Trace the issue. Keep the evidence.
Work the problem.
Find the right help.
Start with a P.A.Y. diagnostic checklist, then use official vendor documentation for your exact product and release. Share fictional examples with other members and keep useful answers connected to their source discussion.
Public checklists and official help links are free to read. Community questions and replies require a current free profile. Do not post employee records, company-confidential information, screenshots of production systems, bank details, credentials or private support links. These general checklists do not authorize production changes.
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P.A.Y. general diagnostic checklist
Approved time is missing from payroll
Where did the hours stop moving?
- Confirm the worker, assignment, pay group and pay-period dates using fictional or approved test data.
- Trace the time record through submission, approval, export, transmission, import and payroll validation. Keep the actual batch and error references in your employer’s secure system.
- Compare source hours, exported hours, imported hours and payable hours separately. A successful file transfer does not prove that every row was accepted.
- Check the relevant vendor help guide for your product and release before changing a mapping or reprocessing a batch.
- Test one approved correction, check duplicate handling, then reconcile the payroll and downstream accounting results.
Escalate rejected records, unexplained duplicates or a payroll cutoff risk to your authorized payroll/HRIS lead and vendor support.
P.A.Y. general diagnostic checklist
A rate or assignment change affects the wrong period
Which effective date and processing date did the system use?
- Write down the intended effective date, the actual saved effective date and the payroll period being evaluated.
- Check whether the change applies to a worker, position, assignment or pay group, and whether a future-dated or historical record is taking precedence.
- Review the vendor’s retroactivity and recalculation documentation for the exact product. Do not assume that editing today updates a closed payroll automatically.
- Use an approved test case to compare the before and after earning lines, hours, benefit eligibility and accounting allocation.
- Have the authorized payroll owner approve the correction route and verify the resulting audit trail.
Escalate historical or closed-period changes before making a production correction.
P.A.Y. general diagnostic checklist
Gross pay agrees, but the net amount differs
Which component explains the difference?
- Compare the same employee, check date, payment type and period using the secure payroll record.
- Reconcile gross earnings, taxable bases, employee taxes, deductions, reimbursements and prior adjustments as separate components.
- Check the product’s deduction limits, arrears, rounding, tax-update and retro-calculation documentation where relevant.
- Use a test calculation or approved preview; do not change tax elections or override a deduction simply to make totals match.
- Document the actual reason and obtain the required review before a corrected payment or communication.
Escalate unexplained withholding or payment discrepancies through your payroll review process.
P.A.Y. general diagnostic checklist
Payroll is correct, but the general-ledger output is not
Did the amount change, or did its classification change?
- Compare the payroll control total to the journal total before investigating individual account or cost-center lines.
- Trace effective-dated organization changes, earning and deduction mappings, balancing lines and allocation percentages.
- Check rejected codes and export/import messages in both systems. Confirm that the same batch was not posted twice.
- Validate a representative test case through payroll, journal generation, file delivery and finance acceptance.
- Ask finance and payroll to sign off on the final reconciliation and period ownership.
Escalate a missing or duplicate journal before posting another batch.
P.A.Y. general diagnostic checklist
An integration fails or creates duplicate records
What happened to each record at each boundary?
- Identify the exact source product, destination product, connector or file format, environment and release.
- Capture sanitized error codes, timestamps and expected versus actual record counts in the secure support process.
- Check authentication status, allowed fields, schema changes, effective dates and record identifiers against the official connector documentation.
- Verify the vendor’s documented retry and duplicate-handling behavior before replaying anything.
- Test a small approved case, reconcile accepted and rejected records, and preserve the before/after evidence.
Do not repeatedly replay a batch with an unknown outcome. Involve the integration owner and vendor support.
P.A.Y. general diagnostic checklist
A user cannot see a task, worker or report
Is this identity, role, scope or workflow?
- Confirm the person is using the correct employer tenant and expected sign-in method.
- Have an authorized administrator compare the assigned role, organization scope, effective dates and workflow permissions.
- Use the vendor’s account-recovery or access guide. Never share another person’s credentials or disable MFA to work around the problem.
- Test the smallest authorized permission change with a representative account and check both allowed and restricted actions.
- Document the approved role change and confirm the original issue is resolved without broader access than needed.
Route account recovery, security alerts and payment-change access to employer IT/security and official vendor support.
Direct from the vendor
Links go to the vendor, where the current instructions live. Product, release, permissions and customer-login requirements can differ. When a specific answer is not in this library, start with that vendor’s official help route.