Nestus AI
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The HR Dashboard is the first page you see when you open the HR module. It gives you an immediate read on what is happening in the organisation today — who is in, who is out, who is late, and whether any compliance or attendance alerts need your attention. All data refreshes in real time; there is nothing to configure and nothing to click to trigger an update.

Attendance KPI cards

Four cards across the top of the page show today's attendance figures, each with a percentage change vs. yesterday so you can see at a glance whether attendance is trending up or down:

Key Alerts

The Key Alerts panel sits below the KPI cards. It shows active alerts that need HR attention — flagged in two severity levels:

Attendance Trend chart

The larger panel on the left side of the bottom section shows the attendance trend for the last 7 days. Three mini-stats sit above the chart — total Present, total Absent, and total Late across the period, each with a percentage change vs the previous 7 days. Below them is a line chart with three colour-coded lines: green for Present, red for Absent, and purple (brand colour) for Late. Hover over any date to see the exact counts.

Document Compliance Status

The smaller panel on the right shows how many employee documents across the organisation are Valid, Expiring Soon, or Expired — both as a count and as a percentage of total documents. This is a quick compliance health check. If the Expired count is growing, navigate to HR Documents or the Reports → Compliance & Audit tab to identify which employees need updated paperwork.

The Employees page is the starting point for all people management in Nestus AI. From here you can see your entire workforce in one view, search by name, filter by department or employment type, add new staff, and navigate into any employee's profile for full details.

What you can do here

Clicking any employee from the list takes you to their profile — the most data-rich page in the HR module. It brings together everything Nestus AI knows about that person: who they are, what they earn, how they've been paid across every closed payroll, and every document filed against their name (including payslips the Compensation module files automatically).

What you can do here

Updating base salary

When an employee receives a raise, their base salary is updated here. Because salary is the foundation of every payroll calculation, Nestus AI checks whether any open payroll runs include this employee and offers to propagate the change.

Year-to-date statistics

The Compensation section shows running YTD totals from January 1 of the current year: total net amount paid, total NASSIT deducted, total NRA/PAYE withheld, total allowances, total bonuses, and total deductions. These update automatically each time a payroll run is closed.

Documents and payslips

Every employee has their own document folder. Payslips are filed here automatically — under a Payslips subfolder — each time a payroll run is closed. You can also upload contracts, offer letters, ID copies, and appraisal records manually.

Assigning admin roles to an employee

Platform admin roles control which modules a user can administer. You assign these roles from the employee's profile — not from Settings. This keeps admin access tied to the employment record so it is easy to audit who has elevated permissions and to remove access when someone leaves.

Nestus AI has four admin role types, and a person can hold more than one simultaneously:

How multi-role users switch between modules

When a user holds more than one admin role — for example both HR Admin and Finance Admin — they can switch between modules without signing out. The switch happens from the company profile dropdown in the top-right corner of the header. Click the company name (or logo avatar) to open it.

Departments in Nestus AI are the organisational containers that give your headcount structure. Department names appear in payroll breakdowns, compensation reports, and any cross-module filtering. Setting them up correctly before you add staff is the single most impactful setup step in the HR module.

What you can do here

Job Titles

Job titles are created and managed from within the Departments page. Each job title is linked to a specific department — so “Senior Accountant” would belong to the Finance department, and “HR Officer” would belong to Human Resources. Once created, a job title can be assigned to any employee from their profile or during the Create New User flow in Settings.

Job titles serve two purposes: they appear on the employee profile and payslip as the person's designated position, and they let you track who holds which role across departments without needing to rely on free-text fields.

The Attendance page lets you record whether each employee was present, absent, late, or on a half-day on any given date. Records are stored per employee per day and can be reviewed by date range or filtered by individual. They serve as a reference when reviewing payroll for part-time staff and as an evidence base for disciplinary conversations.

What you can do here

Documents in Nestus AI live in two places. The Documents page in the HR sidebar is for company-wide files — the employee handbook, registration certificates, templates. The Documents tab inside each Employee Profile is for that person's individual paperwork.

The most important thing to know: payslips land here automatically. Every time a payroll run is closed, Nestus AI generates a PDF payslip for each employee and files it under a Payslips subfolder. There is nothing to do — it happens the moment the payroll closes.

