How do I review and approve approve payroll?

Ensuring accurate payroll is important for both the employee and your business.

In Remote, employer users with the appropriate permissions, including company owners, admins, and people managers, can review upcoming payroll runs. Employer of Record (EOR) customers can view payroll information and pay breakdowns, but they do not approve payroll runs. Customers using Remote’s Payroll product can review and approve payroll runs.

Before payroll is finalized, review and resolve any pending items that could affect the calculations, such as time off, incentives, expenses, and employee changes.

Review payroll runs for multiple products

If your company uses multiple Remote products, employees under Payroll, Employer of Record (EOR), or Professional Employer Organization (PEO) will appear in separate payroll runs. These employees cannot be combined in the same payroll run because each run is linked to one legal entity, and each legal entity has one product type.

Payroll runs for employees hired through your company’s legal entity are labeled with that entity’s name. EOR payroll runs are labeled Remote’s entity because Remote is the legal employer.

Review a payroll run

1. Go to the Payroll page.

   For each country, you can check the payroll run timeline, including:

   • Payroll cutoff date: The deadline for submitting or approving changes that should be included in the payroll run. The date depends on several factors, including the country and payroll schedule. See What does the payroll cutoff mean?.
   • Payday: The date when employees will be paid.

2. Select the payroll run you want to review.

   Remote’s payroll experience helps you compare the current payroll run with the previous run and identify the changes affecting payroll.

3. Before the payroll cutoff, review any items that could affect payroll.

   You can still:

   • Approve or decline expense and time off requests.
   • Add incentives.
   • Add or update information about new joiners, terminations, salary changes, and time off or leave of absence.

   The payroll run shows the number of pending expense and time off approvals. Select the relevant link to go to the Expense Management or Time Off page, where you can approve or decline each request.

   See also:

   • Approving or declining time off requests
   • How do I review employees’ expenses?
   • How do I pay an incentive to an employee?

4. Review the At a glance section.

   This section provides a summary of the payroll run across three areas:

   • Approved Changes: Employee events approved for the payroll run.
   • Pay Breakdown: A summary of the total cost, including salaries and contributions.
   • Documents: Documents uploaded for the payroll run.

5. Review the approved employee changes.

   The Approved Changes section highlights four types of employee events that can explain why payroll has changed since the previous run:

   • New joiners: Check the employee’s start date, annual base salary, and gross salary for the payroll period.
   • Terminations: Check the termination date, termination reason, start date, and last working date.
   • Salary changes: Compare the previous and new annual base salaries and check the percentage change.
   • Time off: Check relevant time off, including sick leave, maternity leave, paternity leave, and paid time off. Some types of time off may affect gross pay.

   Select View Details for an event to open more information in a panel on the right side of the page.

6. Compare employees’ gross pay with the previous payroll run.

   In the employee table, the Gross Pay Variance information highlights differences between an employee’s gross pay for the current and previous payroll periods.

   You can scan the employee list for variances and select an employee to check the details. The employee panel shows the variance under the relevant pay items, helping you determine whether the difference is connected to an incentive, expense, partial pay, or another pay element.

7. Correct any inaccurate employee-event information.

   Employee events are read-only within the payroll run. You cannot edit them directly from this page.

   To request a correction:

   • Update the information at its source, such as the relevant request on the Time Off page.
   • Leave a comment on the payroll run so Remote’s Payroll Operations team can help.

8. After the payroll cutoff, review the finalized payroll.

   Remote calculates the payroll after the cutoff. You can then check the finalized amounts and pay details for each employee. You can also download the gross-to-net report for a detailed breakdown of the calculations.