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.
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. |
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 standard payroll fee floor. 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.