Run payroll for a pay period to turn its approved, locked hours into a finalized, downloadable export.
Who this is for
Owners only. Payroll is Owner-only by default: the permissions that run and read payroll are real, but no role below Owner carries them out of the box — a manager’s permission to manage time deliberately doesn’t extend to payroll. An org can grant those permissions to another role explicitly.
Before you start
The week picker won’t let you page past the current week — payroll only ever acts on a completed or current period.
Every member you expect to pay needs approved (or locked) hours for that period; pre-flight will point out whoever isn’t ready rather than blocking the screen itself.
Payroll has to be part of your plan. If it isn’t, running pre-flight shows an upgrade prompt instead of a verdict.
Steps
Open Payroll runs from the Payroll section of the sidebar.
Choose the pay period with the week picker.
Read the pre-flight verdict: a green “Ready to run” banner with a payout preview (member, hours, rate, and amount) when every included member passes, or a “Not ready to run” banner listing the blockers by type — Unlocked time, Overlapping entries, Missing pay rate, No approved timesheet — with the affected member names.
Once pre-flight is clean, select Run payroll. Until then the button stays disabled with a tooltip explaining why: “Pre-flight must pass before you can run payroll.”
Once it finalizes, select Download CSV in the export section to download the per-member lines.
What happens next
A successful run finalizes the export: a toast titled “Payroll finalized” confirms the total payout and how many members it covers, and the Run payroll button relabels to Finalized and stays disabled — a period can only be finalized once. The finalized export’s per-member lines appear below it, with a Download CSV button for the file.
If pre-flight didn’t pass, the run is blocked rather than run partially: a toast titled “Run blocked” reads “The period didn’t pass validation. See the blockers below.”, and nothing is finalized.
If it doesn’t work
If you aren’t an Owner, the whole screen shows “Payroll is restricted to owners” — “Only an organization owner can pre-flight and run payroll. Ask an owner if you need an export.”
If your plan doesn’t include payroll, you’ll see “Upgrade to unlock this” instead — “Payroll connectors isn’t included in your current plan. Upgrade to unlock it — your data and settings stay exactly as they are.” (or, when the required tier is known, it names the plan that unlocks it) — with a See plans & upgrade button.
If you try to run an already-finalized period again, you’ll see “Already finalized” — “Payroll has already been run for this period.”
“Couldn’t load your team”, “Couldn’t run pre-flight”, “Couldn’t run payroll”, and “Couldn’t download the CSV” each carry the server’s own message, or, when your session itself is the problem: “Your session may have expired, or you lack access to payroll.”
Related
Timesheets (overview)
Approve a timesheet