What you can do here

The Leaves & Holidays page is where HR logs, approves, and tracks all leave activity across the organisation. It is split into four tabs — Overview, Leave Management, Holiday Management, and Employee Balances — so you can switch between a high-level picture and the detailed records in one click.

What you can do here

Tab 1 — Overview

The Overview tab gives you the health of leave across your organisation at a glance. Three KPI cards show: total leave days taken year-to-date across all employees; the number of employees currently on upcoming scheduled leave; and which department has the highest leave count. Click any KPI card to expand a detail modal showing the individual employees behind that number, with their leave type (Excused or Unexcused) and the option to send them a direct email.

The overview also flags employees whose leave balance has gone negative — they have used more days than their entitlement allows. These records are surfaced prominently so HR can follow up.

Tab 2 — Leave Management

Leave Management is the main working list of all leave records in the system. Each row shows the employee name, department, leave type, date range, and whether the leave has been approved. You can search by name or department, filter by leave type (Excused / Unexcused) or date, and take action on any record.

Nestus AI supports two leave types: Excused leave is authorised absence (sick leave, compassionate leave, annual leave). Unexcused leave is unauthorised absence — it counts against the employee's leave balance but is recorded separately so HR can identify patterns.

Tab 3 — Holiday Management

Holiday Management works the same way as Leave Management but for public or gazetted holidays. HR logs holiday periods per employee, sets the number of holiday days, adds a description (e.g. “Independence Day”), and can approve or reject each entry. Holidays draw from the employee's holiday entitlement (set in Settings → Holiday Policy), not their annual leave balance.

Tab 4 — Employee Balances

Employee Balances shows each employee's entitlement versus usage in one table. For every employee you can see:

The Reports page gives HR a cross-organisation view of people, attendance, and compliance data, organised into four tabs: Workforce, Attendance, Leave & Holidays, and Compliance & Audit. Each tab is independently filterable and most have a PDF export button so you can produce printable reports without any external tool.

What you can do here

Tab 1 — Workforce

The Workforce tab is your headcount dashboard. Four KPI cards at the top show total employees, active employees, inactive or exited employees, and total number of departments — all with quarter-over-quarter change indicators. Below the KPIs are two charts and a searchable directory.

Tab 2 — Attendance

The Attendance tab breaks down every dimension of attendance tracking. It has five sections:

Tab 3 — Leave & Holidays

This tab gives you a reporting view of leave data — separate from the management view in the Leaves & Holidays page. It has three sections:

Tab 4 — Compliance & Audit

The Compliance & Audit tab tracks whether employees have the required documents on file. It pulls from the HR Documents system and classifies each employee's document status.

The HR Settings page has a left sidebar with two groups: Workspace and People. Click any item in that sidebar to switch between panels. Every change you make here affects how Nestus AI behaves for your entire organisation — not just for a single employee.

Workspace

The Workspace panel controls how attendance is tracked and what constitutes a working day for your organisation. These rules apply to every employee globally — there are no per-employee overrides.

Leave Policy

The Leave Policy panel defines how many days of annual leave employees receive, based on how long they have worked at the organisation. You build the policy as a set of tiers — each tier covers a tenure range (in months) and gives the matching leave entitlement.

Holiday Policy

The Holiday Policy panel has a single field: the total number of paid public holiday days employees are entitled to per calendar year. This is a flat number that applies to all employees regardless of tenure.

Managers

The Managers panel is where you assign department managers and assistant managers. A manager is linked to one department — a person can be the manager of only one department at a time, though a different person can be the assistant manager of the same department simultaneously.

The panel shows two tabs: Managers and Assistant Managers. Each tab lists every department and who is currently assigned to that role. Expand a department card to see the full assignment history — every person who has ever held that role, and when they were assigned and unassigned.

Create New User

This is how HR adds a brand new person to the Nestus AI platform. Unlike adding an employee from the Employees page (which requires the person to already have a user account), Create New User creates the platform account and the employee record in one guided flow. Use this for all new hires.

The flow has three steps: enter personal details, verify with a one-time code, and then set up the employment record.

The Assets page gives you a complete, searchable inventory of every physical item your organisation owns. Each asset receives a unique auto-generated tag (formatted as AST-0001, AST-0002, and so on), a category, a condition rating, and a status that reflects whether it is currently available, assigned, under repair, retired, or lost. When you assign an asset to an employee or a department, the assignment is recorded with a timestamp and added to the asset's full history — so you can always see who had a device and when.

