Payroll Processing Introduction

Running payroll in Greenroom means creating a run for a pay period, letting Greenroom pull in everyone who's ready to be paid, reviewing what it calculated, and submitting it. This page is the map — the steps, the payee types, and the states a run moves through. For click-by-click walkthroughs, see Creating a Payroll Run and Adding Employees.

Before you can run payroll

You need the Admin or Payroll role to create, edit, or send a payroll for approval. Admin, Payroll, and Approver teammates can approve a payroll they did not prepare; the final required approval submits it automatically. If that submit is refused, the recorded reviewer or an Admin or Payroll teammate can finish it with Submit to Greenroom after resolving the reason. Without an approval requirement, Admin and Payroll submit directly. If you have the Approver role, you read Payroll Summary and approve from Submit Payroll; the entry and Union Reports steps are unavailable. Your role appears under your name in the sidebar. See Payroll Run Status.

Running payroll is gated on your company's setup being submitted to and approved by Greenroom. This happens once — it's not a per-run checklist. Company Setup has five stages:

An Admin finishes company setup and submits it for Greenroom's review. Until your company is approved, the Run Payroll page explains what's holding payroll back. For an Admin, its Submit for review button stays greyed out ("Finish every required stage to submit for review") until every required stage has its answers in, and Finish company setup takes you back to the checklist.

Approval is the moment your company is created with our tax partner, so a few things still have to come back from it afterwards. Actual blocking tasks or a tax-setup hold from our tax partner keep payroll closed. Run Payroll names the first blocking step from Before your first payroll (or Before your next payroll after a prior payroll), with its action or See what's left. An Admin finishes the named setup step; Greenroom handles tasks assigned to it, and tasks awaiting our tax partner's review stay open until it clears them. An unconfirmed saved state-tax answer is a warning on Settings → Company, not a separate payroll lock. Our tax partner's final review is a separate checklist item: Greenroom sends the company once setup is ready. While that review is pending, you can prepare, send for approval, and approve; only submission to our tax partner waits.

The gate's named link is visible to all roles. Its fallback Review Settings → Company setup button is shown only to an Admin; Payroll and Approver teammates see "An admin on your team finishes company setup." instead. When the setup gates are clear, Admin and Payroll teammates see the pay-period picker and can create runs. Separately, a submit is refused for as long as your funding account can't be used yet (see Processing Payroll).

How a run gets built

Open a new draft and Greenroom fills it in — there's no dialog for hand-picking who's on this week's payroll. Every fully onboarded payee with an active rate or carried recurring pay gets a line automatically. A contractor or loan-out on Contract / invoice-based payment joins without a rate. A union payee on a term deal whose benefits dates cover the week joins too, marked Benefits only, even with no pay that week (see Benefits-only weeks).

If someone you expect is missing, it's almost always one of:

• Still onboarding. The panel above the Employees & Loan-outs or Vendors & Contractors table lists who isn't on the run and why. Not ready yet names the payees with something left to finish, gives the specific gap (for example "Add a pay rate" or "Collect required documents"), and links to it. If the draft can take them while it's still open (Draft or In review), they appear under Ready to add, each named with their type and union and an Add button. Add all appears for two or more ready payees. Once the run has been submitted, they join the next one.
• Removed from this run. Someone excluded them. Their pay data isn't deleted — see Removing a payee from the run.
• A minor whose child trust isn't ready. The panel names the reason Needs a signed child trust with its account set up, with Open Finish setup linking to the payee's setup page. A payee under 18 isn't pulled onto a run until their child trust authorization is signed with its trust account set up, and re-including one is refused with that instruction ("…Open the payee's Finish setup to complete it, or assign a start-work packet on the payee page if they have none."). See Child trust accounts.
• A brand-new vendor with no pay rate and no payment history yet. A vendor with no rate on file and no prior run to carry from isn't pulled in automatically, and isn't offered under Ready to add. A vendor never needs a pay rate, so the panel doesn't list them under No active pay rate either. That includes a vendor paid once with Add a vendor payment, since that payment never carries forward to the next run. (Add a vendor payment creates a new vendor together with their payment; it doesn't add one you already have.) To pay one on this run, add a rate on their payee page; the panel on Vendors & Contractors says so.
• A non-union contractor or loan-out paid a stipend, flat fee or invoice, before you've set them up for it. A contractor or loan-out paid a negotiated amount rather than a standing rate has a real fix: on their payee profile, choose Contract / invoice-based payment in the Pay card ("For stipends, flat fees and other negotiated pay. Enter the amount on each run."). It needs no tax ID on file (the payee's W-9 is still needed before they're paid), but it can't be combined with a union assignment: union payees are always paid on their agreement's rates. Once set, the payee needs no pay rate to be ready for payroll, and Greenroom puts them on every new run with no rate. On the run, their Contract pay box reads "This run's stipend, fee or invoice amount": use its Add to enter the amount, with no upload needed. This choice is contractor/loan-out only — Greenroom never shows it for vendors, since vendors already bill by invoice by type.

