Common Issues and Troubleshooting

This guide covers real, verified causes of the issues ops and support staff run into most — matched against current product behavior, not generic guesses. Where the product uses a specific label or shows you specific wording, that's quoted below so you can match it to what's on your screen.

Payroll Issues

A payroll run won't submit

There's no "Process" button — the action you're looking for is Submit payroll. "Processing" is a status a run moves through after you submit it, not something you click.

A few different things can block submission, at different points:

1. Your company isn't approved to run payroll yet. Every company must be reviewed and approved by Greenroom before its first run — and stays gated on this permanently, not just at launch. If your company isn't approved, starting a run fails outright. Getting approved requires finishing company setup first — see Where the setup checklist actually lives, below — and then submitting your company for Greenroom's review.
2. Check, our payroll provider, has closed, suspended, or declined your company. Even an already-approved company can be blocked if Check reports the account as terminated, out of good standing, or KYB-denied. Run Payroll names the specific reason and tells you to contact Greenroom — this is separate from (and checked in addition to) Greenroom's own approval.
3. The run has already moved past draft/review. Once a run is submitted, its entries lock — you can't go back and edit it. If you need to change something at that point, you're looking at a new run (an amendment, if the original was already paid — see Correcting a run that's already been paid, below), not an edit to the old one. The lock is checked as each edit is written, so a change that arrives while a colleague is submitting the run is refused — "…is processing — a submitted run can no longer be edited" — rather than landing after the fact. One exception: if Check refuses the payroll because the pay date's approval deadline has already passed, the run is rolled back to In review and becomes editable again so you can pick a later pay date — see Payroll Statuses.
4. Dual approval is on (the default) and only one person has signed off. A run needs approval from two different people, and the preparer can't be one of them. If you prepared the run yourself, you'll need a colleague to review and approve it — Greenroom blocks a preparer from approving their own run. See Payroll approvals if you want to turn this off for a one-person production.
5. Some payees aren't ready to be paid. At submit time, Greenroom checks every included payee's tax setup is complete (W-4/withholding for employees, W-9/TIN for 1099 contractors). Payees who fail this check aren't included in the run — you'll see a panel like "N payees aren't ready for this run" — but the run itself still goes through with everyone else. This doesn't block the whole run; it just leaves those specific payees out until they're fixed.

Checking how a payee's pay was calculated

Click a payee's row in the Employees step to expand it — you'll see Contract pay, Assignments, Activity, Allowances, and Deductions, plus Gross, Deductions, and Disbursement totals at the bottom of the expanded row. For a whole-run summary of employer taxes and fees, the Review step has a separate Fee & tax breakdown panel.

A payee isn't showing up for a run

Payees aren't hidden from a searchable list so much as automatically excluded from the draft with a reason. When a run is built, Greenroom checks each payee and — if they're not ready — leaves them out and shows why, using one of two reasons:

• "Onboarding incomplete"
• "Work authorization pending"

Separately, payee list and detail screens show an at-a-glance readiness signal: a solid green dot (or a Payroll-ready badge on the payee's own page) means they're good to go; an amber ring (or a "N to finish" badge) means something's outstanding. Per Payroll readiness, what's typically left is a pay rate (not required for vendors), a required document, or unresolved tax setup.

Correcting a run that's already been paid (amendments)

If you need to correct a run after it's already been paid, that's called an amendment in the product (not "adjustment run"). You pick the already-paid run you're correcting and give a reason — Greenroom requires a purpose before it lets you proceed. The correction posts as new payment lines against the original payees; it doesn't rewrite their base pay rate. A draft or review-stage run that hasn't been paid yet doesn't need this — just edit it directly (see point 3 above for when that stops being possible).

Payee Issues

Payee onboarding stuck or incomplete

See Onboarding status for exactly what each status value means and how to follow up with a payee — Greenroom tracks this with specific status pills rather than a generic "stuck" flag, and following up re-sends whatever link is outstanding rather than a separate reminder action.

Can't update a payee's information

Most fields on a payee's record are editable any time by your team. The one real exception: legal name and date of birth freeze once the payee is approved, because they're tied to the signed I-9. If a payee tries to change either themselves, the product tells them directly:

"Legal name and date of birth are locked after approval — they're tied to the signed I-9. Update your address from your profile, or ask your employer to change your name or date of birth."

In other words: the payee can still update their own address, but a name or date-of-birth correction after approval has to come from your team, on the payee's record — not from the payee's own portal.

