Sending hours to your payroll provider

Paidsley produces a file your payroll system imports. Getting there takes three pieces of setup, and Paidsley will not let you export until all three are in place.

Which providers are supported

ADP RUN is fully supported today: Paidsley generates the import file directly.

Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll and Paychex can be recorded as your provider, but Paidsley cannot yet generate an import file for them. You will see that stated plainly on the settings screen rather than discovering it at payroll time. In the meantime, export the general timesheet CSV from Reports and map the columns when importing.

1. Payroll export setup

Under Settings, record how your payroll account is configured:

• Company code — found on the header of any report from your provider
• Pay frequency — must match the pay cycle in your payroll account
• Employee identifier — which identifier your account keys on. Most accounts use the employee ID. Choose the time clock ID only if your account genuinely uses it and it is populated for everyone; if that column is empty, every line in the file will have a blank identifier and the whole file will be rejected.
• Department numbers — include them if you use departments
• Default rate code and separate check — leave at their defaults unless your provider told you otherwise

2. Earning code mapping

Paidsley splits pay into buckets: base, overtime premium, double-time premium, commission, flat-sum bonus, retro overtime, PTO, sick, holiday, unpaid leave, meal premium, rest premium and reporting time.

Each bucket that carries money must be mapped to an earning code that already exists in your payroll account. The codes are specific to your account, so Paidsley cannot guess them — look them up under your provider's earnings setup.

Each mapping also has a value mode, which decides whether that bucket sends hours or dollars.

This one matters. Sending both hours and a dollar amount under the same earning code will double-pay it. Paidsley zeroes whichever field the mapping does not use, so only one is ever sent — but choose the mode deliberately.

For premiums and reporting-time pay, choose dollars. Those hours are not hours worked: they do not count toward overtime and are excluded from the regular rate. If they are sent as hours under an hours-based code, your payroll provider may treat them as worked time and recalculate overtime on them, which would be wrong.

Premiums are wages, not reimbursements — map them to a taxable earning code, never to a reimbursement code.

3. Employee identifiers

Every employee needs the identifier your payroll provider knows them by. Set it on their record, or bring it in with a roster import.

Producing the file

Open a closed payroll run and download the file. For ADP RUN it is a CSV beginning ##GENERIC## V2.0 followed by twelve columns — company code, pay frequency, period start and end, employee ID, earnings code, hours, dollars, separate check, department number, rate code and job code. That is the layout ADP publishes for timesheet import, and it can be imported without editing.

Each export is recorded with a checksum of the exact file produced, so a file your payroll clerk received months ago can be matched back to the run that produced it.

Why an export gets blocked

Paidsley refuses to export when the configuration is incomplete, and it names what is missing. This is deliberate.

A payroll import file with a missing earning code or a blank employee identifier does not fail loudly at the provider — those lines are dropped silently. The file imports, the totals look plausible, and one employee simply is not paid for something. That error is discovered on payday, by the person who was not paid.

Blocking the export is the less painful of the two outcomes.

A sensible first run

Run one pay period through Paidsley alongside your existing payroll and compare the two before you rely on it. Check gross pay, overtime hours, and any premiums. Anything that differs is worth understanding — it may be Paidsley being stricter than your old process, which is the point, but you want to know which it is before payday rather than after.