Working with Payroll & HR

Payroll & HR reads your pay runs and compares them with your employee records and pay rates. It checks that the people you pay are the people you employ, at the rate you agreed, for the hours they worked. It works from the documents in your Data Room, reports whatever does not agree, and shows the amount in dollars as pay outside policy. This page is how to work with it from day to day.

What to put in the Data Room

Two documents are sufficient to begin, and the first is a pay run, the record of one pay day: who was paid, how much, and for which hours. Add it as a PDF from your payroll provider; the second is your employee list, with each employee's start and leaving dates. Neither is an agreement or an invoice, so both sit beside Contracts and Agreements and Invoices in the Data Room. The module's own Data Room tab lists them under Pay runs, and one pay run with one employee list produces a first finding.

Add the remaining documents as you have them, because each one allows another check to complete. Your pay rates and their history allow the rate on each pay run to be compared with the employee's record. They also allow a rate change to be checked for a recorded approver who is not the employee. Twelve months of pay runs allow the hours check to learn each employee's normal pattern, so overtime is visible. Payroll entries from your books and the payment from your bank, as rows a Connection brings in, allow the pay run total to be tied to both.

Add documents with Add to Data Room, as PDFs. No Connection brings pay runs in today, so add each new one on pay day and it is examined the same way as the first. Open the module's Data Room tab to see which documents it has drawn on and to link one it has not used yet. The Data Room explains where documents live and what each kind is for.

When it asks you a question

Payroll & HR asks you nothing when you add it, and it asks a question only when a check needs the answer. Until then it uses a sensible default and names it in the finding, so you can correct it when it matters. Five questions can arise: how many more pay runs an employee may appear in after leaving, who may approve a pay-rate change, any season when overtime is expected, any contractors you pay through payroll rather than by invoice, and any two employees who share a bank account on purpose, such as a married couple.

A question arrives as a needs-information finding in the Findings list, and as a card in Ask Ressura. Your answer becomes an entry in your Organisational context, with your name and the date on it, and the check runs again automatically. A contractor or a shared account you name applies to those employees only. The final-pay rule, the approvers and the overtime seasons apply to every pay run the module examines. Until you name approvers, it uses the approvers your company's context already names for payments.

How to read a finding

The module's Overview shows Pay outside policy, the sum of the exceptions with a dollar value in the period. That is pay after a leaving date, pay at a rate that differs from the employee record, a rate change without a recorded approver, and hours outside the pattern. The employee list sits beneath it, with each employee's gross pay (pay before tax and deductions) and how much of it is outside policy. Employees are people, so members see them by role and id, and names, pay rates and dates show only to admins and the Owner, the roles Members and roles explains. Its Findings tab lists every finding: the employee, the Control that produced it, its kind, the amount where there is one, the confidence, its disposition and the date. Choose Review finding to open one.

An exception says what the pay run paid, what the employee record or the pay rate says, and the difference. Its provenance shows the pay run line, the employee record and the pay-rate entry with the date it took effect, so you can check the arithmetic yourself. When a finding leans on a default rather than a value you gave, such as one final pay after leaving, it says so explicitly.

A needs-information finding names the fact that would let a check finish: a leaving date, the approver of a rate change, or a pay-rate record that is missing. It never blocks the other checks. A fraud-risk finding comes from Fraud Watch and links the findings behind it; the module itself says what it found, never whether it was deliberate. The Checks tab shows each of the eight Controls with its pass, exception and needs-information counts for the period. The headcount check is one number for the whole company, so its result appears there rather than on any one employee.

How to disposition a finding

You answer a finding in one of three ways, and each answer is recorded with your name and the date. Accept an exception when the pay was outside policy, such as a pay run that paid an employee two periods after leaving, and add a note if you like. Reject it with the reason when the pay was right, such as a rate change agreed at a performance review whose note was never filed. The reason becomes a context entry, scoped to this finding, this employee, this module or the whole company, so the same point is never raised twice. Answer a needs-information finding by naming the approver or by adding the pay-rate record it asks for, and the check runs again.

An employee's own page, under Employees, gathers their findings, the pay runs that name them and their context entries in one place. It shows their role, start date, leaving date, pay rate and how often they are paid, and those personal details show only to admins and the Owner. Findings and Dispositions has the rules every module shares, including the two-person rule for rejecting a fraud-risk finding.

What it costs

Running its checks, opening a finding and dispositioning one cost nothing, and checking the same documents again is free.

This page is the how-to. The Payroll & HR page says why it exists and what it checks.