Payroll hub

Where: Payroll (opens at /payroll) · Plan: Complete · Roles: Admin, Branch Manager

Payroll turns clock-in and clock-out records into approved timesheets and an export for your payroll processor. The hub has its own header with a Branch Filter and a pay period selector, and every page shows the same six-step workflow strip:

flowchart LR
  track["1 Time tracking"] --> close["2 Close period"] --> gen["3 Generate timesheets"] --> approve["4 Approve timesheets"] --> export["5 Export & process"] --> paid["6 Mark as paid"]

10.1 Overview

Period-at-a-glance: hours, gross pay, entries completed and active, timesheets by status (draft, submitted, approved, paid), and the workflow strip for the selected period.

10.2 Time Entries

Where: Payroll > Time Entries (a read-only copy is at Insights > Time Entries)

Every clock-in/clock-out pair with the site, shift, duration, GPS result and any adjustments.

• Filter by employee, site, status and date; search by name.
• View Shift opens the schedule the entry belongs to.
• Adjust Time Entry: correct the start or end time, add a reason; the original is kept in the audit trail and the button reads Save Adjustment.
• Void Time Entry removes a mistaken entry from payroll while keeping the record.
• Create a manual entry for a guard who forgot to clock in.

10.3 Timesheets

Where: Payroll > Timesheets

• Generate Timesheets builds timesheets for the selected period; Create Timesheet adds one for a single employee (Create Employee Timesheet dialog).
• Filter by status (draft, submitted, Approved, Rejected) and search by employee.
• Open a timesheet (Timesheet Details) to see regular, overtime and holiday hours, allowances, gross pay and each underlying entry.
• Edit Timesheet lets you override header totals; note that overrides are replaced if the timesheet is recalculated or regenerated, so set them last and then approve to lock them in.
• Approve a timesheet, or select several and Approve (n). Reject Timesheet asks for a Rejection Reason that the employee sees in the app. A branch manager's own timesheet is approved, rejected, edited or recalculated by an admin.
• Export the selected timesheets or Export Period for everyone.

Guards see their own timesheets in the app (More > Timesheets) and can Submit for Approval when the period has ended.

10.4 Pay Rates

Where: Payroll > Pay Rates

Pay rates are the floor of the pay chain described in section 3.3: a shift is paid at its own override, else its bill-rate code's default pay rate, else the site rate for the employee, else the site default, else the employee's base rate. This page manages the last three.

A scope picker at the top switches between Base employee rates and By Site (overrides).

Base employee rates

• One row per employee showing the current base hourly rate, its effective date and the full rate stack that can override it — site overrides (per employee and site default) and any bill-rate codes with a default pay rate that reference them (customer-scoped codes read Customer: {name}).
• Set Pay Rate / Update Pay Rate: enter the New Hourly Rate ($), the Effective From date and an optional Reason for Change. The previous rate is closed the day before, so past periods keep their old figure.
• Select several employees for Set Pay Rate for N Employee(s).
• CSV Upload → Upload Pay Rates from CSV: download the Sample CSV, fill it in and click Upload N Pay Rates to load many rates at once.
• An employee with no base rate is priced at $0 until you add one; Payroll > Reports flags this before export.

By Site (overrides) (also at Site detail > Financial > Pay Rates)

• Pick the Site, then Add Default Rate or Add Employee Rate; both open the Add Pay Rate dialog: optionally an Employee (Optional) (leave it on the site default for everyone at the site), the Hourly Rate, Effective From, optional Effective To and a Reason. Site pay rates have no rate type — overtime and double time are always derived from the multipliers in Payroll Settings.
• An employee-specific site rate beats the site default; both beat the employee's base rate. Overlapping effective windows for the same employee at the same site are rejected ("This rate overlaps an existing active rate").
• Each row's menu has Edit (the Edit Pay Rate dialog), End Rate (the rate stops today; shown while the rate is in effect and has no end date) and Delete. You can also end a rate by giving it an Effective To date.

PTO & Allowances (Employee detail > Payroll > Allowances)

Allowances are balances tracked per employee, not payroll line items: they are not added to timesheet gross pay, which is regular + overtime + double time + differentials only. Each allowance has a type — PTO (Paid Time Off), Vacation, Sick Leave, Personal Days, Bereavement, Jury Duty, Floating Holiday or Other — and an accrual method — Lump Sum, Per Pay Period, Monthly, Anniversary or Per Hours Worked. Guards see their balances read-only in the app's Profile. A branch manager's own allowances are changed by an admin.

10.5 Reports

Where: Payroll > Reports

• Choose a pay period or a custom Start date / end date.
• Readiness checks warn about unapproved timesheets, missing pay rates or open time entries before you export.
• The export menu offers PDF report (a printable register), Internal CSV (every column InstaNotified holds), ADP CSV and Paychex CSV (pre-formatted for those providers' imports).
• Finalize Payroll marks every approved timesheet Paid, sets the period to paid, locks the period's time entries and opens the next period. It is the same action as Mark as paid on the Overview.