Asset statuses

Asset conditions

Categories

Assets are organised by category. Eight built-in categories are available to every organisation: Laptop, Desktop, Monitor, Phone, Tablet, Peripheral, Printer, and Other. These cannot be deleted. You can create additional custom categories to match your organisation's specific equipment — for example “Server”, “Camera”, or “Vehicle”. Custom categories appear alongside the built-ins wherever a category is selected.

What you can do here

The Finance Dashboard shows the current ledger period's financial position at a glance. It is the first page you see when you open the Finance module and gives you a real-time summary without needing to navigate into individual entry lists.

KPI cards

Charts

The Performances page is the analytics layer of the Finance module. While the Dashboard shows the current period snapshot, Performances lets you analyse financial trends over custom date ranges, compare months, and drill into specific account categories. It is the page to use for management reporting and period-end review.

KPI cards

The top of the page shows three KPI cards for the current active ledger period: Total Income (with trend indicator vs prior period), Total Expenses (with trend indicator), and Net Income (income minus expenses, with a positive or negative indicator). All three also show the average monthly figure for the current year below the headline number.

Filters

Charts

Think of a ledger as a financial month. January 2025 has its own ledger; February 2025 has its own. All transactions — income, expenses, and payroll auto-entries — are recorded against the ledger that matches their period. This keeps financial records organised by time and makes period-specific reporting straightforward.

The ledger system also enforces financial integrity. If you are closing a January payroll and no January ledger exists, the payroll closes successfully — but the four automatic expense entries are silently skipped. Under normal operation this is not a concern: Nestus AI automatically creates the current month's ledger at midnight on the 1st of every month. The manual creation flow exists for historical setup — for example, if you onboarded in April and need to create ledgers for January, February, and March so that historical payroll data can be backfilled.

What you can do here

The Income Analysis page gives you a structured view of income across the organisation. It is the analytical counterpart to Income Entries — instead of a list of individual transactions, it shows charts and summaries that let you see income by account category, track trends, and export reports for management review or audit.

KPI cards

Four summary cards across the top: total income for the current ledger period, total income YTD, the top income category (the Primary Account with the highest total), and the percentage that top category represents of total income.

Filters

Charts and tables

What you can do here

Income Entries is the data entry and management page for income. Every leOne your organisation earns is recorded here — one entry per transaction, filed under the correct ledger period and account chain. Entries have a status lifecycle: Pending (submitted but not yet confirmed) and Approved (confirmed and counted in all financial totals).

What you can do here

Expense Analysis mirrors Income Analysis but for expenses. It aggregates all expense entries — manual ones you recorded plus the four payroll auto-entries created on each payroll close — and presents them as charts and a hierarchical table. Use it to understand your cost structure, identify the largest expense categories, and produce management reports.

KPI cards

Total expenses for the current ledger period, total expenses YTD, the top expense category (Primary Account with the highest spend), and the percentage that category represents of total expenses.

Charts and tables

What you can do here

Expense Entries holds two kinds of entries: manual entries (rent, utilities, professional fees, and any other costs you record yourself) and automatic entries (the four payroll-linked entries created each time a payroll run is closed). Both appear in the same list.

Expense entry statuses

What you can do here

The four payroll auto-entries

Each time a payroll run is closed, Nestus AI creates four expense entries in the Finance ledger for that period:

The Transactions page is the reconciliation layer of the Finance module. It lets you create transaction records that represent actual bank movements, then link them to the corresponding income or expense entries already recorded in the system. This gives you a complete audit trail connecting your financial entries to the real-world bank activity that drove them.

KPI cards

What you can do here

Tabs

The transactions list has three tabs: All (every transaction), Income (transactions linked to income entries only), and Expense (transactions linked to expense entries only). Use the tabs alongside the status and reconciliation filters to find the exact records you need.

The Nestus Wallet is an embedded financial account tied to your organisation within the Nestus AI platform. When salaries are disbursed from the Compensation module, the funds come from your Nestus Wallet balance. The Wallet page lets you view your current balance, top up the wallet, and review all wallet transactions.

