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
You need the Admin or Payroll role to create a run. If your role is Approver, Run Payroll instead reads Your Payroll and Admin teammates start payrolls, with a link to the open payroll and Payroll history.
Click Run Payroll in the main navigation. If a draft or in-review run is already open, you'll see a card offering to resume it ("[run code] is in progress — resume it", "or start an off-cycle run below"), and the run type starts on Off-cycle. Starting an off-cycle run doesn't require closing that one out first; both can be in flight at once.
Under the Run payroll heading, a line names your production and its pay schedule, for example "[production] · weekly · checks Thursday". The weekday comes from the check dates of your regular runs (Thursday until you've created one; more than one weekday is listed if they differ), and a semimonthly or monthly company sees just the frequency.
Company setup has to be approved first
If your company hasn't been submitted to and approved by Greenroom yet, this page shows a card explaining why payroll is locked (for example, "Requires Greenroom review and approval of your company"). An Admin sees Submit for review and Finish company setup instead of the run creator described below; other roles are told that an admin finishes company setup. Submit for review stays greyed out until every required setup stage is filled. See Before you can run payroll.
After approval, an actual blocking task or tax-setup hold from our tax partner can still keep this gate closed. Run Payroll names the first blocking step from the Before your first payroll checklist (Before your next payroll after a prior payroll), with its action or See what's left. An Admin finishes the named setup step; a task assigned to Greenroom or awaiting our tax partner's review stays open until it is cleared. Unconfirmed saved state-tax answers are warnings on Settings → Company, not a separate payroll lock. Pending Our tax partner's final review does not block creating a draft, sending it for approval, or approving it. Only submission to our tax partner waits for that review.
The gate's named link is visible to all roles. The fallback Review Settings → Company setup button is offered only to an Admin; Payroll and Approver teammates see "An admin on your team finishes company setup." in its place.
Choosing a run type
The create screen opens with four run types as cards, two to a row. 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. |
Under the Check date field, Greenroom shows the approval deadline for the date you pick, from our tax partner's own calendar rather than a rule of thumb: "Approve and submit by [day and time] for the [check date] check date.", for example "Approve and submit by Mon, Oct 26, 3:00 PM EDT for the Thu, Oct 29, 2026 check date." The approval that completes your required approvals submits the payroll, so that is when the last approval has to land. The line follows the date as you change it. A date whose deadline has already passed shows Choose a new check date ("The approval deadline for this check date has passed."), and if the calendar can't be read the line says "We couldn't confirm the approval deadline for this check date. Refresh to try again." rather than guessing. A demo company, or one our tax partner doesn't hold yet, has no deadline line.
The calendar button at the end of the schedule line under the heading (View pay period calendar) opens a Pay period calendar drawer with a visual monthly calendar for the selected check date. It marks the pay date, your regular paydays, and bank holidays, and shows the same deadline line for that date. If the check date lands on a day banks are closed, it flags that funds arrive the next banking day instead, and a bank holiday that moves the cutoff earlier is flagged too ("A bank holiday affects this pay date, so the cutoff is earlier than usual.").
Off-cycle can't land on your regular payday
For a weekly company, an off-cycle run's check date is blocked if it falls on a weekday your regular payroll pays on. For any pay frequency, an exact match with an existing regular run's pay date is blocked too. 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 $250; 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.
Changing the check date after creation
With Admin or Payroll, use Change check date while the run is Draft, In review, or Approved. If our tax partner's approval deadline has passed, Choose a new check date points you to it. Choose New check date, then Save check date; the dialog recalculates taxes. Demo payrolls stay on estimated taxes. Existing approvals still count if the amounts stay the same. See Changing a missed check date.
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 GR-YYYY-NNNN code automatically, continuing the existing sequence.
A company has only one regular, one off-cycle and one prepay run for any given week. If one of the same type already exists for the week you picked, the button opens it instead of creating another, with no message, whatever its status. A run still in Draft or In review opens on its Employees & Loan-outs step; one that's been submitted or paid opens on its detail page in History. An amendment works the same way per run being corrected: while one is still open against that paid run, you're taken to it. See Duplicate Period Prevention.
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, plus any contractor or loan-out on Contract / invoice-based payment, who needs no rate. For Off-cycle and Prepay runs it means the same population, but excluded by default until you opt them in. An Amendment instead copies the payees who were included on the paid run, all excluded.
If more payees become eligible while the draft is still open, the Employees & Loan-outs and Vendors & Contractors steps name them under Ready to add in the panel above the table. Each shows their type and union, with an Add of their own; Add all appears for two or more. The same panel lists anyone still missing something under Not ready yet, with the reason and a link to finish it.
After an add, a notice names who joined, any existing payees whose pay was recalculated, any recorded approvals cleared, and whether taxes need to sync again with our tax partner. On a regular run, added payees are included unless a prepay already covers them. Off-cycle and prepay runs start them excluded. The notice says when someone was added but isn't in the run's totals, and why. See Who isn't on this run for the notice's wording and refusals.
What comes next
A run moves through five steps, or four when Union Reports is left out: a run with nothing union on it, at a company with no union contract, has no union step. 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", or "Step 1 of 4" on a run without Union Reports) and locks the later steps 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.