Payroll

Payroll Setup & Your First Pay Run

Set up Fintra Payroll from license activation to a processed first pay run: employees, the SSN gate, pay schedules, and the draft → approve → deposit lifecycle.

Updated 11 min read1 labOwner / FounderAccountant

Fintra Payroll is a licensed module built around one principle: every number must be justifiable later. The tax engine computes in exact integer cents from verified 2025 rate tables, every paycheck stores its full calculation trace, and the pay-run lifecycle enforces that the person who drafts a run is not the person who approves it.

This page takes you from an unlicensed module to a processed first pay run. Read it start to finish before payday week - the setup steps have real dependencies, and the SSN gate in particular is not something to discover on the morning you run payroll.

License activation and org settings

Every payroll endpoint is gated until your organization’s payroll license is activated (the module returns a payment-required response otherwise). In a consolidated Fintra deployment your license may be pre-activated; standalone or external copies activate with a license key.

Settings to configure before any employee data

  • Activate the payroll license (check license status first - it may already be active)
  • Pay schedules: weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, or monthly - with the anchor payday
  • State unemployment (SUTA): your state and the rate from your agency notice
  • PTO accrual policy (rate per period and caps) if you track PTO in payroll
  • Approval settings: leave self-approval disabled (the default) so submitters cannot approve their own runs
  • GL account map: which expense and liability accounts pay-run journals export to (defaults exist; map to your chart)

Employees, the SSN gate, and bank details

An employee record carries everything the engine needs: legal identity, W-4 elections, pay basis, schedule, deductions, and payment method. Two fields are hard gates: a structurally valid SSN, and (for direct deposit) verified bank details.

Field groupWhat it drives
Legal name + SSNW-2 reporting; the SSN gate blocks any run that includes an employee with a missing/invalid SSN
W-4 elections (filing status, step 3 credits, step 4c extra withholding)Federal income tax withholding via the Pub 15-T percentage method
Pay basis (salary annual/monthly/biweekly… or hourly + default hours)Per-period regular earnings; hourly enables overtime at 1.5× by default
Pay scheduleWhich runs the employee joins and how annualization works
Deductions (401(k) %, Section 125 flat, post-tax) + garnishmentsPre/post-tax treatment per the taxability matrix; garnishments apply CCPA caps
Bank detailsDirect deposit; employees without bank details are paid by manual check
Employee record essentials

The pay-run lifecycle: draft → submitted → approved → processed

A pay run moves through four states, each with a different owner. Paychecks inside the run have their own lifecycle ending in deposited (direct deposit) or printed → cleared (manual checks).

One pay cycle, end to end

  1. 1

    Draft (clerk)

    Create the run for the period. Regular earnings compute from each employee’s basis; add the exceptions - overtime hours, bonuses, commissions, PTO payouts, reductions (with reasons where required).

  2. 2

    Submit (clerk)

    Submitting freezes your edits and hands the run to the approver. The SSN gate is checked - a run containing an employee with an invalid SSN is blocked with the list of who and why.

  3. 3

    Approve (approver - not the submitter)

    Approval recalculates everything fresh, locks the run, applies year-to-date totals, builds the tax and deduction remittance liabilities, and accrues PTO. This is the moment the numbers become real.

  4. 4

    Process and pay (admin)

    Processing executes payment: direct deposits go out and are marked deposited; manual checks print and are later marked cleared. Deposited and cleared checks are immutable - corrections from here are formal reversals.

After the run: GL export and what to check

  1. 1Export the run’s GL journal - a balanced entry debiting wage and employer-tax expense (by department/cost center) and crediting net-pay, per-agency tax, deduction, and garnishment liabilities - and post it to Accounting.
  2. 2Run the payroll-summary report for the period and file it with the cycle.
  3. 3Check the remittances view: approval created the liabilities you now owe each agency, with due-date context (see Taxes & Remittances).
  4. 4Spot-check one employee’s paystub against their prior stub - same gross, believable taxes, correct net.

Hands-on labs

Practice against a realistic scenario. Each lab lists the steps, what you should see, and the checkpoints that confirm you got the same result.

Lab 1

Acme’s first biweekly pay run

Scenario

Acme Services runs its first Fintra payroll: 12 employees, biweekly. Ten are salaried; two are hourly. One hourly tech, Sam Reyes ($28/hr, 80 hours), worked 6 hours of overtime. One employee, Tessa Nguyen, was entered without an SSN. Marco (clerk) drafts; Priya (admin, also approver) approves.

Steps

  1. 1

    As Marco, create a draft run for the current biweekly period.

    Expected: Twelve employees appear with regular earnings computed from their pay bases.

  2. 2

    Add Sam’s overtime: 6 hours at the default 1.5× multiplier.

    Expected: Sam’s gross shows 80 × $28 + 6 × $42 = $2,240 + $252 = $2,492.

  3. 3

    Submit the run.

    Expected: Blocked - the SSN gate lists Tessa Nguyen as missing a valid SSN.

  4. 4

    Enter Tessa’s SSN on her employee record, then submit again.

    Expected: The run moves to submitted and disappears from Marco’s editable queue.

  5. 5

    As Priya, review the run - open Sam’s paycheck and read the calculation trace for Social Security.

    Expected: SS shows 6.2% of $2,492 = $154.50, with YTD-before and the wage-base context recorded.

  6. 6

    Approve, then process the run.

    Expected: Direct deposits mark deposited; any employee without bank details produces a printable check.

  7. 7

    Export the GL journal and confirm it balances before posting to Accounting.

    Expected: Debits (wages + employer taxes) equal credits (net pay + all liabilities) to the cent.

Checkpoints - you got it right if…

  • The SSN gate blocked the first submission and named the employee
  • Marco could not approve the run he submitted; Priya could
  • Sam’s overtime computed at 1.5× and his SS trace reads $154.50
  • The GL export balanced and was posted to the ledger

Frequently asked questions

Why is every payroll screen returning a "license required" error?

The payroll license for your organization is not active. Check the license status page; in a consolidated Fintra deployment it may be pre-activated, otherwise activate with your license key. Failed activation attempts are rate-limited, so type carefully.

Can I edit a pay run after it is approved?

Approved and processed (but not yet deposited) checks can be voided or edited under strict rules - only the employee’s latest applied check, and the engine re-runs everything with full audit logging. Once a check is deposited or cleared, it is immutable: use a reversal instead.

What if we are a two-person company - who approves?

One person is clerk (drafts and submits), the other is admin/approver. The submitter-cannot-approve rule is on by default; there is an org-level opt-out for true solo operators, but leave it on if two humans exist.

How do bonuses and commissions get into a run?

As earning lines on the paycheck: BONUS, COMMISSION, OTHER, or RETRO (retro requires a reason). If you use the sales commission add-on, computed commissions can feed the COMMISSION line so withholding applies through payroll.

What happens if a state’s tax table is not verified?

The engine fails closed: it refuses to calculate with unverified rate data rather than silently guessing (a 422 error names the problem). Org admins can explicitly accept specific unverified state seeds, but the deliberate default is refusal. Federal, Social Security, and Medicare are verified 2025 tables.

Next in PayrollThe Employee Lifecycle & Portal in Payroll

Keep going

PayrollPayroll Taxes & Remittances, ExplainedRead docPayrollApprovals, RBAC & the Auto-Payroll AgentRead docPayrollThe Employee Lifecycle & Portal in PayrollRead doc

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