Wallet balance card

The large card at the top of the page shows your current wallet balance in Leones. Click the eye icon to toggle the balance display between visible and hidden — useful when sharing your screen. The card also shows your total deposits and total disbursements to date.

Wallet transactions

Below the balance card is a full transaction history showing every deposit (top-up) and disbursement (salary payment) with the date, amount, and direction. The list is paginated and filterable. Each transaction shows a status — pending or completed.

What you can do here

The Documents page in Finance shares the same underlying document library as HR and Compensation — your organisation has one unified document store accessible from all three modules. From Finance, you can create folders (e.g. “Vendor Invoices”, “Bank Statements”, “Audit Files”), upload files into them, and manage existing documents.

What you can do here

The Finance Reports page aggregates financial data across periods into structured reports with PDF export. It has four tabs: Performance, Income, Expense, and Statement. All tabs respect the period filter at the top of the page (preset options like “This Month”, “Last Quarter”, or a custom date range).

What you can do here

Tab 1 — Performance

The Performance tab shows financial KPIs for the selected period: total income, total expenses, and net income. Below the KPIs are trend charts (income trend, expense trend, net income trend) and an account breakdown bar chart. Use the Account Level filter to toggle between seeing data summarised at Primary, Secondary, or Tertiary account level.

Tab 2 — Income

A filterable list of all income entries within the selected period — the same data as Income Entries but scoped to the date range you set in the report filter. Use this tab to produce a period income report for review or audit. Export as PDF to generate a branded financial document.

Tab 3 — Expense

A filterable list of all expense entries within the selected period, including payroll auto-entries. Identical in structure to the Income tab but for costs. The status filter lets you separate Approved entries from Pending ones so you can see confirmed costs vs. entries still under review.

Tab 4 — Statement

The Income Statement tab generates a formatted profit-and-loss style statement for the selected period. It groups all income and expense entries into their account hierarchy, showing subtotals at each level — Primary Account totals, then Secondary, then the overall net income at the bottom. This is the most audit-ready output in the Finance module. Export as PDF to produce a formal financial statement for management, auditors, or board review.

The Finance Settings page is where you build and maintain the account hierarchy. Every income and expense entry must be assigned to an account chain — Primary → Secondary → Tertiary → Tertiary Type — and those chains are defined here. There is also a Types panel for managing any additional classification types the organisation uses.

The four hierarchy levels

Auto-created accounts from payroll

You do not need to create payroll-related accounts manually. When a payroll run is closed for the first time, Nestus AI automatically creates (or finds) the following chains:

What you can do here

The Dashboard is the first page you see when you open the Compensation module. It pulls together payroll numbers from the current calendar year so you can see the financial weight of your payroll at a glance, without opening any specific run.

KPI cards

Charts

The Payroll page is the control centre for all payroll runs. Each row in the list is one run — a snapshot of your entire organisation's pay for a given month. Runs progress through statuses: Open (active, items can be edited), Pending (awaiting Super Admin closure), and Closed (locked, payslips generated, Finance entries posted).

Only one payroll run can be open for a given month at a time. If you need to correct a closed run, a Super Admin can reopen it — which reverts the run to Open status, making all items editable again.

What you can do here

Payroll run statuses

Every payroll run contains payroll items — one per employee. The Payroll Items page shows the full list for the selected run, with each row summarising an employee's gross and net pay for the period. From here you can navigate into any item for full detail, search by employee name, or bulk-review the run before closing.

What you can do here

The Payroll Item Detail page is where payroll accuracy is verified and adjusted, one employee at a time. It shows the complete pay calculation — base salary, every allowance and bonus that adds to gross pay, every deduction and tax that reduces it, and the final net pay that will be disbursed.

How pay is calculated

What you can do here

Allowances are named additions to an employee's gross pay beyond their base salary. The Allowances page is where you manage the allowance types available in your organisation. Once a type exists, it can be assigned to individual employees and will appear pre-filled in every future payroll run for those employees.

Common examples: Housing Allowance, Transport Allowance, Medical Allowance, Meal Subsidy, Communication Allowance. These vary by organisation and role — Nestus AI lets you define exactly the types that apply to your team.

What you can do here

Deductions are voluntary or contractual withholdings from an employee's net pay — distinct from statutory NASSIT and NRA deductions which are calculated automatically. The Deductions page is where you manage the types of deductions your organisation uses, which can then be assigned to employees and pre-filled into payroll runs.

