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-specific employer taxes; 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 |
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.
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.
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
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.