10.6 Schedule Generated Invoices

Where: Payroll > Schedule Generated Invoices (also under Invoicing) · Roles: Admin, Branch Manager

The bridge from payroll to billing. For each site with hours in a closed or paid pay period, InstaNotified proposes a customer invoice priced by the bill chain in section 3.3.

1. Select the pay period in the header. Sites with billable hours are listed with their hours and proposed totals; a period that is still open shows Pay period must be closed or paid before generating invoices.
2. Open a site's suggestion to review the line items, or tick several sites and click Generate invoices for selected.
3. The invoice dialog has two tabs. Preview shows the invoice as the customer will see it — line items in the site's configured format, tax, notes and terms. Send lists the site's customer contacts with an email address; those flagged Receive Invoices are pre-selected and badged invoices. Click Send Invoice to email it.
4. After sending, the status is Sent. Use Mark Paid when payment arrives, or Void to cancel a mistaken invoice (voided invoices stay in the list for the audit trail). Re-sending a paid invoice emails another copy and leaves it Paid; a void invoice cannot be sent, edited or marked paid.

Delivery is by email from the Send tab; there is no separate PDF download button for customer invoices, so if a customer wants a copy re-send it to their address (or your own).

Each site's Settings (gear icon on its row) control how its invoices are built: Line-item format (see section 11.1 for the options), Default tax rate (%), Default due days, Default notes, Default terms, Show site address on invoice, Show company logo on invoice and Allow manual line items.

10.7 Settings

Where: Payroll > Settings — tabs General, Pay Periods, Holidays

Payroll settings cascade Company → Branch → Site (section 3.4). The scope picker at the top of General — Company, Branch or Site — chooses which level you are editing; a field left blank at branch or site level inherits from above.

• General:
  • Work week and period: Work Week Ends On, Pay Period Type (Weekly, Bi-Weekly, Semi-Monthly, Monthly).
  • Overtime: OT Threshold (hours/week) (default 40), OT Multiplier (1.5), Double Time After (hours/week), Double Time Multiplier (2.0).
  • Shift differentials: Differential Type (Flat Amount ($/hr) or Percentage (%)) and Amount, with Night Start Time / Night End Time for night premiums, and a weekend differential. Differentials are added to gross pay on top of the resolved rate.
  • Time capture: Time Source for Timesheets — Clock In/Out Only (only time entries count; a missed punch means no hours), Schedule Only (scheduled hours are paid regardless of punches) or Clock with Schedule Fallback (punches where they exist, the schedule where a guard forgot). Also Allow Schedule Override, Min. Shift Completion %, Require GPS for Clock-In, GPS Tolerance (meters) and Auto Clock-Out After (hours) — the same rules a site can override under Site detail > Settings > Clock In/Out, where the Early clock-in window (minutes) (15 by default) is also set.
  • Automation: Enable Auto-Generation of timesheets with a Generation Day and Generation Time, and automatic pay-period creation with a Pay Day Offset (days).
• Pay Periods: Generate Payroll Periods creates the calendar ahead from the period type and week-end day. Each period shows its status — open, closed, processing, paid — and can be reopened by an admin if needed. Add Override creates a one-off period with different dates.
• Holidays: company holidays with a Pay Multiplier (applied to the guard's pay for all hours worked that day — 1.5 adds 50% as differential pay), a Bill Multiplier and Recurring (same date every year) (the table shows Yearly or One-time). On invoices, holiday hours are billed at the site's Holiday Base Rate when one exists (section 3.3). Under Site detail > Holidays a site can disable a company holiday or override its multipliers, and add holidays of its own.

How gross pay is built. For each shift: hours are split into regular, overtime and double time against the weekly thresholds; each bucket is priced at the resolved pay rate (section 3.3) times its multiplier; night, weekend and holiday differentials are added; unpaid planned break minutes are deducted from schedule-derived hours first. The timesheet's gross pay is the sum across shifts. Allowances are not included.

10.8 FAQ

Where: Payroll > FAQ

In-app answers organised as Workflow, Automation, Periods, Tracking and More.

10.9 Time & Attendance Infractions Setup

Where: Settings > Time & Attendance Infractions Setup · Roles: Admin · Plan: Complete

The same page is also listed under Compliance > Time & Attendance Infractions Setup. Define the disciplinary bands used by Attendance Monitoring: click Add Disciplinary Band, set the lateness range (for example 5–15 minutes) or the count of no-shows, and the action it triggers — Verbal Warning, Written Warning, 3-Day Suspension, 5-Day Suspension or another action from the list. When a manager records an infraction from the attendance board the matching band's action is suggested. Infractions recorded against an employee appear under Employee detail > Communication > Infractions. These bands do not page on-call contacts.