Understanding Payroll Calculations
How Greenroom calculates base pay, proration, net pay, and tax withholding
This page explains how a payee's pay actually gets calculated — what builds gross pay, how a partial week prorates, and how tax withholding works before and after it's synced with Check, our payroll provider.
Base pay
Every pay rate is one of exactly two types:
| Rate type | Formula |
|---|---|
| Hourly | Hourly rate × hours worked |
| Weekly | A package rate for a full, 8-performance Broadway week |
There's no separate "salary" or "per performance" rate type — a weekly rate is the package, and how many of the week's 8 performances a payee actually worked determines how much of it they're paid.
Prorating a partial week
If a payee works fewer or more than 8 performances in the week, their entire weekly package — base pay plus any covered contract premiums — prorates together, by performances, not by calendar days:
- Fewer than 8: package × (performances worked ÷ 8)
- Exactly 8: the full package
- More than 8: package + (performances worked − 8) × (package ÷ 8) — an overage add-on for the extra performances
This is performance-based proration, not day-based. A payee who joins or leaves mid-week is prorated by how many of that week's performances they actually worked, not by counting calendar days in and out of the period.
What builds gross pay
Gross pay for an entry is base pay, plus:
- Increments — contract premiums, session fees, rate bumps, and one-off activity pay, whether they recur every week or are entered just for this one
- Taxable earnings — a taxable per diem or other above-rate/nonaccountable allowance (see the callout below)
- Vacation add-on — some union agreements build a running vacation payout directly into each check as a percentage of base pay (IATSE at 5% and ATPAM at 8.5%, for example), instead of accruing it separately
- Any one-off earning line added directly to the payroll table for the week
Allowances and reimbursements live with net pay, not gross — taxable earnings are the exception
Allowances (per diem, housing, and similar) and reimbursements are non-taxable, and both are added to what a payee takes home after gross, not folded into it. See Payroll Totals for where that shows up.
A taxable earning (most commonly a "taxable per diem") looks similar but works the opposite way: IRS Pub. 5137 treats a nonaccountable or above-federal-rate per diem as W-2 wages, not a tax-free reimbursement, so Greenroom folds it into gross and taxes it — income-tax withholding + FICA for employees, or the 1099-NEC bucket for non-employees. It is not in the union dues/fringe basis by default. See Payroll Adjustments for where it's entered.
From gross to net
Net pay follows this sequence:
Gross wages (base + increments + taxable earnings + vacation add-on)
+ Reimbursements & allowances
− Pre-tax deductions
− Employee taxes
− Post-tax deductions (including any withheld representative fee)
= Net payReimbursements and allowances are typically non-taxable and are added back after deductions and taxes, not folded into gross.
A pre-tax deduction doesn't reduce every tax
It reduces the basis for income tax — federal, state, and local. It does not reduce FICA, Medicare, unemployment, or SUI, which all withhold on the full gross. That's the law rather than a Greenroom choice, and it's the single most common surprise on a payee with a 401(k) line: their income-tax withholding drops and their Social Security and Medicare don't.
Some plans also cap the basis a percentage deferral is calculated from, per week. The Equity-League 401(k) is the one in service: a payee earning more than $7,500 in a week has their deferral computed off $7,500, not off the whole figure. Note this caps the basis, not the resulting amount — 10% of a $10,000 week is $750, not $1,000 trimmed to a limit.
A deferral larger than the week's gross can't produce a negative basis — it floors at zero rather than reading as a credit.
Employer costs never come out of a payee's check
Employer-paid taxes (the employer share of FICA and Medicare, FUTA, and so on) and employer union fringe contributions are real costs to the production, but they are never subtracted from what a payee is paid — they're tracked and shown separately. See Payroll Totals for where they show up in what you owe.
If a minor performer's contract carries a statutory child-trust requirement, part of their already-calculated net pay is allocated to a trust account rather than paid directly to them — this changes where the money goes, not the net amount itself.
For how to see any single payee's actual line items, see Payroll Breakdown and Details.
Tax withholding: estimate vs. synced
Until a run is synced with Check, every tax figure you see is Greenroom's own estimate — annualized effective-rate tables for federal income tax plus statutory FICA/Medicare/FUTA calculations, and, for payees working in New York, estimated NY state income tax, NY PFL, NY SDI, NY SUTA, and NY MCTMT (and NYC local income tax for NYC residents). A badge reading "Taxes: estimates" appears whenever a run hasn't been synced.
Moving from Payroll Summary to Union Reports automatically syncs real numbers from Check when it's connected. You can also sync manually at any point with Sync real taxes. Once synced, the badge reads "Taxes: synced," and if you edit the payroll afterward, it flips to "Taxes out of date — entries changed since sync" (button: Resync taxes) until you resync.
If a sync attempt itself fails — Check rejects it — the badge turns red and reads "Taxes: sync failed — the payroll provider rejected the last attempt," with a Retry sync button. This is distinct from the neutral pre-sync "estimates" state: it means a sync was tried against a connected provider and didn't go through, not that one hasn't happened yet.
Single-state scope
Tax estimation and sync currently cover New York (including NYC local tax). A payee working outside New York only gets the federal + FICA/Medicare/FUTA portion estimated locally — no state withholding estimate is calculated for them yet. See Known Gaps for current status.
Union calculations
Union pay rates, increments, and fringe contributions come from each union's rate book, resolved for the payee's job title and the run's pay period. Fringe contributions (health, pension, and similar funds) that a union's agreement defines as automatic are calculated and added to the run without manual entry; anything that depends on week-specific context (which sessions were worked, which role was covered, and so on) is added as a line for that week instead. These amounts flow through to the Union Reports step for that union's compliance reporting.
Automatic warnings
Greenroom flags a handful of situations automatically, shown at the top of Payroll Summary. All of them are informational — none of them block you from continuing:
| Warning | What triggers it |
|---|---|
| Below union minimum | A payee's covered pay for the period is under their union agreement's minimum for their role (prorated the same way as a partial week, if applicable) |
| Missing fringe | A union payee's agreement defines automatic fringe contributions, but none were calculated — usually a sign the union assignment needs a second look |
| Mid-period rate change | A union's rates step up partway through this pay period; the period is governed by its end date, so the new rate applies to the whole week |
| Unverified rate book | The rate set governing this period is not yet verified against the executed agreement — either the union's rate book was never delivered, or it was loaded and is still awaiting confirmation — so deductions and fringes for that union's payees may be missing, incomplete, or provisional. Submitting requires explicitly attesting you checked those amounts manually. Which versions are verified is on Union Studio Versions and Publishing |
These warnings are separate from the checks that can block submission — incomplete Check tax withholding, a missing/invalid W-9, an unauthorized representative payment direction, a foreign-payee gate, and a few others. See Processing Payroll for the current, complete list rather than a count here that can drift out of sync with it.
Next steps
See Payroll Breakdown and Details for where these numbers show up per payee, Payroll Totals for how they roll up into the run's headline figures, or Platform Fees & Billing for how Greenroom's own fee is calculated.