Physical Checks

Not everybody takes direct deposit. A payee whose payment method is paper check is paid by a printed check, drawn on your production's own bank account. Once our tax partner has approved the payroll, the run's Paper checks card offers Admin and Payroll teammates two ways to get those checks out:

• Print checks: you print them yourself, on your own check stock, from the original check PDFs that our tax partner produces.
• Mail checks: we print them and mail them for you, in one packet to an address you choose or each to its payee.

Either way Greenroom numbers the checks, compares every one with our tax partner's own record before it can go out, and keeps a register of what was prepared or mailed.

If your role is Approver, you can read the registers, amounts and delivery status, but cannot print, mail, cancel, or open check images and saved PDFs. When the checks are ready, the card says Your Payroll and Admin teammates print or mail these checks. An Admin manages the company banking and signer details needed for mailing.

Before you submit: the manual payment certification

Paying someone by paper check adds a Manual payment certification to their start-work packet: the payee certifies that the employer agreed to pay them directly. Until it's signed, Payroll Summary (and, for a vendor or contractor, Vendors & Contractors) shows "Manual payment certification needed before you send this payroll", naming each payee, and the payroll can't be sent for approval or submitted. Having the payee sign it, or finishing their bank link so they're paid by direct deposit instead, clears it.

What happens at submit

1. Submitting numbers the run's union fund checks and any child-trust remittance checks (below), continuing your company's check sequence. Direct deposits get their payment numbers at the same time, from a sequence of their own (see Payment numbers).
2. Personal paper checks aren't numbered at submit, and nothing is printed or mailed then. They get their numbers when you choose Print checks or Mail checks, after our tax partner has approved the payroll, so a number is only spent on a payment that matches its record.

A demo company's payroll never reaches that point: our tax partner never approves a demo payroll, so its personal checks are never numbered, printed or mailed. The submit screen says so in its attestation.

The Paper checks card

The Paper checks card, headed with the number of personal checks on the run, appears on the run's Payroll Summary, on the Submit step (before you submit, and below the confirmation after), on the run's detail page in History, and at the top of the run's check register. It appears only when the run has something to do with paper: on a payroll where everyone is paid by direct deposit there's no card. It shows:

• Net pay by paper check, with "Net pay for paper checks is not part of the debit." under the figure: that money isn't part of our tax partner's debit for the payroll. When a minor paid by paper check has a trust allocation, Separate trust remittances follows on a line of its own. On Payroll Summary and the run's detail page this figure sits on the funding card instead, so the card doesn't repeat it.
• Registered net ready for printing, and when they apply, Payments waiting for correction, Awaiting preparation, and Trust remittance register.
• Until the payroll is approved, "After submission, review and correct any listed payments before printing checks."
• Check register & CSV, a link to the run's register (below), and once our tax partner has approved the payroll, the Print checks button, with Mail checks beside it where mailing is available. Once a payroll's checks have gone out one way, the other button is no longer offered.
• After a mailing, Mailed by Greenroom: each mailed check's payee, check number, net amount and status, and a link, Follow them in the physical-check register. If some of the payroll's checks are still to be mailed (one was canceled, for example), the mail button reads Mail the remaining check, or Mail the remaining N checks.

On a demo company's payroll the card is shorter, wherever it appears: Estimated net pay by paper check, Estimated trust remittances when a minor paid by paper check has a trust allocation, and "Demo estimate. No paper checks or trust payments are sent." It has no register link and no Print checks or Mail checks.

If the run's check register doesn't add up, for example a check number that appears twice or a paper-check payment with our tax partner that has no matching entry on the run, the card doesn't offer Print checks or Mail checks at all. It lists each difference under "Resolve register differences before printing." Contact Greenroom if you can't see how to clear one.

When mailing isn't available for your production, the card says why in place of the button, for example:

Mailed checks use Account for printed checks when one is saved. Otherwise they use the funding account only when its account and routing numbers are stored in Greenroom and it is a checking account. You can keep a funding account linked through Plaid and add a separate account for printed checks; saving that account does not replace the account our tax partner debits for payroll. To mail from a linked checking funding account itself, answer Yes, print from this account under Account for printed checks and type its routing number and whole account number once. Print checks still uses our tax partner's PDFs and the account on those PDFs.

A demo company sees neither button: our tax partner never approves a demo payroll, so its checks are never printed or mailed.

Print checks

Print checks prepares the checks in one step:

1. It compares every paper-check payment with our tax partner's own record of the payroll: the payee, the net amount, and the check date.
2. Each payment that matches gets the next number in your company's sequence.
3. It saves our tax partner's original check PDFs for those payments.

When it's done you'll see "PDFs saved. Open them to print locally. Reprinting uses the same check numbers." and an Open saved check PDFs link. Preparing again never issues a new number for a check that already has one.

