Follow this article on how to set up auto-approval of scheduled pay runs. Note that any custom or on-demand pay
runs are never auto-approved, and their handling is the administrator’s responsibility.
There are three modes of operation for Pay run approval:
- By Administrator is the default and requires an administrator to press the pay run Approve button.
- By Privileged Employee will require a Privileged employee to Approve the pay run in their My tasks app view.
- Assuming timely approval, Debbie will complete the pay run in the finalisation window.
- Automatic by Debbie will auto-approve the pay run with no manual intervention required.
- Debbie will complete the pay run in the finalisation window.
Regardless of the approval type set, the administrator is always able to approve any pay run with the Approve button
Setup #
Auto-approve for pay runs is set on the pay schedule: Setup > Pay Schedules and Update the relevant schedule.
Select the Approval type required and click Update:
Note the summary table dates, which control when various steps occur – these are Prompts start, Prompts end, Approvals begin, as well as Target payday and Actual payday
Privileged Employee Approval #
Administrator view #
If you set the pay run schedule approval type to Privileged Employee, the administrator will also see an Approved till date field. The Approved till date works as follows:
- Usually, you will not enter a date
- After a privileged employee has approved a pay run, this field will show the approved pay run date
- Cancel a prior approval by clearing the date
- Exceptional pre-approval: You can also set a future date, e.g. in case a privileged employee will be absent for a period and you wish to pre-approve on their behalf; noting a future date could include multiple future pay runs; after this date, usual privileged employee approval resumes
Privileged employee mobile View #
Privileged employees will see a new Approve button in My tasks:
Each approval is valid up to the date shown and will be remembered once. Therefore, the privileged employee will need to approve each pay run individually.
The pay run is then marked for approval by Payroll Debbie for the appropriate date.
Before that date, the privileged employee can also Unapprove the pay run if required:
Operation #
During the pay schedule, the following automation will occur:
| Task | “From” date | “To” date | Example dates | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tax coding notices | Prompts start | Prompts end (1-day before Approvals begin) | 7th – 14th | Uses GB HMRC DPS Data- feed |
| Pay run redo | Approvals begin | 1-day before Actual payday | 15th – 26th, typically 15th | |
| Review documents and/or Privileged Employee approval | Visible by employees and privileged employees | Accessed by self-service | ||
| Pay run approval (finalisation) | 1-day before Actual pay day | Actual payday | 27st – 28th | Auto Submit FPS, EPS Auto Submit API pension report Auto post API bookkeeping journal |
| Next interim pay run | Immediately after pay run approval if all reports are completed successfully | Administrator may need to handle any exceptions e.g. HMRC unavailable |
My Dashboards #
The status of all pay runs can be viewed in My dashboards > Pay Run Calendar:
