First Steps
What to do after you sign in for the first time — setup, approval, and adding your first payees
Where you land after signing in for the first time depends on how your account was created. If you just signed up and created a brand-new company, you're dropped straight into Company setup — Greenroom would rather you finish that first than land on an empty Dashboard (see Signing In). If you accepted a teammate's invite to join a company that's already set up, you land on the Dashboard instead. Either way, the shape of the work ahead is the same: finish company setup, submit it for approval, and start adding payees. You don't have to do these in strict order, and only one of them — running payroll — actually waits on anything.
Getting approved only unlocks payroll. Setup, payees, packets, and reports are all available immediately — there's no reason to wait on Greenroom before you start adding your cast and crew.
What a brand-new company sees
If you just created your company, you land directly on Company setup's first stage (Business info) — not the Dashboard. From there:
- The wizard itself is where you'll spend the next few minutes (see Step 1, below).
- If you navigate to the Dashboard anyway, you'll find a banner reading "Finish company setup, then submit for review" with a link back to setup, and — once you have payees — an empty state reading "Let's get [your show] ready for payday" with an Add payees button. Until then the Dashboard is mostly empty; that's expected, not a bug.
Step 1: Complete company setup
Company setup is a six-stage wizard: a clickable progress bar across the top, one stage's form below it, and Back / Save and continue buttons to move between them (the progress bar also lets you jump to any stage directly). Save and continue writes whatever you've changed on the current stage before it moves on, and if that save is refused — a starting check number left blank, say — it stays on the stage with the reason shown rather than hiding it behind the next step. A stage you walk through without changing anything is left exactly as it was. A stage checks off with a green check once its form is saved and complete:
| Stage | What you're confirming |
|---|---|
| Business info | Company name, FEIN, full business address, business type, phone, expected payee count, and expected start date |
| Pay schedule | Pay frequency and starting check number — managed from Settings → Company |
| Production & unions | Your production type (Broadway, Off-Broadway, or Development), and which unions apply — or confirm the production is non-union |
| Bank & checks | The funding account for payroll, encrypted at rest |
| State tax registrations | SUI and withholding IDs for your primary state — marking them "applied for" is enough to move on, a real ID isn't required yet |
| Payroll provider | The authorized signer for Check, our payroll partner, plus their hosted onboarding |
The page header tracks your progress as "X of Y stages complete." On the last stage the button is Submit for review instead. Until every required stage is done, clicking it validates instead of submitting: it jumps you to the first incomplete required stage and lists everything still outstanding. (The Payroll provider stage only counts as required if Check is connected in your environment; otherwise it's shown but doesn't block submission.)
Step 2: Submit for review
Once setup is complete, click Submit for review on the wizard's last stage. Your Dashboard banner and the status chip in the top bar update to "Submitted — Greenroom is reviewing your company." If Greenroom requests changes instead, you'll see their notes right on the Company setup page — address them and resubmit. Once approved, every approval banner disappears and Run payroll unlocks (unless Check, our payroll provider, has separately closed or suspended your account — Run Payroll will tell you if so).
Step 3: Add your payees
You don't need to wait for approval to do this — add payees as soon as you're ready, from the Payees section. Either fill in a payee's information yourself, or send them a link to do it themselves; either way they move through the same guided flow and land on an explicit choice near the end: finish it yourself, or send the rest to them. See Payee Onboarding for the full walkthrough.
Step 4: Invite your team
If you're not running this alone, invite teammates from Settings → Team. Every teammate gets a one-time temporary password shown once in a confirmation dialog — share it securely, since it can't be retrieved again. This is covered in more depth in Signing In.
Role-specific notes
Company managers — the role every invited teammate gets — have full access inside the company: setup, payees, payroll, reports, and team management. There's one role for everyone on your team; Greenroom doesn't currently offer narrower, view-only, or payroll-only permission levels within a company.
Super admins are Greenroom's own staff, not a role your team uses — they review and approve companies platform-wide and maintain the underlying union rules.
Getting help
There's no in-app help widget today. If you run into something this documentation doesn't answer, reach out to your Greenroom contact directly.
Next steps
Once setup is submitted, explore Navigation and Interface to get oriented, or head to Payee Onboarding to start building your roster while you wait on approval.