When every paper-check payment on the run is an exception, the button reads Recheck payments instead: it runs the comparison again.

If our tax partner already holds a check number for one of these payments that Greenroom didn't put there, nothing is printed: "The processed payroll already has check number … for [payee], so it may have been printed outside Greenroom. Nothing was printed; contact Greenroom before printing this payroll's checks." Mail checks refuses the same way.

Mail checks

Mail checks opens the Mail checks dialog: "We print these checks and mail them for you." It first compares the payments with our tax partner's record and numbers them, exactly as Print checks does; payments that don't match are listed as exceptions and aren't mailed. Closing the dialog without sending leaves Print checks available. Then you choose:

Where they go

• One packet to an address: "Every check in one envelope, for you to hand out." It starts addressed to your company at its registered address and phone, and you can change any of it for this mailing without touching your company record. Sent by USPS Priority Mail unless you pick FedEx 2Day or FedEx Overnight under Shipping. The carrier calls the Phone for delivery problems only if it can't deliver, and "A packet it can’t deliver goes back to Greenroom’s office." Because of that, a packet can't be sent to Greenroom's office itself: the dialog says "This packet would come back to the same address if it couldn't be delivered, so a lost packet would have nowhere to go. Send it to a different address, or mail each check to its payee."
• Each check to its payee: each check in its own envelope to the address on the payee's record, by USPS First-Class Mail. An envelope that can't be delivered comes back to your production's registered address.

What is mailed: the number of checks, the total, the check numbers, and Signature — the signer's name with "Printed as text", or their signature image captioned with whose it is ("[name]'s, printed from the image on file"). Only one signature prints on a mailed check; a company that requires two can't mail (see What can stop a mailing). Account identifies the bank and last four digits, with Your account for printed checks or Your funding account underneath; Routing shows its last four digits. The dialog says, "The account and routing numbers print on every check. These must match the checks your bank issued." Show the N checks lists each payee, check number and amount. Each employee's check encloses their pay statement from our tax partner (Pay statement enclosed); contractors' checks carry none.

Timing. "Checks we receive on a business day before 4 PM ET (First-Class Mail) or 6 PM ET (Priority Mail and FedEx) are processed that day; later ones are processed the next business day."

To send, you confirm a sentence that names exactly what you're authorizing, for example: "I authorize Greenroom to print 12 checks totaling $18,402.66 for payroll GR-2026-0031 on the account ending 4421, with Jordan Lee's name printed as the signature, and to mail them in one packet by USPS Priority Mail to 229 W 42nd St, New York, NY 10036." When a signature image is on file, the authorization reads "…with the signature image on file printed as [name]'s signature…" instead of a name printed as text. The sentence is kept with the mailing. If anything changed since you opened the dialog, the send is refused rather than sending something different.

When you send, Greenroom:

1. checks every payee against the U.S. Treasury's sanctions list (OFAC's SDN list);
2. registers each check number with our tax partner;
3. fetches each employee's pay statement from our tax partner, to mail with their check (a loan-out's, contractor's or vendor's check goes without one; they can download their pay statement from their portal, and you can from their Pay statements tab);
4. sends the checks to our print service.

When it's done, the dialog closes with a message saying what went, for example "12 checks sent to be printed and mailed, $18,402.66 in all." If our print service doesn't confirm every check, the dialog stays open under We haven't had confirmation for every check and says how many it didn't: we're checking on them, so don't mail those again. Their status is on the payroll's Paper checks card.

What can stop a mailing

When it opens, and again when you send, the dialog checks everything our print service needs before anything is screened, registered or sent, and names whose record to fix. A refusal sends nothing and claims nothing, so Print checks stays available. Every check, in a packet or not, carries its payee's own address, so:

• A payee's mailing address is incomplete ("[Name]: the mailing address is missing the …"): add it on the payee record.
• A payee's name is too long, more than the 35 characters an envelope's address window holds or the 43 a check's "Pay to the order of" line holds: shorten it on the payee's record, then open Mail checks again, or use Print checks instead. A name corrected before the checks are printed or mailed carries through to the check.
• An address line is over 35 characters: shorten it on the payee record (or, for the packet's own address, in the dialog).
• Your company's address is incomplete or too long for a check's payer block: fix it under Settings → Company. A legal name that won't fit the payer lines can't be shortened, because it has to match your bank's records: contact Greenroom.
• The routing or account number on file can't print on a check: an Admin corrects Account for printed checks under Settings → Banking & payment.
• The company requires two signatures: mailed checks carry one, so a company that requires two can't mail them. The dialog says "Mailed checks carry one signature, and this company requires two, so these checks can't be mailed. Print them, and have both signers sign each one." Print the checks and have both signers sign each by hand, or have an Admin require one signature again under Settings → Banking & payment.
• The signer's name is too long to print as text: the limit is 100 characters. An Admin shortens it under Settings → Company. This refusal does not apply when the check uses the signature image on file.
• An employee's pay statement doesn't come back from our tax partner: nothing is mailed. Try again in a few minutes; if it keeps failing, print the payroll's checks instead or contact Greenroom.

