Approve and finalize payroll

What this does

Admin/Payroll: approves employee items, publishes the approved run's payslips, then optionally finalizes payroll as an immutable record.

Before you start

You need salary update permission and a generated payroll with reviewed employee results.

Steps

1. Open Generate Payroll and select the Period. Approve each pending employee with Approve, or use Approve All and confirm the pending employee count. A disabled individual action provides its reason on hover.
2. After all employee items are approved, select the top-level Approve. This is separate from approving individual items.
3. If corrections are needed before finalization, use the run's Unapprove: it returns the run to Generated and resets all its employee items to Pending, removing employee payslip availability until reapproved. In a generated run that has individually approved items, an organization administrator can instead Unapprove an individual item before regenerating it.
4. When the approved run is final, select Finalize. The page shows Payroll Locked and Finalized; it offers View and Download Payslips instead of regeneration or approval controls.

Result

Approved employee items become employee-visible payslips only after the run is approved; they remain available for processed or paid runs. Finalization makes payroll immutable, locks attendance for the period, and blocks pending attendance corrections for that period. Finalized payroll cannot be unapproved, regenerated, or deleted. These actions do not transfer money.

Related/Next guide: Payroll periods and history.