How to handle an employee's departure

What is it for?

When a contract ends, the company must pay what is outstanding (the salary up to the last day, the proportional holidays and allowances and, in many cases, compensation), hand over the employment certificate and communicate the termination to Social Security. fiscaldoo records the termination, checks the notice period, calculates the final payslip item by item and prepares the certificate and the communication.

fiscaldoo sends nothing to Social Security and does not issue the unemployment status declaration (declaração de situação de desemprego) (see “Important notes”).

When to use it?

• A fixed-term contract is about to expire, or there has been a dismissal, a revocation by agreement, a resignation by the employee or another form of termination.
• Before processing the month in which the contract ends: the final payslip is made separately, and the employee no longer goes into that month's regular batch.

Where to find it?

Payroll › Prepare › Workers and contracts › Terminations (the same list is in People › Contracts and departures › Terminations).

The final payslip is made on the termination itself, with the Create final payslip button. Payments are in Payroll › Pay › Salary payments and issued certificates in People › Contracts and departures › Employment certificates.

Before you start

• Your profile is Payroll Processor or Payroll Administrator. The Payroll Processor does all the steps in this article except Account, which belongs to the Payroll Administrator.
• The employee's contract is recorded, with its type and dates (How to record an employment contract).
• The payslips for the previous months are processed. The final payslip uses the IRS situation of the last validated payslip.
• In the example, the fixed-term contract of Hugo Miguel Santos (from 01/02/2026 to 30/11/2026, salary of €1,250.00) expires at the end of its term, and the company notified him on 10/11/2026.

How to use it

1. Record and confirm the termination

1. Open Payroll › Prepare › Workers and contracts › Terminations and click New.
2. In Worker, choose the employee. The Contract and the Contract type come from the record (in the example, 01/02/2026 and Fixed term, certain (termo certo)).
3. In Mode of termination, choose how the contract ends. The options are: the expiries (fixed term, uncertain term, retirement, death of the employee, supervening impossibility, extinction of the employer), Revocation by agreement (arts. 349.º, 350.º), the dismissals (for cause attributable to the employee, collective, job extinction, unsuitability), Resolution by the worker with just cause (arts. 394.º to 399.º), Resignation by the worker (arts. 400.º to 402.º), Abandonment of work (art. 403.º) and Other mode provided by law (art. 340.º). In the example, Expiry — fixed term (arts. 343.º a), 344.º).
4. In Initiator, choose Employer, Worker, Both (agreement) or By operation of law.
5. In Date of the notice, type the day the notice was given (in the example, 10/11/2026). In Last day of the contract, type the last actual working day, never the notice date (in the example, 30/11/2026).
6. Check the notice period, which fiscaldoo calculates by itself: Days of notice required, Days of notice given, Days of notice missing and Last day to communicate. In the example: 15 required, 20 given, 0 missing, last day 15/11/2026.
7. If there are holiday days from previous years still to be taken, fill in Holidays of earlier years not taken (HOLIDAYS group). If the mode is an agreement or a dismissal, fill in the REASON AND AGREEMENT group.
8. Save and click Confirm. The termination becomes Confirmed, with Confirmed by and Confirmed on, and the bar shows Create final payslip, Reopen, Work certificate and Cancel.

On confirmation, fiscaldoo creates the communication of the termination to Social Security, as a Draft (in the example, “Cessação / Hugo Miguel Santos / 30/11/2026”).

2. Prepare the final payslip

1. On the confirmed termination, click Create final payslip. The employee's payslip opens, from 01/11/2026 to 30/11/2026, already with the Base remuneration and the termination items.
2. Click Calculate. In the example, Total IRS withheld is €274.00 and Net pay €4,467.65.
3. Check the lines and the HOW THE AMOUNTS WERE REACHED block. Each line has How was it calculated?.
4. Click Validate. The termination becomes Settled.
5. With the Payroll Administrator profile, click Account. Without this step, Run is refused to the Payroll Processor, and Pay does not let you mark as paid an accounted payslip with no payment recorded (How to account for payroll processing).
6. To pay, open Actions and click Generate payment. Make the transfer at the bank.
7. Open Payroll › Pay › Salary payments and the employee's payment. Fill in Value date with the date given by the bank (in the example, 30/11/2026), save and click Run. The payslip becomes Paid.