After an add, a notice names who joined and says whether anyone already on the run was recalculated, recorded approvals were cleared, or taxes need to sync again with our tax partner. If someone was added but remains excluded — on an off-cycle or prepay run, or because a prepay already paid them — the notice names them and explains why they aren't in the totals. See Who isn't on this run.

The steps of a payroll run

✓Employees & Loan-outs

2Vendors & Contractors

3Payroll Summary

4Union Reports

5Submit Payroll

Steps 1 and 2 are always open. Payroll Summary unlocks once every included payee is approved, or the run is past Draft; Union Reports once the run is past Draft; Submit Payroll then too, unless a union report is still missing hours worked. Marking reports reviewed doesn’t affect the step bar. A run with nothing union on it, at a company with no union contract, has no Union Reports step: four steps.

A run leaves out Union Reports when your company has no union contract (none added on Company setup's Production & unions stage, or on Settings → Unions after approval) and nothing on the run is union: no payee on it is assigned to a union, and no line on it pays into one. A payee removed from the run doesn't count. That run has four steps, so Payroll Summary is "Step 3 of 4", its Continue: Submit Payroll leads to Submit Payroll, and a link to the union step opens Submit Payroll instead. Once your company adds a union contract, every run shows Union Reports from then on, open drafts included.

With Admin or Payroll, steps 1 and 2 are always open, and you can move between them freely. The later steps unlock in the step bar as you go: Payroll Summary once every included payee is approved (or the run has moved past Draft), Union Reports once the run is past Draft, and Submit Payroll once the run is past Draft too, unless a union report is still missing hours worked. Marking reports reviewed doesn't affect the step bar. The Continue: Submit Payroll button at the foot of Union Reports goes to the submit screen either way. See Creating a Payroll Run for what happens at each step.

Payee types

Every payee on a run is one of four types. There's no separate "Agent" or "Manager" payee type — a representative is configured on a payee's own profile. For a commission-only representative, the run withholds the commission from the payee; the production pays it to the representative. A full-payment representative's commission is recorded for reference and is not withheld. See Representatives & Child Trust Payments.

Run types

You pick the run type when you create the run — see Creating a Payroll Run.

Payroll run states

There's no "Cancelled" state and no "Pending" state. A payroll our tax partner voids after submission keeps its state, but it reads Voided in History, on its own page and on the Dashboard (see Payroll Run Status). A draft you no longer need can be deleted from its page with Delete draft; nothing past Draft can be (see Payroll Run Status). Once a run is submitted, the only way to correct it is an Amendment against the paid run.

Accessing payroll

The main navigation's Pay group has four items. Run Payroll opens the pay-period picker for Admin and Payroll teammates (and, while a draft or in-review run is open, a card to resume it). For an Approver, it reads Your Payroll and Admin teammates start payrolls and links to the open run and payroll history. History lists every past run with its status, payee count, and totals. Obligations holds what a union is owed by contract rather than by a week's work (see Union Obligations). Invoices lists Greenroom's platform-fee invoices to your company; the first one appears after a payroll run is paid.

Next Steps

Continue with Creating a Payroll Run to start a new payroll, or see Adding Employees to learn about the Employees & Loan-outs step.