Payment method and bank detail errors

Bank account and routing numbers go through real validation, not just a length check:

• Routing numbers must be 9 digits and pass the standard ABA bank checksum — a routing number can be the right length and still fail this check. Greenroom's own message: "That routing number doesn't pass the bank checksum — double-check it."
• Both the routing number and the account number require double-entry — you type each one twice, and pasting is disabled specifically so a copy-paste error can't silently duplicate a typo. A mismatch between the two entries is rejected with "The routing numbers don't match — re-enter them" / "The account numbers don't match — re-enter them."

This applies to a payee's own direct deposit setup (see Payment Details) and, separately, to your company's own bank account under company setup — the validation logic is the same in both places, just with slightly different wording.

Duplicate payee errors

You don't need to search manually before adding someone — Greenroom checks for you. Creating a payee with an email that's already in use is blocked automatically, with a message that names the conflict directly, for example: "[Name] already uses [email] (payee [code]) — they may have been added on an earlier try. Open that payee, or use a different email." If you hit this, open the named payee to confirm it's the same person rather than re-entering them.

Company Setup Issues

Where the setup checklist actually lives

The setup checklist is its own page — Company setup — not something embedded in the dashboard. The dashboard only shows a banner that links you there while your company is still unapproved; once Greenroom approves your company, that link disappears from the main navigation entirely (which is expected — it's not a bug or lost data, the checklist's job is done).

It's presented as a six-stage wizard now — a clickable progress bar up top, one stage's form at a time below it, Back / Save and continue to move between them. The real stages are:

All required stages need to be complete before you can submit your company for Greenroom's review — and approval of that review is what actually unlocks running payroll (see A payroll run won't submit). The submit button itself lives on the wizard's last stage: if you click it before every required stage is done, it validates instead of submitting — jumping you to the first incomplete required stage with a list of everything still open.

Bank authorization

Authorization isn't a separate signature step or a waiting period — successfully saving valid bank details (details that pass the checksum and double-entry checks above) is the authorization. If bank authorization isn't going through, the fix is the same as any other bank-detail error: check the routing number and both double-entered fields match exactly.

Union setup

Setting up unions at the company level is simpler than older materials suggest: you select which of your production's applicable unions apply, or confirm "this production runs non-union." There's no separate AEA-specific sub-form, and no "production ID" field anywhere in company or union setup — if you're looking for one, it doesn't exist.

Agreement type is a real field, but it's chosen per payee (in that payee's Engagement section), not during company-level union setup — see Engagement & union.

Data Issues

"My changes aren't saving"

The fix depends on which screen you're on — Greenroom saves changes in three different ways depending on context:

Whichever screen you're on, a validation error (shown directly on the field) blocks saving until it's fixed — that part is consistent everywhere.

Missing or filtered-out data

If the payee list looks incomplete, check for active filter chips — the Payees list shows removable chips for each filter you've applied, plus a Clear all button once any are active. Payroll History works a little differently: it uses two dropdown filters (status and year) and a single Clear filters button rather than individual chips. Don't expect identical filter controls on every list — check for whichever pattern that specific screen uses.

Performance Issues

If a page feels slow, narrowing date ranges and other filters before loading a large list or report generally helps, as does closing unused browser tabs. If a page seems stuck rather than just slow, a refresh is usually a faster fix than waiting.

"Something went wrong"

If a page fails to load, you get a card reading Something went wrong — "We couldn't load this page. Nothing you entered was saved in a partial state — try again, or re-open the link from your email." — with Try again and Sign in buttons, and a short ref code underneath.

Quote the ref code when you contact Greenroom. It identifies the exact failure in Greenroom's own records, which is far faster than reconstructing what happened from a description.

Most of these are transient, which is why "a refresh fixed it" is a common and entirely consistent outcome. Try again first.

Getting Help

Greenroom doesn't currently have an in-app help center, tooltip-help system, or chat widget. There is a Need help? / Read our docs link at the foot of the sidebar, which opens this documentation site in a new tab. If something here doesn't cover your situation, contact Greenroom directly at hello@greenroompayroll.com.

When you reach out, include:

• The exact error message (copy the text rather than paraphrasing it)
• What you were doing right before it happened
• A screenshot, if possible
• Relevant IDs — a payee code or payroll run code, if one's involved
• The ref code, if you saw a "Something went wrong" card

Next Steps

See Running Payroll for payroll workflows, Payee Management for payee help, or Company Setup for setup guidance.