Common examples: Loan Repayment, Health Insurance Premium, Staff Cooperative Contribution, Company Car Deduction. Define as many types as your organisation needs.

What you can do here

Bonuses differ from allowances in one key way: they are applied per payroll item, not assigned to an employee permanently. You define the bonus types here (their names and descriptions), and then apply them to specific employees in specific payroll runs through the Payroll Item Detail page.

What you can do here

The Documents page in Compensation is the same underlying system as HR Documents — it gives you access to your organisation's full document library, including folders created in HR. You can create new folders specific to compensation (e.g. “Payroll Reports”, “Bank Transfer Confirmations”), upload files into them, and manage existing documents.

One practical use of Compensation Documents is saving bank transfer XLSX reports directly from the Reports page. When you generate a bank transfer export in Compensation Reports, you can choose to save it directly into a Documents folder rather than (or in addition to) downloading it locally.

What you can do here

The Reports page is where compensation data becomes actionable documents. It has three tabs: Overview, Compensations, and Allowances & Deductions. Use the month and year filters at the top to scope all three tabs to the period you need.

What you can do here

Tab 1 — Overview

The Overview tab shows payroll summary KPIs for the selected month: total gross payroll, net payroll, total allowances, total deductions, and total bonuses. It also shows a count of payroll items and how many employees were included in the run for that month.

Tab 2 — Compensations

The Compensations tab renders a full table of all payroll items for the selected month, one row per employee. This is the bank transfer preparation view — it shows the data your finance team needs to initiate salary payments.

Tab 3 — Allowances & Deductions

This tab breaks down allowance and deduction data for the selected period. It shows totals by type so you can see how much was paid in housing allowances, transport allowances, loan repayments, and so on. It also has the NASSIT and NRA export.

The Compensation Settings page is where statutory compliance lives. It has three areas: NASSIT configuration (rates and employment type eligibility), NRA configuration (PAYE tax brackets), and general compensation settings. Changes here affect future payroll runs only — existing runs retain the rates that were frozen when they were created.

What you can do here

NASSIT Configuration

NASSIT contributions in Sierra Leone are split between the employee and the employer. In the Settings page you configure:

NRA / PAYE Configuration

NRA PAYE in Sierra Leone uses a tiered bracket system — each tier has an income threshold and a tax rate. Nestus AI applies the brackets progressively: income up to tier 1's threshold is taxed at tier 1's rate, income between tier 1 and tier 2 thresholds at tier 2's rate, and so on. The five-tier system matches Sierra Leone's current PAYE structure.

The Super Admin Dashboard is a consolidated summary of the organisation's financial and workforce health. Unlike the Finance Dashboard (which focuses on ledger entries for a single period) or the Comps Dashboard (which focuses on payroll composition), the Super Admin Dashboard combines metrics from all three modules into one view.

KPI cards

Employee list and payroll chart

Below the KPI cards, the dashboard shows a list of active employees drawn from the HR module — a quick headcount view. To the right is a payroll trend line chart plotting gross payroll by month, allowing Super Admins to spot month-over-month payroll growth or anomalies at a glance.

What you can do here

The Overview section in the Super Admin primary nav expands to reveal three sub-pages: HR Overview, Compensation Overview, and Finance Overview. Each is a curated summary dashboard for that module, similar to but distinct from the full module Dashboard. They are designed for a quick cross-module status check without switching to a different module session.

HR Overview

Shows total employee count (active/inactive breakdown), recent joiners, and department-level headcount. Useful for a quick workforce snapshot without navigating into the HR module.

Compensation Overview

Shows the current payroll run status, total net pay for the run, NASSIT and NRA summary figures, and a department-level payroll breakdown. Equivalent to the Comps Dashboard but accessible from Super Admin without switching modules.

Finance Overview

Shows current period income, expenses, and net position — plus a summary of pending income and expense entries awaiting approval. Equivalent to the Finance Dashboard accessible from Super Admin.

The Approvals page is where Super Admins review and action Finance entries that require sign-off before they are treated as confirmed. When a Finance user submits an income or expense entry, it is created with a Pending status. The Super Admin reviews it here and either approves it (making it count in all financial totals) or rejects it (returning it with a reason).

