Gross Wages, Staff Salaries & Regular/Casual Wages: Codes 7000, 7003, 7004 & 7005

Payroll for non-director staff is one of the biggest overhead costs most businesses carry, and Sage offers several ways to split it depending on how a business's workforce is structured.

The codes, and what each one holds

Code 7000 — Gross Wages is a general code for total gross pay before deductions, often used as the main wages code by simpler businesses.

Code 7003 — Staff Salaries records the salaries of permanent, salaried staff.

Code 7004 — Wages — Regular covers pay for regular, ongoing hourly or weekly-paid staff.

Code 7005 — Wages — Casual covers pay for casual, temporary, or ad-hoc staff brought in as needed. All four are Overheads codes and normally carry a debit balance.

A worked example

Say a business pays £8,000 in salaries to its permanent office staff this month, £5,000 to its regular hourly warehouse team, and £900 to casual staff brought in to cover a busy weekend.

Staff Salaries (code 7003): £8,000 debited.

Wages — Regular (code 7004): £5,000 debited.

Wages — Casual (code 7005): £900 debited.

Why this matters day to day

Splitting salaried, regular and casual pay apart makes it much easier to spot whether staffing costs are creeping up because of overtime and casual cover rather than the core team growing. It's also useful when budgeting for busy periods, since casual wage spend tends to move with seasonal demand in a way that's worth tracking on its own rather than lost inside a single wages figure.