In the example, Hugo Miguel Santos's final payslip has these lines:

Line	Quantity	Amount
Base remuneration	1,250.00	€1,250.00
Christmas allowance	1.00	€1,037.67
Holiday pay proportional to the service of the year (termination)	18.26	€1,053.64
Holiday allowance proportional to the service of the year (termination)	18.26	€1,053.64
Legal compensation of the termination	19.92	€830.14
Holiday pay due and not taken (termination)	0.00	€0.00
Holiday allowance due and not taken (termination)	0.00	€0.00

• Total earnings €5,225.09, Social Security (worker) €483.44, Total IRS withheld €274.00, Net pay €4,467.65.
• Company contribution to Social Security €1,043.80 and Total cost to the company €6,268.89.

How the example figures are reached. The contract lasted 303 days (from 01/02/2026 to 30/11/2026). The Christmas allowance is €1,250.00 × 303 ÷ 365 = €1,037.67. In a contract that did not reach 12 months, holidays are proportional to its duration: 22 days × 303 ÷ 365 = 18.26 days. The compensation for the expiry of a fixed-term contract is 24 days per year: (€1,250.00 ÷ 30) × 24 × 303 ÷ 365 = €830.14 (19.92 days, without rounding midway). Social Security applies to €4,394.95 (11 % = €483.44 from the employee; 23.75 % = €1,043.80 from the company): the compensation, €830.14, is outside the base. Personal Income Tax (IRS) has three parts: €219.00 for the month, €26.00 for the Christmas allowance and €29.00 for the holiday allowance, the latter two withheld separately. The month's part applies to €2,405.01: the base remuneration, the holiday pay and €101.37 of the compensation (€2,405.01 × 34.9 % − €401.19 = €438.16; in November 2026 only half is withheld, rounded down to the euro). The other €728.77 of the compensation is outside IRS: it is the monthly average of regular pay (€7,287.67 ÷ 10 months) × 1 year of seniority. The average is low because the demo only has validated payslips from June to September; with all months processed, the whole compensation would be outside IRS. For example, with October also processed, the average rises to €853.77 (€8,537.67 ÷ 10 months), more than the compensation; the month's part applies to €2,303.64 (half of €402.78 = €201.00) and the payslip gives €256.00 of IRS and €4,485.65 net. The HOW THE AMOUNTS WERE REACHED block summarises this withholding. Pending validation by a certified accountant: days per year and the fraction method in the compensation, proportional holidays in a contract of less than 12 months, exclusion of the compensation from the Social Security base and the part of the compensation outside IRS (whether the Christmas allowance enters the average).

Instead of the button: the Final settlement batch

The button makes a payslip without a batch, and the Transfer file only exists in the batch. If you want to pay by file, or there are several departures in the same month, use the batch instead of the button. The payslip comes out the same, to the cent. You cannot use both on the same termination: fiscaldoo refuses the second final payslip (see “Common problems”).

1. Open Payroll › Process › Process the month and click New.
2. In Type, choose Final settlement. The Name becomes “Acerto final de novembro de 2026” and the period is from 01/11/2026 to 30/11/2026. The other types are Regular, Holidays, Christmas, Corrective and Simulation.
3. Save and click Create the payslips of the month. The batch only takes the employees with a confirmed termination ending in that period (in the example, only Hugo Miguel Santos), with a payslip of type Final (termination).
4. Click Calculate. The batch becomes Previewed and shows the payslip's net pay (in the example, €4,467.65).
5. Open the payslip and check the lines and the HOW THE AMOUNTS WERE REACHED block.
6. Validate and pay the batch like a regular batch (How to process the month's payroll and How to pay salaries). With the Payroll Processor, the file can only be downloaded after accounting.

3. Issue the employment certificate

1. On the confirmed termination, click Work certificate. The certificate opens as a Draft, with the Date of admission (01/02/2026), the Date of termination (30/11/2026) and the POSTS HELD with their dates (in the example, “Operador de armazém”, from 01/02/2026 to 30/11/2026).
2. Only if the employee asks, fill in OTHER REFERENCES (ONLY AT THE REQUEST OF THE WORKER, CT ART. 341.º/2).
3. Click Issue. The certificate becomes Issued and is closed: after that there is only Re-issue and Register delivery.
4. When you hand it to the employee, fill in Delivered on and Delivered by in the DELIVERY group and click Register delivery.

