Payroll Hub

The Payroll Hub is payroll's single front door for a pay cycle. Approved timesheets collect into each cycle's pay run automatically; the Hub is where you see what is waiting, review and finalise runs, and record what was keyed into your payroll software.

This page is the reference: what everything on the screen is and who can use it. If you just want to get this week's pay out, follow Completing a Pay Run instead and come back here when you need the detail.

Who can use it — You need "view payroll hub" permission just to open the page. Reviewing, finalising, exporting, holding pay and Record as Processed need "manage pay runs". Two destructive overrides — Unfinalise Pay Run and Void an Export (and voiding a processing record) — need the separate, higher "override payroll" permission, so a payroll manager can run day-to-day work without holding the break-glass powers. Settings needs "update tenant settings". See Roles & Permissions.

Where to find it — Payroll & Billing → Payroll Hub in the sidebar.

Before you start — the Hub looks at one pay cycle at a time: pick it with the Pay cycle switcher (arrows or the dropdown), or click a cycle's card. What's left, the pay figures and the tabs are scoped to that cycle. Cycles with open pay runs is the exception: it shows every cycle that still has a run to finish.

How work reaches a pay run

Nobody creates a pay run or attaches timesheets to one — pay runs are always automatic. Your workspace started collecting with the pay cycle it was in when its pay cycle was first set; Settings › Pay cycle shows the date.

The first approved timesheet in a cycle opens Run #1 for that cycle. Every approval after it — worked days, leave days and work-order days — joins the same run automatically, usually within the hour. An hourly sweep picks up anything missed.
Salaried staff are paid for the period whether or not they file a timesheet, so the cycle gets a run for them too.
Once a run is finalised, anything approved later for the same cycle opens the next numbered run (Run #2, marked late work). Payroll managers get one notification when that happens. A later run only pays what earlier runs did not.
Future cycles are never opened early; their work waits until the cycle starts.
A cycle card with no run yet says what opens one — usually timesheets waiting for approval. Approve them and the run appears.

The overview

Cycles with open pay runs — one card per cycle that still has a run to finish (draft, awaiting a second approval, or finalised but not yet exported or recorded as processed), oldest first. Each card lists its runs — Run #1, and a Run #2 · late work beside it when late approvals opened one — with its state, gross and the next step. A cycle whose draft is weeks overdue is outlined in red; older cycles fold into one older runs still open card so nothing unfinished disappears.
What's left — everything still open for the selected cycle, each with its count and the action that resolves it: timesheets waiting for a supervisor, blockers grouped by kind with their fix, approved work not yet in a run, active people in no pay run, held pay and open amendments. What is already done collapses into a line of ticks, and the main button opens the cycle's run.
Pay — the payable gross (or Priced subtotal when a pay item has no rate), a bar splitting it into ordinary, overtime and penalties, leave and stand-down, travel and allowances, a comparison with the last finalised cycle, and Payroll vs project costs — open it to see where every dollar between payroll and project labour cost went.

Below that sit the work lists, all scoped to the selected cycle — the Hub opens on Exceptions when there are any:

Exceptions — the full exceptions list for the cycle (see below).
Timesheets — the cycle's timesheets (Ready for Processing / Awaiting Approval / Not Approved / In a Pay Run / All). Row actions include Hold from pay and Release hold.
All pay runs — the runs for the selected cycle (or all cycles), numbered within their cycle, with sub-tabs for Draft, Finalized, Awaiting Approval, Exported and All.
Before automatic pay runs — approved work dated before your workspace started automatic pay runs. It is never paid automatically; mark each day as processed externally, confirmed unpaid or unresolved.

Reviewing a pay run

Opening a pay run shows:

The header — one button for the next step (Mark reviewed, then Finalise pay run, then approve, export or record as processed), a Reports menu (the pay run report as PDF or Excel, Check the export, the Reconciliation worksheet and Worksheet (CSV)) and a More menu for everything else.
The figures — employees, paid hours, earnings, allowances, gross and missing weekdays.
Sort these before review — submitted days to approve in place, gaps to fill (with suggestions: extend adjacent leave, one answer for a day several people missed, rain where wet weather is logged), Ask them reminders, distant travel to confirm, and every other blocker with its fix.
The week — a row per person, a column per day, with overtime in bold, day codes (leave, stood down, rain, public holiday), allowance letters and a red + Fill on each missing weekday. Tap a name for the day-by-day detail and their pay items.
Side panel — pay items, Travel (daily travel and distant travel, with Travel evidence), delays logged this week, report downloads and counts for the run.

A draft whose timesheets changed recalculates itself when you open it. While the run is a Draft you can adjust allowances on a timesheet, hold a day (Hold from pay in the Timesheets list), hold a person's period pay (Hold an Employee) and Release a Hold — the last two are under More.

Mark Reviewed records that you checked the run as it stands. Collection keeps adding to a draft, so if anything is collected, held, released or edited afterwards, the Review chip reads Changed since review and Finalize Pay Run stays locked until you review again.

Public holidays not worked

A permanent employee is paid for a weekday public holiday they did not work. When a draft run includes one, its to-do list shows Public holidays not paid and finalising is blocked until you deal with it.

Press Pay public holidays… (also under More). It lists each permanent employee on an hourly pay level who did not work the holiday, with their pay level and normal daily hours.
Untick anyone who is not owed it — for example, a part-timer who never works that weekday. Change the hours if theirs differ.
Press Pay ticked days. Each ticked day is added to the run, approved, at their ordinary hours and base rate, with no project.

