Understanding Payroll Totals
How Greenroom adds up a payroll run, and exactly what number needs to be in your bank account
Payroll Summary shows this run's money at three levels of detail: a four-metric headline, a funding stack that ends in the one number that has to be in your account, and a fee & tax breakdown for the accounting side. This page covers all three.
The four headline numbers
A summary card near the top of Payroll Summary shows:
| Metric | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Total gross wages | Every payee and payment on the run, before any deduction |
| Employee & loan-out wages | The W-2 and loan-out slice of gross wages |
| Contractor & vendor payments | The 1099 and vendor-bill slice |
| Union fringe & benefit funds | Employer-paid union contributions — links through to Union Reports for the full calculation |
Fund your payroll: what needs to be in the bank
Below the headline card, the Fund your payroll panel stacks up everything this run costs, then subtracts what never touches your bank account, to land on the one number you actually need to have on hand:
| Row | What it is |
|---|---|
| Gross wages | Same figure as the headline card |
| Reimbursements & allowances | Added on top of wages — real money out, but not part of gross |
| Employer taxes | FICA, Medicare, FUTA, and — for New York payees — NY SUI and MCTMT; see Payroll Calculations for estimate-vs-synced status |
| Employer union fringe | Same figure as the headline card |
| Platform fees & postage | Greenroom's own fee plus check postage — see Platform Fees & Billing for how the fee itself is calculated |
| = Total payroll cost | The sum of every row above — this run's full liability |
| Less: settled via .045 | Union box-office settlements some funds are paid through instead of a check — Greenroom never moves this money, so it's subtracted here |
| = Total to fund | What has to be in your account by the check date |
Only .045 is subtracted — funds you pay directly are not
A union fund can settle three ways, and two of them are described in the app as "no check required." Only .045 comes off this stack. A fund marked paid directly — where you send the wire or ACH instead of Greenroom cutting the check — stays inside Total to fund, because that cash still has to be in the account. See Fund Routing.
Net pay to payees (what payees actually take home) is shown alongside this stack for context — it's already inside "Total payroll cost," not an additional amount on top of it.
Total to fund vs. Check cash requirement
Until Check — Greenroom's payroll provider — has priced this run, the bottom-line number is Greenroom's own estimate, labeled Total to fund, with a "Funding: Greenroom estimate" badge. Once Check's preview succeeds and its figure is comparable to Greenroom's (every included payee is Check-managed and previewed), the label switches to Check cash requirement and the badge reads "Funding: Check · [time]" — you're now looking at the vendor's own number, not an estimate. If the two figures disagree by more than a cent, a notice appears instead and submitting is blocked until it's resolved — see What can block submitting.
Tip: Use the Print / share button on the Fund your payroll panel to generate a shareable version of this exact breakdown — handy for whoever manages the bank account if that isn't you.
Post-tax deductions can leave the funding figure short
Union working dues and other post-tax deductions aren't sent to Check yet. They sit inside gross — so you fund them — but Check never receives them, pays that money to the payee instead, and the full amount is still owed to the fund. When this applies, a warning appears here and on the submit screen with three numbers: what Greenroom recorded, what Check will withhold, and the difference. Budget for the difference on top. See Processing Payroll.
Auto-debited vs. physical checks
The panel also splits the total by how it leaves your account:
- Auto-debited — direct deposits plus all taxes, pulled from your connected bank account
- Physical checks — the total going out as printed checks, postage included, with a count of how many. Those cheques are printed and mailed as one batch to a single address you choose at submit — see Physical Checks.
Fee & tax breakdown card
A separate collapsible card on the same screen restates the tax and fee detail:
- Employer taxes & reimbursements — the same employer-tax figure as above, with a note on whether it's an estimate or synced with real numbers, plus reimbursements & allowances and their subtotal
- Platform fees & payment breakdown — your platform fee (with a "show math" link explaining the specific calculation for this run), postage per check, and the same total payroll cost figure — followed by the auto-debited and physical-check split
See Platform Fees & Billing for exactly how the platform fee is calculated by production tier and run type — this page doesn't repeat that math.
Coding summary
A third collapsible card groups every dollar on the run by GL (accounting) code, in three columns: Wages, Fees & services, and Taxes & fringe, each with its own subtotal. This feeds your books, not payroll accuracy — most productions won't need to check it line by line unless reconciling with accounting.
Verifying totals
There's no separate "verification" screen — the anomaly warnings at the top of Payroll Summary (below-minimum pay, missing fringe, unverified rate books) are Greenroom's automatic checks, and they're informational rather than blocking. See Payroll Calculations for the full list. Beyond that, comparing this run's headline totals to a recent, similar payroll is the fastest manual sanity check.
Next steps
See Payroll Breakdown and Details for how these totals build up payee by payee, or Payroll Calculations for the underlying formulas.