4. Communicate the termination to Social Security

The communication created when the termination was confirmed is in Payroll › What is there to do this month? › Social Security employment link. Follow How to communicate hiring, termination or changes to Social Security: that article uses the same termination of Hugo Miguel Santos.

Expected result

• After the payslip is validated, the termination is Settled in the Terminations list.
• The employee's final payslip is Paid, with each item on its own line.
• The employment certificate is Issued in Employment certificates.
• The communication of the termination appears in Social Security employment link, as a Draft.

Important notes

• Check the compensation before paying. The compensation and credit amounts come from legal rules stored in the product (Payroll › Configure › compensation and termination rules). Validate them with the certified accountant or the lawyer.
• Unemployment status declaration. fiscaldoo neither issues nor prepares it. If the employee asks for it to claim unemployment benefit, the company fills it in outside fiscaldoo, in Segurança Social Direta or on the Social Security form, with the termination dates and reason recorded here. Pending validation by a certified accountant: deadline for handing the unemployment status declaration to the employee and how to hand it over.
• The notice period counts from the Date of the notice. If the Days of notice missing are more than zero, the final payslip includes the missing-notice line (paid by the company or deducted from the employee, depending on who failed to comply).
• A settled termination is closed. Correct the data before calculating and validating the final payslip; after that, the correction is made with a corrective payslip (How to correct a payslip already processed).
• The deadline for paying the credits. fiscaldoo warns in the Payment of the credits field when it does not know the deadline for the mode: in the example, “The deadline for the credits of this mode of termination was not found in the sources read (to be confirmed by the certified accountant).”
• Accounting. The final payslip can only be accounted when every pay item with an amount has a posting template, including the termination ones (How to account for payroll processing).

Common problems

Create final payslip replies “… already has a final payslip for this termination”

• Symptom: “Invalid Operation “Hugo Miguel Santos” already has a final payslip for this termination: “Hugo Miguel Santos (01/11/2026 — 30/11/2026)” (Draft, without batch, created on 04/11/2026 00:09:11 by Salários (demonstração)). What happened: two final payslips of the same termination would settle it twice. How to fix it: open the existing one in the list of payslips (Payroll menu), or cancel it (with a reason) before creating another.”
• Cause: the termination already has a final payslip. The message says which one, what state it is in, who created it and when.
• What to do: continue with the payslip the message points to. If you want to redo it, open Actions, click Cancel, type the reason and create it again.

The Final settlement batch ends up with no payslip

• Symptom: in Create the payslips of the month the same message appears, “… already has a final payslip for this termination”, and the batch stays in Draft, with no payslips.
• Cause: one of the employees already has a final payslip made with the button. The refusal undoes the whole batch: the other employees with a termination in that month do not get in either. In the example, with two November terminations, the refusal named only the employee who already had a payslip, and her colleague was also left out.
• What to do: cancel the payslip indicated and click Create the payslips of the month again, or make that month's payslips with Create final payslip, one by one.

Account replies “Contabilização bloqueada” (accounting blocked)

• Symptom: “Accounting blocked: 4 pay item(s) with an amount have no posting template on 30/11/2026: Christmas allowance, Holiday pay proportional to the service of the year (termination), Holiday allowance proportional to the service of the year (termination), Legal compensation of the termination. What happened: the journal entry cannot be built without an account for each line. How to fix it: create a template for each one (Payroll › Configure › Pay item setup › Posting templates).”
• Cause: the pay items listed do not yet have a posting template on that date.
• What to do: click Close, create the template for each pay item as in How to account for payroll processing and click Account again.

Confirm says there are required fields to fill in

• Symptom: “Some required fields are empty. Fill in the fields marked in red to be able to save.”
• Cause: the Initiator, the Date of the notice or the Last day of the contract is missing.
• What to do: fill in the red fields and click Confirm again.

The employment certificate can no longer be changed

• Symptom: after Issue: “This record is already closed (validated, approved, paid or sent), so it can no longer be changed. To correct it, use the actions of the document: cancel it or create a correction.”
• Cause: an issued certificate is closed.
• What to do: click Re-issue to make a new version.