Payroll Adjustments Explained

Payroll adjustments are the recurring allowances, deductions, taxable earnings, and pay premiums that sit on a payee's own record and feed into every run they're part of. They live on the payee's page, organized into three cards: Pay (rates and premiums), Allowances & taxable earnings, and Deductions. For a union payee, a read-only Automatic union deductions card sits between the last two ("Computed on every payroll under the union agreement."), showing what the agreement deducts on its own, with the employer contributions it pays behind an Employer contributions toggle.

The Kinds

You need the Admin or Payroll role to add or edit adjustments on a payee or payroll. Approver teammates can read payee records and review the resulting payroll amounts.

Every adjustment row — regardless of kind — shares the same basic shape: a name, a value (a flat dollar amount or a percentage of a basis), a frequency, an effective date range, and an optional GL code for your chart of accounts.

Allowances

Pick from a standard list or choose "Other" to type a custom name:

Allowances are paid on top of wages, never taxed, and never counted toward the union dues basis. The card adds a caution of its own: whether a particular allowance is taxable depends on how it's structured, so confirm the treatment with your accountant, and if one is taxable, add it under Taxable earnings instead.

Reimbursements

Reimbursements are entered on each payroll run, with their receipts, not on the payee: the run's Add allowance, reimbursement or taxable payment window has a Reimbursement tile (see Adding Employees). A reimbursement saved on a payee before that change still pays on every run until it ends or you remove it; the payee's card lists it read-only under Saved reimbursements. Reimbursements are non-taxable and paid on top of wages, exactly like allowances.

Taxable Earnings

The standard name list here is deliberately short and separate from the Allowances list, so a taxable and a non-taxable per diem can never be confused by name alone:

Adding an Allowance or Taxable Earning

On the payee's page, go to the Allowances & taxable earnings card, click Add allowance or Add taxable earning in the relevant sub-section, pick a name (or "Other" to type your own), set a flat dollar amount or a percentage, choose a frequency, and set an effective date range.

A new allowance, taxable earning, or premium starts on the payee's engagement start date rather than today. Picking an earlier date asks you to confirm it first ("Use a date before the payee starts?"); a row still waiting for that shows Confirm earlier date. Deductions start today, as before.

Deductions

The picker offers these standard deduction names, plus Other (type a name) for anything custom:

Retirement deferral is the employee's own contribution to their union's retirement fund, for example Retirement deferral (Equity-League 401(k) Plan) for an AEA employee. The fund and its tax type come from the union, so the row is always pre-tax ("Retirement deferrals are taken before income tax."), has no benefit-type picker, and reads "Employee contribution to fund". A loan-out, contractor, or vendor isn't offered it.

Garnishment and levy lines

A Wage Garnishment or Tax Levy / Tax Garnishment line takes a dollar amount, not a percentage, and warns while it's picked: "Greenroom withholds this amount. It doesn't check the legal limit, and the production must pay the court or agency itself." On a payee's Deductions card the same warning adds what a small paycheck does; see Deductions.

Deductions have three fields allowances don't:

• Pre-tax — a checkbox marking whether the deduction comes out before income tax is calculated. New rows start post-tax. Picking Retirement deferral makes the row pre-tax; picking any other standard name sets it to post-tax (unless you've already chosen a benefit type on that row); a name you type yourself leaves the box as you set it.
• Benefit type — appears once Pre-tax is ticked (except on a Retirement deferral row, where the fund decides it): 401(k), Roth 401(k), 403(b), Roth 403(b), 457, SIMPLE IRA, HSA, FSA — medical, or FSA — dependent care. This is what tells our tax partner which kind of benefit it is, which decides the contribution limit and the W-2 box. See Role & Pay.
• Lump-sum target — an optional total to collect. Once the deduction has withheld that much across however many runs it takes, it stops automatically — useful for paying off an advance or a fixed garnishment amount.

A post-tax deduction with a lump-sum target, such as initiation dues, never takes more than the check can still cover. It comes out last, after taxes, every other deduction, any representative's commission and any child-trust amount, and takes whatever is left, which can be $0.00. The rest stays owed: the target counts only what was withheld, so the deduction runs on at its usual amount until the target is reached. With two on one check, the one added first comes out first. Payroll Summary lists a reduced one under Installments reduced (Reviewing Payroll); a last payment that is smaller only because it finishes the target isn't listed.

A pre-tax deduction, even one with a target, and a deduction with no target aren't reduced this way. If one takes a payee's net pay below zero, the payroll can't be sent for approval, approved or submitted until it's corrected.

For an employee paid through our tax partner, a post-tax deduction you add here (a garnishment, an advance repayment, equipment) is sent there at the exact amount and withheld from their pay. Our tax partner doesn't pay it on to whoever it's owed to; that's still the production's job. See Post-tax deductions and our tax partner.

Premiums (Pay Section)

Premiums are contract add-ons on top of base pay — often role-driven (Dance Captain, Media Fee) or a percentage of scale. They're entered under the Pay section, alongside the payee's rates.

For unions with configured contractual premiums (Actors' Equity is the main example), Add premium picks the premium from that union's own list. Greenroom saves which premium it is, not a dollar figure, so every run prices it from the rates in force for that run's week, and the row shows today's figure (for example $69.97/week today). Type a different amount and it's saved as typed, labelled Negotiated amount. See Premiums from the union's list. When a union payee's agreement lists no standard premiums for their role, the block offers Add custom premium instead ("Union agreement lists no standard premiums for this role. Add a custom premium only when negotiated."), and you type the name and amount. Non-union payees don't get a Premiums block. Unlike allowances, premiums are wages — they're taxed and counted in the dues and benefits basis, same as base pay.

Frequency

Every adjustment (allowance, reimbursement, taxable earning, deduction, or premium) has one of three frequencies:

One-Time Additions on a Specific Run

Outside of a payee's standing record, you can also add a one-time line directly to their entry within a specific payroll run — useful for something that only applies this week, like a one-off allowance, reimbursement, or taxable per diem, an activity-based union premium (an understudy performance, a rehearsal overtime session), or a manual payment line. These run-only additions don't change the payee's standing record and don't carry forward to the next run. The run-entry version of the allowance/reimbursement/taxable-per-diem picker offers the same three-way choice described above — see Adding Employees.

If a contract premium added this way should actually be a standing part of the payee's pay going forward, there's an option to save it to the payee's profile instead — that turns it into the same recurring premium described above rather than a one-time line.

Salary Proration

For a weekly-rate union employee or loan-out, a full week is either 8 performances or 6 rehearsal days, and you enter one or the other with Adjust salary on the run (see Adjusting a week's salary). Fewer prorates the base pay and contract premiums down together, by eighths or sixths; more adds the overage on top of the full package. Dues, fees, and percentage fringes follow the adjusted salary, while flat weekly fringes such as health and welfare bill a full week either way. This is a weekly-salary mechanic, not a general calendar-based "days worked this period" calculation, and Development productions don't use it.

Validation Rules

Amendment Runs vs. Payroll Adjustments

Best Practices

• Use the standard name list where it fits — it keeps reporting consistent across payees
• Set an effective end date on anything temporary so it doesn't keep applying after it should stop
• Use a lump-sum target on deductions that should stop once a fixed amount is collected, rather than remembering to remove them manually
• Double-check pre-tax vs. post-tax on deductions — it changes the payee's taxable wages
• Use GL codes consistently if your company relies on them for reporting

Next Steps

Continue with Reviewing Payroll to verify all calculations, or see Payroll Calculations to understand how amounts are computed.