Tab 1 — Overview

A summary of the current approval queue: total pending income entries, total amount pending, total pending expense entries, and total expense amount pending. A quick read on how much financial activity is waiting for review before the period is considered complete.

Tab 2 — Income Approvals

A paginated list of all pending income entries. Each row shows the entry date, ledger period, account chain (Primary / Secondary / Tertiary / Type), amount, and the Finance user who created it. Click any entry to open its detail view, then approve or reject it with a reason.

What you can do here

Tab 3 — Expense Approvals

The same interface as Income Approvals but for expense entries. Note that payroll auto-entries are always created as Approved — they represent committed payroll obligations and are never routed through the Approvals queue. Only manual expense entries submitted by Finance users appear here.

Four Finance module pages are surfaced directly in the Super Admin primary navigation: Ledgers, Income, Expenses, and Transactions. These render the exact same pages as Finance → Ledgers, Finance → Income Entries, Finance → Expense Entries, and Finance → Transactions. Any changes made here are instantly reflected in the Finance module.

This is the most efficient route for Super Admins who need to create a ledger for an upcoming payroll period, check a specific income entry, or review the expense entries for the current month — all without leaving the Super Admin context and navigating to a separate module session.

Which Finance pages are NOT in the primary nav?

The Finance Dashboard, Performances, Income Analysis, Expense Analysis, Nestus Wallet, Reports, and Settings are not linked from the Super Admin primary nav — but they are all accessible via Finance Module in the Module Nav at the bottom of the sidebar. Use Module Nav to reach those pages.

The Documents page in Super Admin connects to the same organisation-wide document library as HR, Finance, and Compensation Documents. The Super Admin sees every folder and file regardless of which module created them. This is the right place to find compliance documents, HR records, financial statements, payslip archives, and any other files uploaded across the organisation.

What you can do here

The Super Admin Reports page is a tabbed container that embeds the full reports page from each module. No data is duplicated or re-calculated — it renders the actual HR, Compensation, and Finance report components. This means all the filters, charts, and export functions from each module's own Reports page are available here too.

Tab 1 — HR Reports

The full HR Reports page: Workforce tab (headcount by department, gender, contract type), Attendance tab (daily/monthly summaries), Leave & Holidays tab (leave balances and usage), and Compliance & Audit tab (document expiry and training completion). All period filters and PDF export buttons work the same as in the HR module.

Tab 2 — Compensation Reports

The full Comps Reports page: Overview tab (KPI summary for the selected month), Compensations tab (configurable-column table with XLSX bank transfer export and save-to-Documents), and Allowances & Deductions tab (NASSIT and NRA remittance export). Super Admins can trigger the bank transfer export from here without navigating into the Comps module.

Tab 3 — Finance Reports

The full Finance Reports page: Performance tab (KPI cards and trend charts), Income tab (filterable income entry list), Expense tab (filterable expense entry list), and Statement tab (income statement with period presets and PDF export). Super Admins commonly use this for month-end management reporting.

What you can do here

The Super Admin Settings page manages platform-level configuration that sits above individual module settings. This includes organisation profile details (name, logo, address), user account management (creating and deactivating user accounts, assigning module roles), and any system-wide options.

What you can do here

The Module Nav section at the bottom of the Super Admin sidebar shows three expandable groups: HR Module, Comps Module, and Finance Module. Expanding HR Module reveals links to every HR page. These are not read-only views — a Super Admin can add employees, approve leave, create departments, and do anything an HR Manager can do.

The pages are rendered by importing the HR module components directly. There is no separate “Super Admin version” of the HR pages — it's the same component. This means any change you make here is immediately visible if the HR team navigates to the same page in the HR module.

The Comps Module section in the Module Nav gives a Super Admin full access to every Compensation page. This includes the ability to create payroll runs, record allowances, deductions, and bonuses, run payroll, and — critically — reopen a closed payroll run. Reopening reverses the payroll auto-entries in Finance and returns the run to an editable state. This is only available to Super Admins.

The Finance Module section in the Module Nav gives access to every Finance page, including the ones not surfaced in the Super Admin primary nav (Dashboard, Performances, Analysis pages, Nestus Wallet, Reports, and Settings). This is the route for building the account hierarchy, topping up the Nestus Wallet, and accessing the full Finance income statement without switching to the Finance module.