I wrote Indonesian payroll twice on purpose
CoalTrack computes statutory payroll on the server in PHP and again on the handset in Dart. Duplicating the logic sounds wrong — here's why it's the safest thing I did.
“Don’t repeat yourself” is good advice right up until the moment a wrong number costs someone their correct wage. CoalTrack calculates payroll for coal-mining crews, and I implemented the same statutory logic twice — once in a Laravel/PHP service, once in a Dart mirror on the phone. On purpose. Here’s the reasoning.
The rules are law, not preference
Indonesian payroll isn’t a formula you invent. It’s legislation:
- PPh21 income tax under the TER scheme (PMK 168/2023),
- BPJS health and employment contributions,
- overtime under Kepmenaker 102/2004.
Each has brackets, caps and rounding rules that have to be applied in a specific order. Get the order wrong and the total is wrong in a way that’s hard to spot and easy to dispute.
Why two implementations, not one
A payroll figure shows up in two places: computed authoritatively on the server, and previewed instantly on the worker’s handset — including when the handset is offline down a mine access road. I could have made the phone a dumb display that waits for the server, but a preview that’s blank without signal is useless exactly when people want it.
So the phone computes too. And the moment you have two implementations of a legal calculation, you have a new risk: they can disagree. That risk is also the safety net. If the PHP service and the Dart mirror ever produce different numbers for the same inputs, something is wrong — and I want to know at build time, not at payday.
Mirrored tests are the contract
The two implementations are held together by mirrored test suites: the same input fixtures, the same expected outputs, run against both languages. The tests are the real specification. When the tax rule changes, I change the fixtures first, watch both sides fail, then fix both until they agree. Neither implementation is allowed to be “close enough.”
This is also why the numbers can be trusted after the fact. Attendance events and approvals live behind an append-only audit trail — PostgreSQL triggers reject UPDATE and DELETE on those tables — so the inputs to payroll can’t be quietly rewritten later.
When duplication is the right call
Duplication is a cost, and most of the time DRY is right. But when a calculation is (a) defined by an external authority, (b) needed in two runtimes for real reasons, and (c) expensive to get wrong, a second implementation checked against the first isn’t waste — it’s a proof. I’d take a redundant, cross-verified payroll engine over a single elegant one every single payday.
FAQ
Isn't duplicating logic a violation of DRY?
Usually yes — but when a calculation is defined by an external authority, needed in two runtimes for real reasons, and expensive to get wrong, a second cross-checked implementation is a proof, not waste.
How do you keep the two implementations in sync?
Mirrored test suites — the same input fixtures and expected outputs run against both PHP and Dart. When the tax rule changes, the fixtures change first and both sides must be fixed until they agree.
What stops attendance data being altered after the fact?
An append-only audit trail: PostgreSQL triggers reject UPDATE and DELETE on the attendance and approval tables, so the inputs to payroll can't be quietly rewritten later.