There's no charge for mailing: Greenroom adds nothing to your funding total for paper checks, whether you print them or we mail them.

The physical-check register

Follow them in the physical-check register opens Physical-check register (/reports/checks?run=…), with a Run picker for your other payrolls. Every mailed check is listed with its payee, amount, check number (with the first eight characters of its mailing ID under it, or No mailing ID), status, the dates it printed and mailed, and its tracking when the carrier has some. Statuses move on their own as our print service reports them, and we also ask it ourselves: every 30 minutes until a check is in the post, then twice a day.

Once a canceled check shows Canceled, it no longer holds its payee, so you can mail it again from the payroll's Paper checks card. If the Postal Service forwards a check to a new address, its row says Rerouted by USPS to that address.

View check shows the check as we printed it, once we have an image of it. Because the image carries your full account and routing numbers, it's shown only to your production's own Admin and Payroll teammates. The row's menu also has Copy mailing ID, which copies the check's whole mailing ID.

Payment exceptions

A payment that doesn't match our tax partner's record is an exception. It gets no check number and is neither printed nor mailed, and it stays part of the payroll and its funding ("Exceptions remain part of payroll and funding. Only matching payments can be printed."). The card shows how many there are and the first three; the register lists them all, each with Greenroom net, Processed net (our tax partner's figure, or Not available), and the reason, for example:

• "Net amount differs from the processed net."
• "Check date differs from payroll."
• "No paper-check payment in the processed payroll."
• "Complete this payee’s payroll setup before printing their check."
• "Trust allocation is not reflected in the processed net amount."

The other eligible payments can still go out. Once the difference is resolved, Recheck payments compares again; contact Greenroom if you can't see why a payment differs.

The check register

Check register & CSV opens the run's register (/reports/manual-checks?run=…), headed Check register · [run code], with a Download CSV link. It holds:

The CSV includes every payment, numbered or not, with its status, its reason, and both amounts.

Child trust money on a paper check

When a minor is paid by paper check, their trust allocation isn't part of their personal check. Greenroom doesn't move this money: the employer sends it to the trust as a separate remittance, and the minor's check carries the rest of their net pay. Each trust remittance is its own check, and it gets its number when the run is submitted, the next one in your company's check sequence (the same sequence your personal and union fund checks use). The Paper checks card shows the total as Separate trust remittances, and the union remittance report on Reports lists each one under Child trust — employer remittances, with the amount to remit, its check number, and where to send it. A minor paid by direct deposit is different: when the payroll is approved, Greenroom has our tax partner deposit the trust's share straight into the trust account, as the first part of the payment, and the rest into the minor's own account.

Common questions

Can Greenroom mail the checks for us? Yes, once Greenroom turns mailing on for your production and there is an authorized signer and a checking account to draw on. An Admin can save the account under Account for printed checks on Settings → Banking & payment, independently of payroll funding. When your funding account is a checking account linked through Plaid, that section offers it, so you only type its routing number and whole account number. Then Mail checks sits beside Print checks on the Paper checks card. Demo companies don't mail.

Why doesn't a payee have a check number yet? Personal checks are numbered when you choose Print checks or Mail checks, not at submit, and only when the payment matches our tax partner's record. A payment listed as an exception gets no number until it's resolved and you Recheck payments.

We printed this payroll's checks. Can we mail them instead? No. A payroll's checks go out one way, because both ways use the same check numbers for the same payments, and once Print checks has saved the PDFs they may already be printed. Print them from the saved check PDFs. The other way round, contact Greenroom: a payroll sent to our print service can go back to Print checks only once every check mailed for it reads Not sent or Canceled.

Can we cancel a mailed check and send it again? Before it prints, yes: Cancel check on its row in the physical-check register, and once it reads Canceled, mail it again from the payroll's Paper checks card. A check in a packet cancels with the whole packet.

The card says a payment differs from our tax partner's record. Should I send it anyway? No. An exception isn't printed or mailed by design. Resolve the difference and recheck, or contact Greenroom with the run code.

I reprinted a check. Did it get a new number? No. Reprinting uses the same check numbers; a number, once issued, stays with that payment.

A mailed check came back. What now? See Returned undelivered above: void it when it arrives, and email hello@greenroompayroll.com with the run code to arrange that payee's pay.

Related

• Payment Details — setting a payee's payment method to check
• Processing Payroll — the submit step this sits inside
• Payroll Totals — how paper-check payments show up in what you fund