Chart of Accounts (GL Codes)
Setting up GL codes so payroll dollars land in the right account in your books
If your production tracks payroll spend against an accounting code — what some companies call "cost coding" — Greenroom's version is the chart of accounts, built from GL codes (short for general ledger codes). Set your codes up once, then optionally tag any pay rate or adjustment line with one so it lands in the right bucket in your books.
Greenroom doesn't have a separate workers' compensation classification-code feature. This page covers GL coding only.
Setting up your chart of accounts
Go to Settings → Chart of accounts. Each code has three parts:
| Field | Rules |
|---|---|
| Code | Up to 12 characters — letters, numbers, periods, and dashes only (for example, 4310). Must be unique within your company. |
| Name | Up to 80 characters (for example, "AEA performance wages"). |
| Category | One of Wages, Fees & services, or Taxes & fringe. |
Add a row with Add code, edit any cell inline, and save everything at once with the save bar at the bottom of the page — nothing is written until you save. Deleting a code asks for confirmation first: past payroll lines that already used it keep their coding, but new lines can't select it anymore.
Importing a chart of accounts
If you're bringing in a chart of accounts from another system, use Import CSV / Excel next to the table instead of typing codes in one at a time. Download the template first — it's a three-column file (code, name, category) with one example row per category.
Accepted files are .csv or .xlsx, up to 256 KB and 1,000 rows. After you choose a file, Greenroom shows a preview with a verdict on every row before anything is saved:
| Verdict | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Will add | A new code — imports as-is |
| Updates existing | Matches a code you already have — shows exactly which fields (name and/or category) will change |
| Duplicate in file | The same code appears more than once in your upload |
| Invalid code | Fails the 12-character / letters-numbers-dots-dashes rule |
| Name too long | Over 80 characters |
| Unknown category | Not one of Wages, Fees & services, or Taxes & fringe (the category column also accepts those exact labels, not just the raw wages / fees / taxes_fringe values) |
| Missing code or name | Either cell is blank |
All-or-nothing — unlike importing payees
If even one row in the file has a problem, the entire import is blocked — fix the file and re-upload. Nothing partially imports. (This is different from importing payees, where valid rows go in and only the bad ones are rejected — see Importing Payees.)
Coding a pay rate or adjustment line
Once you have a chart of accounts, a GL code picker appears next to each pay rate and each allowance, reimbursement, or deduction line on a payee's Role & Pay sections, grouped by category with No GL code as the default. Coding is entirely optional — a payee can be fully payroll-ready with nothing coded at all.
Where the coding pays off
Every payroll run that's been approved or paid has a coding summary — your payroll dollars totaled up by Wages, Fees & services, and Taxes & fringe, plus a separate "uncoded" total for anything without a GL code. The same chart of accounts also drives the QuickBooks CSV export: one double-entry journal row per coded line, debits balanced against credits, ready to import into your books. See Reports & Exporting Data for how to generate it.
Next steps
See Reports & Exporting Data for the QuickBooks export and coding summary, or Role & Pay for where GL codes attach to a payee's pay.