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Romanino, Superintendent paying the workers, 1531-32, fresco, Castello del Buonconsiglio, Trento, Italy. A salary is a form of periodic payment from an employer to an employee, which is specified in an employment contract. It is contrasted with piece wages, where each job, hour or other unit is paid separately, rather than on a periodic basis. From the point of a view of running a business, salary can also be viewed as the cost of acquiring human resources for running operations, and is then termed personnel expense or salary expense. In accounting, salaries are recorded in payroll accounts.