Payroll Links
Part of Payroll software integration
Reconciling payroll integration errors before a pay run
Compare approved source changes with accepted payroll inputs and calculated pay before releasing a pay run.
Before releasing a pay run, compare approved source records with what payroll accepted and calculated. Put rejected, missing, duplicated and late changes into a named exception queue. A completed transfer or balanced batch total cannot prove that every employee's pay is correct.
Key Compliance Metrics for Payroll Reconciliation
- Pay slip requirements
- Must include gross pay, deductions, net pay, and payment date
- STP reporting obligation
- Submit Real-Time Payroll data to ATO
Fix the comparison point
Record the pay period, source cut-off, export or message version and payroll import time. If a change is approved after the cut-off, mark it as late and decide how it will be handled. Payroll needs to know which approved records are included, which are pending and whether an earlier import was superseded.
Keep separate counts for employees, source transactions, accepted transactions and rejected transactions. Compare totals by employee and pay category, as well as overall. Two errors can cancel each other in a grand total.
Check changes likely to alter pay, such as rates, classifications, approved hours, leave, allowances and employment endings.
Source Records vs Payroll Input – Key Differences to Verify
- Employee count
- Compare approved source employees vs accepted in payroll
- Transaction count
- Match source transactions (e.g., hours, leave) with accepted entries
- Pay category totals
- Review by category (e.g., base pay, overtime, allowances)
- Rejected vs accepted transactions
- Track rejections and reasons for review
Triage each difference
| Exception | First check |
|---|---|
| Missing employee or transaction | Match the source identifier and approval to the import log; establish whether the item was never sent or was rejected. |
| Duplicate input | Identify the original and repeated item before changing either record. |
| Wrong date or category | Compare the source effective date and code mapping with payroll's accepted values. |
| Correct input, unexpected pay | Have a knowledgeable payroll reviewer inspect the calculation and applicable pay rule. |
| Late correction | Determine whether payroll needs a replacement, adjustment or separate correction process. |
The receiving system determines how a rejected or repeated item can be repaired. Record the cause, owner, correction, check of the result and pay impact for each exception. Do not edit an input solely to make totals agree.
Where a record is corrected, retain enough information to explain the original and corrected values, reason and approval. Where an exception affects pay, check the resulting pay slip details.
Decide whether the run can proceed
Set a release rule before the deadline. An unresolved item that may affect pay needs a payroll decision and escalation before release. Record which exceptions were resolved and which still affect the run.
Do not treat a plan to address an exception later as permission to delay pay that is due. If a separate payment or adjustment is needed, calculate and record it through the appropriate payroll process.
If the review indicates a possible underpayment, refer to the sibling article on underpayment remediation; resolving the underpayment itself is outside this reconciliation.
After the run, retain the reconciliation, exception decisions, approvals and final payroll output. Review recurring errors by cause. An unstable identifier, ambiguous code, late approval or retry process may call for a system or workflow change.
