Embedded payroll infrastructure — New Zealand BETA

Launch payroll in New Zealand without building NZ payroll.

Your platform is expanding into a country with a two-working-day filing clock to Inland Revenue, KiwiSaver on every eligible hire, and the Holidays Act — the most re-litigated leave law in the region. Ledra Pay gives you the government-sourced New Zealand pack behind the same API you already integrated.

PAYE + ACCTax + earners' levy, deducted together
KiwiSaver + ESCTEmployee & employer, student loan, child support
Payday filingIR348 employment information — output ready
RailDirect IRD payday filing — with a design partner

What's at stake

New Zealand's clocks are short and its leave law is unforgiving.

The prospect question is always the same — "can you do IRD?" — and the honest answer has parts. These are the three that catch platforms out.

The Holidays Act 2003Leave that has cost employers hundreds of millions to get wrong

Annual holiday pay is the greater of ordinary weekly pay and average weekly earnings; other leave uses relevant or average daily pay. It's payroll's most remediated calculation in NZ — a pack that models it correctly is the whole point.

Payday filingThe Employment Information return is due within two working days of every payday

Not monthly — every payday. Employers over the $50,000 PAYE-and-ESCT threshold must file electronically. The return (IR348) and the money to Inland Revenue travel on two separate clocks.

Two clocks, one EMP accountFiling the return is not the same as paying IRD

The Employment Information return files to Inland Revenue; the PAYE, KiwiSaver, student loan and child support settle to IRD's EMP account by the 20th — or twice a month over the threshold. Miss either and it compounds.

Your pack

The pack speaks New Zealand payroll natively. Your API doesn't have to.

A regulation pack means you never handle the IRD chain raw: your integration stays the same API shape you built for Australia, and the New Zealand pack absorbs PAYE, the ACC earners' levy, KiwiSaver with ESCT, student loan repayments and child support, plus the Holidays Act leave framework and the payday-filing outputs.

Calculation correctness sits with an accredited third-party payroll engine; Ledra Pay orchestrates the pay run, evidences every write, and produces the statutory outputs — while you keep payroll approval and the customer relationship. Rules trace to Inland Revenue and Employment New Zealand sources and ship as versioned pack releases, never silent changes.

Native register

PAYE, ACC earners' levy, KiwiSaver/ESCT, student loan (SL codes), child support — modelled as NZ payroll professionals know them.

Holidays Act aware

The leave framework that trips up incumbents — ordinary vs. average pay — is in the pack, not left to you to bolt on.

Versioned compliance

Minimum wage, KiwiSaver default rate and threshold changes ship as pack releases against the 1 April tax year.

Clean boundaries

We carry calculation correctness; you keep payroll approval. Tax advice stays with your accountant or tax agent — by design.

The honest answer — "can you do NZ IRD?"

Calculate. Produce. File. Here's who does each part today.

This maps one-to-one onto the NZ setup checklist in our guide — the IRD chain of number, employer registration and filing channel. Green is Ledra Pay; grey is you or your accountant today; ochre is the rail we build next with a design partner.

Stage 1

Calculate

● Ledra Pay — live via the payroll engine
  • PAYE (income tax + ACC earners' levy) on every pay
  • KiwiSaver employee + employer contributions, net of ESCT
  • Student loan repayments (SL codes) and child support
  • Holidays Act leave — ordinary vs. average pay
Live · beta
Stage 2

Produce the return & payment schedule

● Ledra Pay produces · you approve
  • The IR348 Employment Information return, ready to file
  • New / departing employee details for Inland Revenue
  • What to pay IRD's EMP account, and by when (the 20th / twice-monthly)
  • Payslips and wage records, per the pack
Output ready
Stage 3

File to Inland Revenue

Today: you or your accountant  ·  Next: our rail
  • Today — you or your accountant upload the IR348 to myIR (on-screen, file upload, or express file transfer), within two working days
  • Always — paying IRD's EMP account is your own bank payment; we tell you the amount and the due date, we never move the money
  • Next — a direct IRD payday-filing rail (IR348 → the Inland Revenue gateway Return service), built with a design partner
  • When it lands, filing becomes one API call — POST /pay-runs/{id}/submit — no re-integration
Rail · design partner next
Ledra Pay does it You or your accountant, today The design-partner rail we build next
So, for the prospect who asked: we calculate the full NZ deduction stack and hand you a compliant IR348 payday-filing return plus the pay-IRD schedule. Today you or your accountant file that return via myIR and pay Inland Revenue directly — we hand over something correct and ready to file. The direct IRD payday-filing rail is our next build, with a design partner; when it lands, filing is one API call — exactly the path Australia's STP rail is already walking.

What the pack returns

A New Zealand pay run, evidenced — with the IR348 already shaped.

The pay-run lifecycle runs live — draft, preview, approve, finalise — and finalising commits real per-employee results. Here is the shape of one employee's result and the payday-filing output beside it.

