Running Payroll How a payroll run works end to end: what it collects, the two approvals it needs, and what to check before anyone is paid.

A payroll run produces one payslip per employee for one month, in one hub. You need payroll access.

The Run Has Four States

Payroll is deliberately not a single button. A run moves through:

State	Meaning
HR approved	HR has produced and checked the run
Finance approved	Finance has signed off the money
Paid	Payment has been made
Returned	Sent back for correction

Two separate approvals is the control that matters. HR checks that the figures reflect what happened - attendance, leave, joiners, leavers. Finance checks that the organisation is paying what it intends to. One person doing both is how errors reach bank accounts.

Returned exists so a run can go back without being deleted. Use it. A returned run keeps its history; a deleted one does not.

What A Run Collects

For each employee it assembles:

• Basic salary and allowances from their compensation record
• Commission earned in the period
• Unpaid leave taken, as days and as an amount
• Any advance repayment due
• Statutory deductions from the hub's payroll profile
• Employer contributions and the total employer cost

Which is why payroll is late in the setup order. It reads attendance, leave, compensation and commission, and it is only as right as they are.

Before You Approve

The checks worth making every month, in this order:

1. Headcount. Does the number of payslips match the number of people you expect to pay? Joiners and leavers are where this breaks.
2. The joiners. A mid-month starter should be part-month. Check one.
3. The leavers. Anyone who left should not be here, and should instead have a settlement. See Final Settlement.
4. The outliers. Sort by net pay and look at the top and bottom. A number that surprises you is worth a minute now and an apology later.
5. Unpaid leave. Cross-check against approved leave for the period.
6. The total. Compare against last month. A material move without a known cause is worth explaining before, not after.

Cut-Off

Each payroll profile carries a cut-off day. Anything after it falls into the next run - which is what makes the run reproducible rather than a moving target.

There is also a regularisation window before the cut-off: the period in which attendance corrections can still be made. After it closes, the attendance the run reads is fixed.

Tell people both dates. Most late corrections come from someone not knowing when the door closes.

Per Hub

Runs are per hub, because tax, currency and statutory deductions are per hub. A multi-entity organisation runs payroll several times, not once.

After Payment

Mark the run paid, which records who did it and when. Payslips become available to employees.

Common Questions

Someone is missing from the run. Check they are active, in the right hub, and have a compensation record. A person with no compensation record produces no payslip.

A figure is wrong. Return the run rather than editing around it. Fix the source - attendance, leave, or the deduction rule - and produce it again, so the payslip matches the records behind it.

Can we run payroll twice in a month? The run is per month per hub. Off-cycle payments are usually a settlement or an advance rather than a second run.

Who can approve? HR approval and finance approval are separate permissions, deliberately. See Permissions in the Settings section.