Most payroll vendors show you a clean screenshot and ask you to trust them. We'd rather show you the test report, the test numbers, and the one thing our engine doesn't yet do.
This page is the honest summary of what we've verified in our payroll engine — and what we haven't claimed. If you're evaluating Chegatta for real payroll, this is the page to read before the sales call.
What we mean by "test" here
Chegatta's payroll engine (SalaryCalculationService plus the SalarySlipService pipeline) is configurable: rates, tax tables, meal allowance caps, overtime rules, employer contributions. We don't want to ship payroll that only works on paper, so we run it against realistic scenarios before we tell a customer it's ready.
These are fictional test scenarios — fake employees, fake companies, real Portuguese payroll logic. No real personal data appears anywhere in these tests. You won't find a real NIF, NISS, address, or IBAN in any of the outputs.
What we've verified
We run tests that answer practical questions a buyer should be able to ask:
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Can the engine produce a full Portuguese payslip from approved shift data? Yes — tested in August 2026 against a fictional part-time employee with base salary, holiday subsidy, Christmas subsidy, meal allowance, salary regularization, Social Security, IRS, and insurance. The output was a complete PT recibo with all standard sections.
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Does the same engine produce the UI view, the database calculation, and the PDF from one set of numbers? Yes — we verified that the calculated result, the slip service output, and the PDF template all consumed the same source of truth, without independent recalculation.
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Do individual employee gross totals add up to the right payroll run total? Yes — tested in our reconciliation checks.
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Does locking a payroll run actually prevent silent changes? Yes — once a run is approved/locked, the engine throws for attempted unauthorized recalculation. Corrections go through the intended audit path, not a back door.
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Does the system keep payroll data isolated between tenants and between agency and client? Yes — verified.
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Does SEPA data link back to approved salary records? Yes — payment details, IBAN, and net pay figures tie back to approved records.
You can read the individual pieces in the links below. We kept each one short and written for a buyer, not a payroll developer.
What we don't claim
This is the part most vendors skip. We won't skip it.
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We have not certified our tax tables with an accountant. The engine is mathematically correct and configurable with the right Social Security rates, IRS brackets, meal allowance caps, and overtime multipliers. But statutory table specifics, IRS withholding coefficient edge cases, and sectoral collective agreement rules should be reviewed by a local accountant before you run real payroll. That's normal for any payroll product before first real run.
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Our overtime treatment in the test scenario was simpler than a real reference payslip. In our test, the engine treated overtime as a single multiplier on the overtime bucket. The reference payslip we compared against split overtime into several tiers (some at 25%, some at 50%, some at 150%). That's a real difference. We documented it. We didn't hide it by tweaking the engine just to make the test match.
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We don't publish real customer payroll figures. We can't, and shouldn't. What we can do is show you that the engine produced a realistic result from a realistic scenario — and be honest about where it differed from a reference.
The example we generated
The most concrete thing we can show you is a sample payslip from our Portuguese test: a full RECIBO DE REMUNERAÇÃO for a fictional part-time employee in July 2026, with employer information, worker information, earnings, deductions, employer TSU contribution, payment section, and a work summary.
Read the full test write-up here: We stress-tested Chegatta's payroll against a real Portuguese payslip.
Why this matters for buying payroll software
If a vendor shows you only the happy path, you're buying blind.
- You don't know whether overtime is handled the way your sector needs.
- You don't know whether the PDF is generated from the same numbers as the UI.
- You don't know whether a locked payroll run can quietly be changed.
Publishing our test results — including the caveats — is how we make the buying decision less blind.
Where to look next
- We stress-tested Chegatta's payroll against a real Portuguese payslip — the example payslip, with the numbers and the honest differences.
- Restaurant payroll is harder than office payroll — here's what we tested — the scenario that breaks naive payroll systems.
- We proved there's zero cross-employee leakage in payroll calculations — short, practical trust proof.
- What "production-ready payroll" actually means — our Phase 4 checklist — what we verified before we'd call the engine production-ready.
If you're evaluating Chegatta for real payroll in Portugal or another EU country, start with the Portuguese payslip test and the production-readiness checklist. If you run restaurants, hospitality, or multi-site operations, the restaurant scenario is the one to read.