Payroll history & edits

This guide covers: Browse past payrolls, Read the run detail, Edit a draft, Recalculate, Cross-portal view.

Browse past payrolls

What it does: Lists every payroll run for a client — drafts, approved, processing, completed, voided.

Where: Two paths:

• Per-client list — client sidebar → Run Payroll (/clients/{clientId}/payroll).
• Global accountant list — visit /payroll directly (there's no sidebar entry), then pick a client from the dropdown.

Steps:

1. Open the payroll list.
2. Each row is a card showing: Date range · Pay Date · Gross · Status badge · Employees · Net Pay · Employee Taxes · Employer Taxes.
3. Draft rows show Edit and Delete action buttons inline.
4. Toggle Show YTD Setup payrolls at the top to include or hide ytd_setup-type rows (YTD takeover entries are stored as fake payrolls so they aggregate cleanly into 941/W-2/940 — toggle off for a cleaner real-run list).

Who: Accountant, SMB admin, or any client-portal/SMB-portal user with payroll-read permission.

Notes: The list shows the 50 most recent runs. The current pay-period banner at the top is computed from the next pending period, not the latest run. On the global accountant page (/payroll), draft rows have an inline Approve action and approved rows have an inline Process action — both with confirm dialogs.

Read the run detail

What it does: Shows everything about one run — period dates, status timeline, employee items, direct deposit status, downloadable PDFs.

Where: Click View Details on a row, or View in the global accountant list.

Steps:

1. Click into the run.
2. The header shows the status pill (draft, approved, processing, completed, voided, cancelled) with a status icon.
3. The download menu has: Payroll Register PDF, All Paystubs ZIP, All Paychecks ZIP, per-employee paystub/paycheck.
4. Action buttons depend on status:
   • draft → Approve Payroll.
   • approved → Process Payroll (with a Same-Day ACH toggle pre-checked from client.same_day_ach_enabled).
   • Any non-draft/voided/cancelled → Void Payroll (with a confirm explaining: cancel Moov debits, mark items voided, cancel scheduled tax payments).
5. For completed runs, the Direct Deposit Status card shows: not_initiated, pending_funding, pending, processing, complete, or error — with retry/refresh actions.

Who: Accountant or SMB admin.

Notes: A Post to QuickBooks button appears on completed runs; it posts the journal entry to QuickBooks Online if QBO is connected — calls the same endpoint as the auto-post Celery task, idempotent server-side (returns "already_synced" if the run already has a journal-entry mapping). The detail page also surfaces tax breakdowns and, on draft runs only, lets you click into individual payroll items to Edit Tax Amounts if you have a justified manual override (rare). On non-draft runs an item that was overridden shows a read-only Override badge instead.

Edit a draft

What it does: Re-opens a draft payroll for changes to dates, hours, or earnings — only works on draft status.

Where: Click Edit on a draft row or visit /clients/{clientId}/payroll/{payrollId}/edit directly.

Steps:

1. From the payroll list, click Edit on a draft row.
2. The same form as a new payroll loads, prefilled from the saved draft. The pay_type_at_run snapshot stamped on each item drives whether each row shows hourly or salary fields — so a salary employee who took unpaid time off stays salary, even if hours_regular happens to be 0.
3. Change any field. Click Calculate to recompute.
4. Click Save as Draft to keep it a draft, or Run Payroll to finalize the previewed numbers.

Who: Accountant or SMB admin.

Notes: The page hard-blocks if the run isn't draft — a toast appears and you're redirected back to the run detail. To "edit" an approved run, void it and re-create — see the void action on the detail page, or use a correction run from Off-cycle, bonus & correction payrolls. The edit page does NOT let you change which employees are in the run — that's set at creation.

Recalculate

What it does: Runs the tax engine again on the current edits without persisting them.

Where: Calculate button on the edit form.

Steps:

1. Inside the edit form, change hours, bonus, commission, or dates.
2. Click Calculate.
3. The green preview panel updates with new gross, net, employee taxes, employer taxes, and the per-employee breakdown.
4. To apply, click Save as Draft or Run Payroll. To discard, navigate away.

Who: Accountant or SMB admin.

Notes: Preview reads against the current YTD ledger plus all OTHER items in the run, so caps and additional Medicare thresholds are correct. Editing the period dates re-runs reciprocity and SUI-rate resolution by pay date — so a draft moved across a calendar boundary may show different state-tax breakdowns.

Cross-portal view

What it does: Same data, surfaced in each portal for the right audience.

Where:

• Client-portal owners — Payroll History in the sidebar (/client-portal/payroll).
• SMB-portal admins — Payroll in the sidebar (/smb-portal/payroll).
• Employee portal — only their own paystubs (the Paystubs view at /employee-portal/paystubs).

Steps:

1. Log in to the portal.
2. Client portal: pick a tax year from the dropdown; runs are listed as expandable cards. Click a card to reveal the summary (Gross · EE Taxes · ER Taxes · Net) and the per-employee breakdown table (Employee · Gross · Federal · State · SS · Medicare · Net).
3. SMB portal: top of page shows three stat cards (Total Payroll Runs · Total Paid (YTD) · Employees Paid). The list below shows status badges per run; each run row is clickable to open its detail.

Who: Client-portal owner, SMB-portal admin.

Notes: The client and SMB portals are read-only for past runs. To run new payroll, the SMB portal has a Run Payroll button at the top right; the client portal does not — only the accountant or the SMB itself runs payroll. Status badges in the SMB portal: Pending (yellow), Processing (blue), Completed (green), Failed (red).

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Related: Run a regular payroll · Off-cycle, bonus & correction payrolls · Auto-pilot payroll · Direct deposit return codes.