Who is left out:

Casuals — they are not paid for public holidays they don't work.
Salaried and day-rate staff — their normal pay already covers the day.
Anyone who worked the holiday. Their hours are paid at the public holiday rate as usual.
Anyone on unpaid leave or an unpaid stand-down that day.

Paid leave over a public holiday pays the holiday as a public holiday, not as a day of leave, so no leave is used up. This happens when the leave is approved. If the leave is shortened or cancelled, the holiday day goes with it, and the run asks you to pay it again.

If someone already has a leave day recorded on the holiday (from before this change), they are listed but not ticked. Shorten or cancel that leave first; nothing is converted automatically. If they really are not owed the holiday, acknowledge it when you finalise.

These days export as their own pay item, Public Holiday (not worked). In Payroll Settings → Export, under Pay item names — leave, stand-down & public holidays, enter the exact name of your public holiday pay category in MYOB or Xero.

If any workers were on a living-away (LAFA) project this period, the run's to-do list asks you to Confirm distant travel. Confirm whether they used their own vehicle (paid km) or car-pooled (travel time only) before finalising — travel is reviewed inside each run, not on the Hub.

Finalising and processing

Finalize Pay Run freezes the run: it becomes read-only, its timesheets flip from Approved to Processed, and the figures are snapshotted so later edits to timesheets or rates never change them. Finalising is disabled while the run has nothing in it, its calculation is stale, or its latest version has not been reviewed.

Before the cycle has ended you can still finalise, but it is listed as a blocker you must acknowledge. Anything approved afterwards goes into a later run.
Timesheets still awaiting approval are counted in the confirmation; once approved they go into the next run for the cycle.
Held pay is never a blocker — it simply stays out.

If your workspace has dual control turned on (Settings → Export tab), finalising parks the run in Pending Export Approval. A different payroll manager opens the run and clicks Approve for Export.

Then key the run into your payroll software:

Download the Worksheet (CSV) from Reports, or click Export [Format] CSV for the payroll file. From a finalised run either download is recorded in the export history with a SHA-256 hash of the exact file.
Key it into your payroll software.
Click Record as Processed, enter when it was processed and the payroll software's pay run reference. The record points at the download it was keyed from and moves the run to Exported.

Finalising is not payment, and neither is recording processing: Subgrade records what was sent to payroll, not what reached a bank account.

Privileged, audited overrides exist for correcting a mistake (need "override payroll"):

Void an Export — marks an export ledger row as voided (never deleted) without touching the run's status.
Void Processing Record — marks a processing record voided when a run was recorded by mistake.
Unfinalise Pay Run — reverts the latest finalised run in its cycle to Draft: voids its exports and processing record, marks its snapshot superseded, and returns its timesheets to Approved. Requires a reason (min 10 characters), which is logged and sent to the original finaliser. An earlier run cannot be unfinalised once a later run exists in its cycle — correct it in the later run instead.

Exceptions and warnings

The Exceptions tab lists everything that could go wrong with this cycle's payroll, each tagged blocker, warning, or info, with a Fix link straight to the record that needs attention. Kinds you'll see include:

Timesheet issues — awaiting approval, no work entries logged, more than 12 hours in a day, Sunday work, an approved timesheet with no recorded approver.
Employee master-data gaps — no active pay level assignment, missing Xero employee ID / MYOB card ID / payroll employee code.
Missing weekday timesheet — a coverage gap for an employee who's already in this cycle's pay run.
LAFA travel to review — a living-away worker whose boundary-day travel hasn't been confirmed yet (see above).

Blockers surface again as a checklist when you Finalize, and most can be overridden with an acknowledgement — but they don't go away on their own; fix the underlying record to clear them.

Settings

Settings (top right, needs "update tenant settings") configures how the Hub and pay runs behave, in tabs:

Timesheets & approvals — which roles and people approve timesheets and leave, whether supervisors can approve their own, the mandatory timesheet checklist, and default shift times.
Pay cycle — frequency and start day (with a preview of the next cycles), the date your pay runs started collecting automatically, and the pay-run name format. A frequency change only affects cycles that have not started; stored cycles never move.
Pay rules — default pay level, casual loading on penalty hours, claimable one-off allowances, the productivity allowance mode and the projects that don't count toward it, and rain-pay caps.
Export — payroll export format and the pay item name for every line (grouped into hours, leave and stand-down, other and allowances), and the safeguards that block an export: dual control (needs at least two "manage pay runs" users), and a missing payroll employee code or payroll software ID.

Connected pages

Team Approvals — where timesheets get approved, which is what sends them to a pay run.
New Timesheet — how workers log the hours that feed payroll.
My Work Log — a worker's own submitted timesheets.
Compensation — pay levels, rates, and allowance templates that drive what a pay run calculates.
Budget Ledger — where processed payroll cost lands against projects.

Tips & common mistakes

Looking for Build Pay Run? It is gone — approved work collects into its cycle's run on its own. To keep something out, hold it.
Finalize is greyed out? The run needs up-to-date figures (Recalculate OT) and a review of its current version (Mark Reviewed).
"Recalculate OT" banner won't go away? An entry on a timesheet in the run changed since the last calculation — recalculate before trusting totals or finalising.
A timesheet shows under Not collected? Check whether it is held or has an amendment open. If neither, collection has not picked it up — contact support.
A late approval for last week? It opens a new run for last week's cycle; it appears in that cycle's card under Cycles with open pay runs.
Recorded the wrong run as processed, or sent an export by mistake? Don't try to delete anything — use Void Processing Record, Void an Export, or Unfinalise Pay Run (all need "override payroll" and are logged).
Dual control won't turn on? You need at least two users holding "manage pay runs" — the finaliser can never approve their own export.