Creating a Payroll Run
How to create a new payroll run
Start a new payroll run to process payments for a pay period. This guide covers the create screen and what happens right after.
Starting a new run
Click Run Payroll in the main navigation. If a draft or in-review run is already open, you'll see a banner offering to resume it instead — but starting an off-cycle run doesn't require closing that one out first; both can be in flight at once.
Company setup has to be approved first
If your company hasn't been submitted to and approved by Greenroom yet, this page shows a setup checklist and a "Submit for review" button instead of the run creator described below. See Before you can run payroll.
Choosing a run type
The create screen opens with four run types as side-by-side cards. Pick one before anything else, since it changes which fields appear next.
| Type | What it's for | Starting population |
|---|---|---|
| Regular payroll | The standard weekly run. | Payees, contract premiums, and recurring allowances carry forward from your last regular run automatically. |
| Off-cycle | Paying select workers outside the regular schedule — bonuses, reimbursements, advances, or one-time payments. | Starts with every payee excluded — nothing carries forward. You opt in whoever you're paying. |
| Prepay | Recording wages or payments already made outside Greenroom. Greenroom calculates and remits any required payroll taxes, when applicable. | Starts with every payee excluded — re-include who you're recording. |
| Amendment | Correcting a payroll run that's already been paid. Greenroom recalculates wages, taxes, dues, pension, and other obligations from the changes. | Copies the paid run's payees, all excluded — opt in whoever you're correcting. |
There's no date restriction on any of them — past-dated, back-dated, and future-dated (prepay) runs are all normal; nothing blocks a period because of what today's date is.
Not sure off-cycle or amendment?
A small "Off-cycle vs amendment — which do I use?" link under the run-type cards opens a short explainer: off-cycle issues a brand-new payment outside the schedule (a new transaction, history untouched); amendment corrects an already-processed run (revises the prior run, recalculates wages/taxes/dues/pension). It also covers how an overpayment gets resolved — a regular-payroll offset, an ACH debit with payee authorization, external repayment, or an employer write-off.
Pay period and check date
For Regular, Off-cycle, and Prepay runs:
| Field | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Period start | Pick any date — Greenroom snaps it to the Monday of that week. Weeks always run Monday–Sunday. |
| Period end | Read-only; set automatically to the Sunday of that same week. |
| Check date | Defaults to the Thursday after period end. Editable. |
A calendar icon next to "Pay period" opens a drawer with a visual monthly calendar for the selected check date — it marks the pay date, your regular paydays, and bank holidays, and shows Check's actual submission deadline for that specific date (or an honest "couldn't confirm" note if that read fails, rather than guessing). If the check date lands on a day banks are closed, it flags that funds arrive the next banking day instead. The help text under the Check date field is similarly live: it names the approval cutoff for next-day pay, or the processing window your company is currently on, sourced from Check rather than a fixed rule of thumb.
Off-cycle can't land on your regular payday
An off-cycle run's check date is blocked if it falls on the same weekday your regular payroll pays on (or matches an existing regular run's exact pay date) — the button greys out with a tooltip explaining why. This exists so off-cycle runs can't be used to route regular pay around the weekly minimum that applies to regular payroll (Broadway's $750; the other tiers have no minimum). If you need to pay someone on the regular payday, use a regular run.
For Amendment, the period fields are replaced with:
| Field | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Run to amend | A dropdown of your company's paid runs — only a paid run can be amended. The amendment's pay period always copies from the run you pick. |
| Purpose | Required free text explaining the correction (up to 280 characters). It shows on the run and in the audit trail. |
If you have no paid runs yet, Amendment shows a note instead of the form — there's nothing to amend yet.
Creating the run
The button label changes with the run type — Create draft & add payees, Create off-cycle draft, Create prepay draft, or Create amendment draft — and creates the run in Draft status, landing you on the first step, Employees & Loan-outs. There's no separate "payroll name" field to fill in; Greenroom assigns the run a code automatically.
Eligible payees are pulled onto the run automatically at this moment — see How a run gets built. For Regular runs that means anyone with an active rate or carried-forward pay; for Off-cycle, Prepay, and Amendment runs it means the same population, but excluded by default until you opt them in.
What comes next
A run moves through five steps. See Payroll Processing Introduction for the full breakdown of what each one gates on.
| Step | Name |
|---|---|
| 1 | Employees & Loan-outs |
| 2 | Vendors & Contractors |
| 3 | Payroll Summary |
| 4 | Union Reports |
| 5 | Submit Payroll |
The step bar at the top of the run shows your position (for example, "Step 1 of 5") and locks steps 3–5 until their prerequisites are met. Steps 1 and 2 are always reachable, so you can bounce between Employees & Loan-outs and Vendors & Contractors freely while building the run.
Best Practices
- Pick the run type first — it determines which fields you'll see and how payees start (included vs. excluded)
- For a regular run, confirm the check date lands on your usual payday
- For an amendment, write a purpose specific enough that anyone reading the audit trail later understands what was corrected
- If an off-cycle check date is greyed out, that's the payday guardrail — move the date or use a regular run instead
Next Steps
After creating the payroll, continue with Adding Employees to work through the Employees & Loan-outs step, or see Vendors & Contractors for vendor and contractor payments.