A payroll run is the record of one pay week: what was paid, who signed it off, and when. It lives in Payments → Runs, and it exists so you can answer "who approved this week's pay, and what exactly did they approve?" long after the week has passed.
The steps
A run moves forward one step at a time, and each step is stamped with your name and the time:
- Draft — created automatically as soon as anyone has hours for the week.
- Reviewed — you have looked over the figures.
- Approved — you are signing off the amounts. This is the important one: the figures are frozen here.
- Exported — you have downloaded the files for your payroll or accounting system.
- Released — payslips have gone out to staff.
- Locked — the week is closed.
What gets frozen when you approve
Open the What was approved panel on any run to see one line per person: their pay rate, hours, gross, adjustments and super, plus the pay rules in force at the time.
While a run is still Draft or Reviewed those figures keep up to date as hours change. The moment you approve, they are frozen — later edits to rates or rules do not rewrite what you signed off. That is the whole point of the record.
Things worth knowing
- Runs are created for you. You do not need to start one — opening By Location for a week creates it.
- Each button only records a step. In particular, Mark Payslips Released does not send payslips — you send those from the Export tab, then record it here.
- A locked week can be reopened with Unlock if you need to correct something.
- Runs created before this record existed will show no breakdown, and approved ones stay that way. Nothing is invented after the fact.