Archiving Payees
How to archive or restore payees on your roster
Archive payees who are no longer active on your production. Greenroom doesn't have a separate "delete" — archiving is the only removal action, and it's a soft-delete: the payee is hidden from your default view, but nothing about their record is ever removed.
Archiving and restoring require Admin or Payroll. Approvers can view active or archived payees, but the Archive and Restore actions are not available to them.
An archived payee is left out of address-refusal Needs attention notices. If you restore them while the refusal is unresolved, the notice returns.
When to Archive a Payee
Common reasons for archiving a payee include:
| Reason | Description |
|---|---|
| End of production | The production has wrapped and the payee's engagement is complete |
| Personnel change | The payee has been replaced or is no longer part of the team |
| Data entry error | A duplicate or incorrect payee record was created |
| Seasonal break | The payee is temporarily inactive between production seasons |
How to Archive a Payee
Archiving is a one-payee-at-a-time action, available from two places:
- From the payee list: click the ··· menu at the right of the row, then choose Archive. With a mouse, the menu button appears when you hover over the row or tab to it; on a touch screen it's always shown.
- From the payee's own page: click the ··· menu next to their name in the header, then choose Archive.
Either way, Greenroom asks you to confirm: "They remain on past payrolls and can be restored later. Archived payees can't join new runs." Click Archive payee, and the payee is archived immediately.
What Happens When a Payee Is Archived
| Item | Effect |
|---|---|
| Payee list | Hidden from the default view; shown again when you turn on the Offboarded chip |
| New payroll runs | The payee can't be added to a new payroll run |
| Payroll runs already open | Unaffected — archiving doesn't remove a payee from a run that's already been built |
| Historical payroll records | Fully preserved; all past payroll data remains accessible |
| Tax documents, signed agreements, payment method | Retained exactly as they were |
| Payee profile | Still viewable within your role's permissions, marked Archived |
| Account link | An account link the payee hasn't used yet stops working, and restoring them doesn't bring it back. While they're archived, Send to payee is refused: "This payee is archived. Restore them before sending an account link." |
| Tax setup link | While they're archived, Send tax setup link is refused: "This payee is archived. Restore them before sending a tax setup link." Nothing is created or emailed. |
There's no bulk-archive action — if a whole production is wrapping, you'll archive each payee individually from the list.
It reaches our tax partner too
Archiving also tells our tax partner that the payee is off the roster, and Greenroom reads back what it actually did rather than trusting the response — a request that succeeds but changes nothing is the failure this is shaped around.
When the payee is connected to our tax partner, the result is recorded in Settings → Activity whether or not the push worked, so a push that was skipped or refused is visible rather than silent. The entry is one of three labels, with no further detail. A payee who was never connected gets no entry, because there was nothing to push:
| Activity entry | What it means |
|---|---|
| Payee status updated with our tax partner | Our tax partner now has the payee inactive (or active again, on restore), and Greenroom read that back. |
| Payee status not sent to our tax partner | A contractor, loan-out, or vendor. Our tax partner's contractor record has no active switch at all, so they stay on its roster after archiving. Greenroom's own block on adding them to a new run is unaffected. |
| Payee status not updated with our tax partner | Our tax partner rejected the change, or accepted it and read back unchanged. |
A failed roster push never blocks the archive. Archiving is you tidying your own list, and an outage at our tax partner shouldn't stop you doing it. The local record is archived first, then the push is attempted.
Deductions held by our tax partner stop, and restart on restore
An employee paid through our tax partner has their post-tax deductions set up there as recurring deductions: union dues, and also other post-tax deductions such as a custom deduction, a garnishment, or a representative's commission (see Post-tax deductions and our tax partner). Those would otherwise keep coming out of any later paycheck, so archiving ends each of them there as of today, or as of the latest pay date of a payroll that already includes them if that is later, so a run that's already built still collects them. Restoring the payee re-opens them: union dues for as long as their engagement with that union runs, and the other deductions for as long as the payee stays active.
This part has to succeed. If our tax partner doesn't confirm the change, nothing is archived (or restored), and Greenroom shows:
The payee's union deductions could not be updated with our tax partner. Try again; contact Greenroom if the problem continues.
Payees with no deductions held by our tax partner, which includes every contractor, loan-out, and vendor, never see this message.
Data Retention and Compliance
Archived payee data is retained indefinitely to meet compliance and audit requirements. This includes:
- All payroll history and payment records
- Tax forms and filings (W-2, 1099, W-4, W-9)
- Onboarding documents and signed agreements
- Payment method records
Archiving does not delete any data from the system. The soft-delete approach ensures records remain available for tax reporting, audits, and historical reference — a payee can be archived and restored as many times as you need.
Restoring Archived Payees
If a payee needs to come back (for example, if they return for a new production), you can restore them:
- Navigate to the Payees list.
- Click the Offboarded filter chip, next to Onboarding, above the search box — this reveals archived payees, which are hidden by default.
- Find the payee, open their ··· row menu, and choose Restore.
Restoring takes effect immediately — there's no confirmation dialog (unlike archiving). The payee moves back into your active list and can be added to payroll runs again.
If another active payee has taken their email since they were archived, the restore is refused, naming who has it: "[name] already uses [email] (payee [code]). Change their email or archive them, then restore this payee."
An account link they hadn't used before they were archived stays cancelled. To invite them again, use Send to payee on their start-work packet card (see Following up with a payee).
Note: Restored payees may need to update their information if it has changed since they were archived. Review their profile after restoration to ensure accuracy.
Next Steps
See Payee Management Introduction for an overview of the payee lifecycle, or Managing Payee Information for details on updating payee records.