Zoho Payroll & People for Lebanon: NSSF, End-of-Service & the Labour Code

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Lebanese payroll is harder than it looks. You have NSSF contributions and End-of-Service Indemnity to track, a Labour Code that dates to 1946 and has been amended many times since, and salaries that are now split between fresh dollars and Lebanese pounds. Zoho Payroll and Zoho People can carry all of it, but only if you set them up for Lebanon specifically. This is how an employer with a Beirut head office and branches in Tripoli and Sidon makes it work.

NSSF contributions: family allowances, sickness and maternity

The National Social Security Fund is the backbone of Lebanese payroll. It covers family allowances, the sickness and maternity scheme, and the End-of-Service Indemnity branch. In Zoho Payroll you set up each as an employer contribution or employee deduction with the right base, so every run produces a clean breakdown you can carry into NSSF declarations instead of recalculating by hand.

Getting the contribution bases right is the part that trips people up, especially when salaries are part-dollar and part-pound. Define the calculation base once, correctly, and the monthly numbers take care of themselves.

End-of-Service Indemnity accruals and calculation

End-of-Service Indemnity (EOSI) in Lebanon is administered through the NSSF and builds up over an employee's service. The mistake most businesses make is treating it as a surprise expense at termination. The better approach is to accrue it continuously: track each employee's start date, service length and salary history in Zoho People and Payroll so the indemnity figure is always current.

That means when someone resigns or retires, you already know the number. No scramble, no dispute, no last-minute spreadsheet archaeology.

The Lebanese Labour Code: leave and notice

The Lebanese Labour Code of 1946, as amended, sets the rules for annual leave, sick leave, maternity leave and notice periods. You encode these into leave policies in Zoho People so accruals happen automatically and a manager in Tripoli applies the same rules as one in Beirut. Notice-period logic ties into the offboarding workflow, which keeps terminations defensible.

• Annual leave accrues per Labour Code entitlements, by length of service.
• Sick leave and maternity leave follow statutory rules.
• Notice periods feed the resignation and termination workflow.
• Public holidays load into the Lebanon calendar so they are not counted as leave.

USD vs LBP salaries and the multi-currency mess

This is the messiest part of Lebanese payroll today. Many employers pay a portion of salary in fresh USD and the rest in LBP, and the LBP rate they use is a moving target. Zoho Payroll lets you define the currency split per employee, keep USD as the reporting base, and apply your chosen rate. The result is a payslip that shows both components clearly and cost reports that an owner can actually read.

Without this structure you end up running two parallel payrolls and reconciling them manually every month. With it, one run produces both currencies correctly.

Income tax brackets and corporate tax context

Payroll income tax in Lebanon is applied through progressive brackets on salaries, withheld by the employer. You configure the brackets in Zoho Payroll so the right tax comes off each payslip and the totals are ready for filing. Separately, the corporate income tax rate is 17% on company profits; payroll feeds into that picture as a deductible staff cost, so accurate payroll data also keeps the corporate return clean.

Work permits, trilingual payslips and data protection

Lebanese employers, especially in Beirut, often have foreign staff who need work permits and residency tracked. Store permit and residency expiry dates in Zoho People with reminders so renewals never lapse. Payslips can be issued in Arabic, French or English to match each employee, delivered through the self-service portal rather than email. And because Law No. 81/2018 governs personal data, payroll and HR records should be access-controlled with a clear audit trail.

Zoho People across the governorates and rollout

For a group with a Beirut HQ and branches in Tripoli in the North and Sidon in the South, Zoho People gives one org structure with location-aware policies. Leave approvals route to the right manager, attendance reflects each site, and reporting rolls up to head office. A typical payroll and People rollout runs four to eight weeks: configure NSSF, EOSI and tax in weeks one and two, load employees and leave balances in weeks three and four, run a parallel payroll cycle, then go live. Licensing is billed in USD per employee per month, with implementation usually between USD 2,500 and USD 8,000 depending on headcount and branch count.