Every pay run produces the same two things: a payslip your customer can stand behind, and the Employment Information (IR348) data Inland Revenue expects — with the ESCT, student loan and child support already resolved.

The figures on the right are illustrative. Live rates — PAYE bands, the ACC earners' levy, the KiwiSaver default, the minimum wage — are maintained in the government-sourced NZ guide and shipped as versioned pack releases.

Illustrative fortnightly figures for a single tax code (M) employee with KiwiSaver at the default rate and no student loan. The production pack handles all tax codes, secondary income, ESCT tiers, SL/child-support, and Holidays Act leave. Not tax advice — confirm with Inland Revenue and your tax agent.

Payslip — fortnightly PAY RUN NZ-2026-13 · TAX CODE M
Gross earningsORDINARY + HOLIDAY PAY$2,400.00
PAYEINCOME TAX + ACC EARNERS' LEVY− $448.20
KiwiSaver — employeeDEFAULT RATE− $84.00
Net pay$1,867.80
Employer costGROSS + KIWISAVER (NET OF ESCT) · ACC LEVIED SEPARATELY BY IRD$2,484.00
Payday filing output — preview CALC + PAY-RUN LIVE · IRD RAIL WITH DESIGN PARTNER
{
  "employment_information": {
    "form": "IR348", "pay_period_end": "2026-07-05",
    "paye": 448.20, "kiwisaver_ee": 84.00, "kiwisaver_er": 84.00,
    "esct": 0.00, "student_loan": 0.00,
    "status": "output_file", "file_by": "2 working days"
  },
  "pay_ird_emp_account": { "due": "the 20th", "channel": "employer bank payment" },
  "rail": { "ird_payday_filing": "design_partner_next" }
}

The embeddable component

The pack is the engine. This is the UI you ship.

The New Zealand payslip as a standard web component — drop it into your product, theme it with CSS variables (this one is wearing this page's palette), localise it. The full set — onboarding, employees, leave, pay runs — runs in the component playground →

<ledrapay-payslip-viewer country="NZ"> · sample data, real component, themed inline

The obligations

New Zealand payroll on its clocks. The pack keeps time.

These are the employer obligations every NZ payroll must serve. Ledra Pay generates the data for all of them — and lodges payday filing directly once the IRD rail is live.

Every payday / every event

2 WORKING DAYSPayday filingEmployment Information (IR348) to Inland Revenue after each payday
ON HIRENew employee to IRDName, IRD number, tax code, KiwiSaver status — and KiwiSaver auto-enrolment for eligible new hires
BY THE 20THPay Inland RevenuePAYE, KiwiSaver, student loan and child support to the EMP account (twice-monthly over the $500k threshold)
ON DEPARTUREFinal payHolidays Act leave paid out, departing-employee details filed

Every year / continuous

ANNUAL (JULY)ACC levy invoiceInland Revenue passes your payroll data to ACC; the levy is invoiced and payable within 30 days
1 APRILYear rolloverMinimum wage, KiwiSaver default and thresholds change against the NZ tax year — shipped as pack releases
CONTINUOUSRecords & agreementsWage and time records, holiday and leave records, and a written employment agreement for every employee
CONTINUOUSHolidays Act leaveAnnual holidays, sick, bereavement, family violence and public holiday entitlements — accrued and valued correctly

The plan

Three steps from here to New Zealand payroll you can stand behind.

01

Attach the pack

Same API, New Zealand pack. Run gross-to-net in your sandbox this week, then shadow-run against your incumbent's results before anything goes live.

Calculation · live via Payroll Engine
02

Statutory outputs

The full pay-run lifecycle runs live — draft, preview, approve, finalise. Finalising commits real per-employee results and shapes the IR348 Employment Information plus the pay-IRD schedule for your process or your accountant to file.

Output files · available
03

The IRD rail, built together

New Zealand's filing layer is Inland Revenue's payday-filing gateway — the Return service that files the IR348. We build the direct rail with a design partner whose launch sets the sequence.

Design partner project
Said plainly: today Ledra Pay does the hard part — the full NZ calculation and a ready-to-file IR348 — and you or your accountant file it to Inland Revenue via myIR. The direct IRD payday-filing rail is scoped as a design-partner project, not promised as "done". We disclose exactly where the partnership completes the picture, so a prospect knows the whole path, not just the piece we've shipped.

The New Zealand payroll guide

Government-sourced guides. Adversarially verified.

Everything an employer in New Zealand must get right — written from fetched Inland Revenue and Employment NZ sources, verified claim by claim, and maintained as the law moves.

The NZ guide hub
PAYE, KiwiSaver, the Holidays Act, payday filing.
Payday filing & paying IRD
The two clocks: the return, and the money.
The setup checklist
The IRD chain, in the order the law issues it.
For global operators
Run NZ payroll without being in New Zealand.

Design partner program

New Zealand's IRD rail gets built with one design partner. Be that partner.

Thirty minutes with our team: gross-to-net end-to-end through the API, the IR348 payday-filing output, and a shadow-run plan against your incumbent's New Zealand payruns.