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:
- You 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).
- Greenroom created your company for you. You get an email with the subject "You've been added to Greenroom — set your password". Set your password from its link and enter the sign-in code Greenroom emails you, and you land where your setup picks up: the Settings tab that holds the first setup answer still missing, or Company setup if Greenroom hasn't approved the company yet. With nothing left to answer, you land on the Dashboard.
- A teammate invited you. Set your password from the invite email's Set your password button, then enter the sign-in code Greenroom emails you. Once setup is finished, you land on the Dashboard. While setup is unfinished, an Admin lands where it resumes. Payroll and Approver teammates see Your admins set up the company before approval; after approval, they land on Settings → Me if setup still needs answers. If you were invited before team invites started with two-factor on (October 19, 2026), it's off on your account, and setting your password signs you straight in.
Your role determines which steps you take. As an Admin, you finish company setup, invite the team, and can manage payees and payroll. With Payroll, you manage payees and run payroll. With Approver, you review and approve payroll someone else prepared. See Team roles for the full permissions.
You don't need to wait for company approval to add your cast and crew if you're an Admin or Payroll teammate. Company setup is an Admin's responsibility.
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, until you add payees, an empty state reading "Let's get [your show] ready for payday" with an Add payees button. Above the banner, a State tax registrations card reads Not sent yet, even once you've saved your answers in setup, because nothing goes to our tax partner, which funds and files your payroll, before Greenroom approves you. The card stays until our tax partner confirms your state tax details after approval. Until then the Dashboard is mostly empty; that's expected, not a bug.
Step 1: Complete company setup
You need the Admin role for this step and to submit the company for review. If you open Company setup as Payroll or Approver, it says Your admins set up the company. After approval, setup lives in Settings tabs available to Admins.
Company setup is a five-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. An unchanged stage usually saves nothing new; a connected company can resend saved Business info, and State tax registrations can retry answers our tax partner still needs. A stage checks off with a green check once its form is saved and complete:
| Stage | What you're confirming |
|---|---|
| Business info | Legal company name, FEIN, full business address, business type, phone, website, expected payee count, expected first payroll date, and pay frequency |
| Production & unions | Your production type (Broadway, Off-Broadway, or Development), then each union you run under with its contract, or confirm the production is non-union |
| Bank & checks | The funding account payroll is drawn from, and the starting number for your physical checks. Enter the account by hand for now: Link with Plaid reads Available after Greenroom approves your setup until then (Bank & checks). If Greenroom turns on check mailing, the stage also holds the Account for printed checks and Signatures on checks, the signers and images printed on the checks we mail. Mailing uses the account for printed checks, or the funding account's stored checking-account numbers until you add one. Linking with Plaid leaves a separate printed-check account unchanged; if mailing used the funding numbers, the section then offers to print from the linked checking account, asking only for its routing number and its whole account number. Payroll can't use a hand-entered funding account until our tax partner has verified it, which typically takes about three banking days. |
| State tax registrations | Your New York registrations. Withholding and MCTMT are filed under your FEIN, so there's nothing to enter or apply for there; the unemployment account number and rate appear only after your first employee exists with our tax partner. You can then enter the SUI account number or mark it Applied for. The stage checks off once your answers are saved, reading Answers saved — sent to our tax partner at approval. Our tax partner confirms them after approval. |
| Payroll signer and history | Your authorized signer, the person legally authorized to sign this company's tax filings, who e-signs the payroll tax authorizations through an emailed link; and who ran this production's payroll before Greenroom. The signer's signing link becomes available after Greenroom approves your setup. |
The page header tracks your progress as "X of Y stages complete." On the last stage the button is Submit for review instead. It's ready once every required stage is done, so a company ready to submit reads "5 of 5 stages complete". Until then the page names what's left (for example "To submit for review, finish Business info below."), the button is greyed out, and clicking it validates instead of submitting: it jumps you to the first incomplete required stage and lists everything still outstanding. (The Payroll signer and history stage only counts as required if our tax partner is connected in your environment; otherwise it's shown but doesn't block submission.) Once your company is approved, pay frequency is changed on Settings → Company and the starting check number on Settings → Banking & payment.
Step 2: Submit for review
Once setup is complete, click Submit for review on the wizard's last stage. Your Dashboard banner changes to "Submitted — Greenroom is reviewing your company", and the status chip in the top bar reads Under Greenroom review. Your answers stay editable while Greenroom reviews. If Greenroom requests changes instead, you'll see their notes right on the Company setup page — address them and resubmit.
If Greenroom created and approved your company, there's nothing to submit. The Dashboard's Finish company setup card lists anything still needed, and Continue setup opens it in Settings (see Finishing setup after approval).
Approval is when Greenroom creates your company with our tax partner and sends it the answers you saved. Every approval banner then disappears. You can run payroll once your funding account is verified and our tax partner has cleared any blocking tasks; until then, Run Payroll and the Dashboard say what's still pending. Unconfirmed saved state-tax answers alone do not block payroll. Run Payroll also tells you if our tax partner has closed your company's account, paused your company, or declined its business verification.
Greenroom automatically sends your company for our tax partner's final review once its setup is ready. This is separate from Greenroom's approval. While only that final review is pending, you can prepare payroll, send it for approval, and record approvals; submitting payroll to our tax partner waits until the review is done. Follow Our tax partner's final review on the Dashboard's first-payroll checklist.
Step 3: Add your payees
As an Admin or Payroll teammate, you don't need to wait for approval to do this — add payees as soon as you're ready, from the Payees section. Add payee opens New payee, which asks for the engagement and the payee's name and contact; nothing is sent to the payee when you create them. Their record then opens at Representation and Pay, for any representative and their pay rates. Then, on their page, assign a start-work packet and choose who completes it: Assign and complete as manager to fill it in yourself, or Assign and send to payee to email it to them. See Adding Payees and Payee Onboarding for the full walkthrough.
Step 4: Invite your team
As an Admin, invite teammates from Settings → Team: Invite member, their name and email, choose Admin, Payroll, or Approver under Role, then Send invite. Greenroom emails each one a link to set their own password, which works once and expires after 7 days. Their row reads Invite pending while the link is live. If the email goes missing or the link expires, an Admin can use Resend invite, or the teammate can use Forgot your password? while their access remains active. See Team, and Signing In for what the invitee sees.
If your company requires approval from another person, which is the default, whoever prepares a payroll can't approve it, and a teammate can't approve anything until they've signed in. Invite your second approver before your first payday.
Send for approval emails eligible teammates who are ready to approve. It excludes the run's preparers, the sender, Greenroom staff, and anyone whose current approval already counts. A run's preparers are the teammates whose saved changes moved what it pays; until anyone has, the person who started it is its preparer (see Submit Payroll). If no teammate who didn't prepare the run is set up to approve it yet when you reach Submit Payroll, that step says so and names anyone who hasn't set a password (see When no teammate is set up to approve yet).
Role-specific notes
Your invite email names your role, and the sidebar shows it under your name. Admin, Payroll, and Approver can each approve a payroll they didn't prepare. Review and tick the attestation before approving; the approval that completes the requirement submits the payroll automatically. If submission is refused, the approval stays recorded. That reviewer, or a Payroll or Admin teammate, can finish with Submit to Greenroom after resolving the refusal. If an interrupted submission offers Resume submit, the same people can use it; an Approver confirms the attestation again. An Admin changes roles from Settings → Team.
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, but the Need help? / Read our docs link at the foot of the sidebar opens this documentation in a new tab. If you run into something it 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.