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A separation is the formal record of an employee leaving — a resignation, a termination, a retirement, a layoff, or the end of a fixed-term contract. In Hitaji 360 the separation drives the whole offboarding: it carries an exit checklist (return the laptop, revoke access, conduct the exit interview), it terminates the employee and ends their contract when the checklist is done, and it computes and posts the final settlement — gratuity, leave encashment, and the recovery of any outstanding advances and loans. The settlement is where HR meets accounting. When you post it, Hitaji 360 runs an off-cycle settlement payroll run for the leaver (so terminal pay is taxed properly), draws down any gratuity that was being accrued, recovers what the employee still owes, and posts the lot to the general ledger. This page covers the whole flow. You’ll find this at: /hr/separations (list) and /hr/separations/:id (detail).
📷 Screenshot: the Separations list with the “Initiate Separation” button — to be added.

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Before you start

  • Which business am I in? A separation belongs to one business. If you run more than one, confirm the business switcher is correct first — a separation is invisible (and un-editable) to users working in a different business.
  • The employee needs an active employment contract. You cannot initiate a separation for someone with no active contract; the form blocks it and tells you to add one first. The contract must belong to the same employee being separated.
  • Date sanity. The last working date cannot be more than a year in the past, and the notice date (if given) cannot fall after the last working date.

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The separation lifecycle (statuses)

Two automatic moments:
  • When the last activity is ticked off, the separation flips to Completed, sets the employee’s status to Terminated, and ends their employment contract.
  • A separation can only be cancelled while it is Pending or In Process.

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Initiating a separation

From the Separations list choose Initiate Separation (you can also start one from the Separation tab on an employee’s profile).
📷 Screenshot: the Initiate Separation dialog — to be added.
The separation is created in Pending. Choose Start Process to move it to In Process and begin working the checklist.

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The exit checklist (activities)

Each activity row shows its sequence number, title, optional description, who it is assigned to, its due date, and its status (Pending, In Progress, Completed or Skipped). Due dates are computed from the offboarding start plus the template’s day-offset. Choose Complete on an activity to tick it off (it records when it was completed). Activities can only be completed while the separation is Pending or In Process. When every activity is Completed or Skipped, the separation completes itself — and the termination and contract-end side-effects fire.

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The exit interview

A separation has an Exit Interview panel. If one is already linked, you can open it from here; if not, choose Schedule Exit Interview to create one tied to this separation and employee. See Exit interviews.

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The final settlement

Once a separation is Completed, the Settlement panel appears with the computed figures. The settlement is created as a Draft: When everything looks right, choose Post Settlement. A confirmation warns you this posts to accounting and cannot be reversed.
⚠️ Current state: The detail page shows the settlement figures and a Post Settlement button, but does not currently expose an edit form for the draft amounts in the UI (the back end supports editing a draft, e.g. to set asset recovery, via PATCH .../settlement). If you need to adjust figures before posting, that adjustment isn’t available on this screen today. (Flagged for the team.)

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What posting does (the off-cycle run, gratuity draw-down, and recovery)

Posting the settlement is a multi-step financial action, all stitched together so a mid-way failure can be safely retried without double-paying:
  1. Off-cycle settlement payroll run. Hitaji 360 creates an OFF_CYCLE payroll run for just this leaver, injects the terminal benefits (Gratuity and Leave Encashment) as earnings, and submits it. Because it goes through payroll, terminal benefits are taxed — PAYE is withheld according to each component’s tax treatment, and statutory contributions apply where configured. If the leaver’s exit month is already closed, the run is posted into the next open period instead of failing. See Running payroll.
  2. Gratuity draw-down. If gratuity was being accrued monthly for this employee, the accrued provision sitting in gratuity payable is drawn down and netted against the run’s fresh gratuity expense. See Gratuity.
  3. Recovery. Outstanding advances and loans are recovered out of the terminal net pay, and each loan/advance sub-ledger is cleared (loans marked Closed, advances Settled). Recovery can never exceed the leaver’s net accrued pay — if it would, posting is refused and you’ll need to recompute.
  4. The settlement flips to Posted.
If the employee has no active salary structure, the run can’t generate a payslip and posting fails with a clear message asking you to activate a salary structure first.

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Behind the scenes — the accounting

Posting a settlement produces several balanced entries. In plain double-entry terms: The off-cycle settlement run (terminal pay): Gratuity draw-down (only if gratuity was being accrued): Recovery of advances & loans (withheld from terminal net): The net effect is that the leaver’s terminal pay is recognised and taxed, any gratuity already provided for is consumed rather than double-counted, and what they still owed the business is netted off before the final payment.

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Permissions

Posting is the only separation action that needs the elevated hr:admin slug — it commits money to the ledger.