Welcome to Greenroom
What Greenroom is, who it's for, and how the product is organized
Greenroom is Drama Free Payroll — payroll built specifically for Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, with union contracts built in rather than bolted on. Instead of running your show's payroll through a generic payroll product and hand-tracking union rates on the side, Greenroom already knows the rules for AEA, ATPAM, IATSE (including Local 798, Hair & Makeup, and Local 764, Wardrobe), Local 802 (musicians), SDC, and USA 829 — so a payee's union and role determine their pay automatically, and a scheduled contract rate increase applies itself on the right date instead of needing a manual update.
Who it's for
Greenroom is built for Broadway and Off-Broadway theatrical productions — companies running weekly payroll across a mix of union and non-union cast, crew, and production staff. At launch that's scoped to single-state (New York) productions; touring and multi-state payroll are planned but not available yet. See Known Gaps for what's confirmed built versus still on the roadmap.
The people you'll pay
Every payee in Greenroom is one of four types:
| Type | Who this covers |
|---|---|
| Employee | W-2 cast, crew, and staff |
| Loan-out | A performer or creative paid through their own loan-out corporation |
| Contractor | 1099 individuals — many union designers, directors, and choreographers fall here |
| Vendor | Companies and individuals you pay for goods or services, not performance |
What you can do in Greenroom
Your team role determines which actions you can take. Admin and Payroll manage payees, prepare payroll, and print or mail checks. Approver reviews and approves payroll; only Admin manages company setup, the team, and QuickBooks packages.
Run payroll. A guided flow — Employees & Loan-outs, Vendors & Contractors, Payroll Summary, Union Reports (when the company has union contracts or the run includes union work), then Submit Payroll — that you can leave and come back to. There's no single fixed cutoff time: your actual submission deadline for a given pay date comes from our tax partner, which funds and files your payroll, and depends on your company's processing timeline — it can be several business days before payday, not just hours. Run Payroll shows the real deadline for the pay date you pick. You can add payees before Greenroom's review finishes, but your company must be approved before you can run payroll (see below).
Let union rules do the math. Union Studio holds every agreement's rates, premiums, and fund contributions as effective-dated data, not hardcoded logic, so rate changes land automatically on the date they're supposed to.
Onboard payees without chasing paperwork. Add a payee yourself, or send them a link to fill in their own information: a W-4 and their state withholding forms for employees, a W-9 for everyone paid on a 1099, direct deposit, and the union forms their role requires. For employees, someone on your team also records an employer I-9 attestation in Greenroom; the Form I-9 itself stays with you. See Payee Onboarding for exactly how that works today.
Pull reports from live data. A payroll register, union remittance report, QuickBooks package (QBD), a consolidated register across a date range, and a 1099 filing preview — every report is generated from the current database, not a static export that can drift out of date.
Track what a contract owes outside a payroll run. An SDC director's Health and Pension are due at contract signing, often before any payroll exists. Union Obligations is where those are opened, tracked, and recorded as paid.
Print or mail the paper checks. Payees paid by paper check get real checks: once you've submitted a payroll and our tax partner has approved it, the run's Paper checks card has a Print checks button that prepares the check PDFs for you to print, numbered in sequence from your starting check number. Where Greenroom has turned mailing on for your production, Mail checks beside it has the checks printed and mailed for you instead, in one packet or each to its payee. A payroll's checks go out one way or the other, not both. See Physical Checks.
Run more than one production from one login. If you manage multiple companies, a switcher in the top bar moves you between them without signing out.
Getting your company approved
Signing up makes you an Admin, so you can set up your company and start adding payees right away. Once your company's setup is complete and you submit it, Greenroom reviews and approves it. Approval is also when Greenroom creates your company with our tax partner, and you can run payroll once your funding account is verified and our tax partner has cleared any blocking tasks. Unconfirmed saved state-tax answers alone do not block payroll.
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. See the Our tax partner's final review line in the first-payroll checklist for its status.
If Greenroom set up your company for you, it's normally approved already; the Dashboard's Finish company setup card then lists anything setup still needs from you. First Steps walks through this in order.
Who works in Greenroom
Your company's team has three roles:
| Role | What they can do |
|---|---|
| Admin | Company setup, banking, team access, accounting, payees, and payroll. |
| Payroll | Manage payees, prepare and submit payroll, and print or mail checks. No company setup, banking, team management, or QuickBooks package actions. |
| Approver | Read payee status and payroll, and approve a payroll someone else prepared. Final approval submits automatically; they can retry or resume submission of their own current approval. Can't edit payees or payroll, or send checks. |
All three can approve a payroll they didn't prepare and read ordinary reports.
The reviewer ticks the attestation before approving. If submission is refused, their approval stays recorded; they or a Payroll or Admin teammate can finish submitting after the refusal is resolved.
Only Admin can generate, download, mark posted, or void QuickBooks packages; every role can read the package page and version history. Your role belongs to each company, so it can differ between productions. Team explains how an Admin chooses or changes it.
Super admin means Greenroom's own staff, who review companies and maintain union rules. It isn't a role you assign to a teammate.
Payees hold a separate role with their own portal for pay stubs (pay statements, for loan-outs, contractors and vendors), tax documents, and profile details. They sign in on the same page you do but land in that portal, which isn't covered by this documentation. See Signing In for where the manager/super-admin product and the payee portal split.
Before you start
- An account — you created your company yourself at sign-up, Greenroom set it up and emailed you a link to set your password, or an Admin at your company invited you. All three are covered in Signing In.
- Your production's basic details on hand: the legal company name to sign up, then the FEIN, business address, phone number and website when you're ready. Sign-up doesn't need those, but company setup does before you can submit it for review.
- Details for the bank account payroll will be funded from, when you're ready to add them — you don't need these on day one. You'll need them before you submit setup for review, and our tax partner then has to verify a hand-entered account before payroll can use it, which typically takes about three banking days.
Next steps
Continue with Signing In to access your account, then First Steps to set up your company and add your first payees.