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 → Payroll (/clients/{clientId}/payroll).
• Global accountant list — top nav → Payroll (/payroll), 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 (/clients/{clientId}/payroll/{payrollId}).

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 is available when 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 lets you click into individual payroll items to Edit Taxes if you have a justified manual override (rare).

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 Preview to recompute.
4. Click Save Changes to persist.

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 Preview button on the edit form.

Steps:

1. Inside the edit form, change hours, bonus, commission, or dates.
2. Click Calculate Preview.
3. The green preview panel updates with new gross, net, employee taxes, employer taxes, and the per-employee breakdown.
4. To apply, click Save Changes. 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 (a separate Pay & Tax Forms view).

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 · Total Employees Paid). The list below shows status badges per run with View Details links.

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.