-payroll.com.com or skype account support@phoenix-payroll.com) in order to get your Serial Number for this machine. 

Introductory Edition users (or companies with 1 to 10 employees) may proceed without the Serial Number by simply clicking the OK button.  Be sure to input your company name, however at the Registration window.

Initial Login

The first time you run Phoenix Payroll, the system will be able to detect if this is your first time running the software.

This dialog explains that Phoenix Payroll has detected that you are running the software for the first time, and you are prompted to create an Administrator password:
It is important that you create a password that you will be able to remember since the Administrator account, by default has access privileges for the whole system.

Initial Configuration

When running Phoenix Payroll for the first time and after creating an administrator password, you will then be brought to the System Settings form wherein you can input pertinent information about your company.   This section may be skipped at this time; however, it is advised that you fill up the basic information needed. You can return to the System Settings form later on by simply clicking Preferences à Settings from the main menu.

Clicking OK without filling up all the required fields will result in a message prompting that all required fields must be completed.  For more detailed explanation about the Settings Form, please see the section entitled System Settings.