Toast Payroll: Run Your Payroll

In this Article:

• Prepare to Run Payroll
• Steps to Run Payroll
• Troubleshoot Your Payroll Run

Prepare to Run Payroll

In order to most efficiently process a payroll, you should take a couple steps before beginning. This includes approving timesheets (if applicable), preparing tips, and making personnel updates such as job or pay changes. See the full list of preparation steps and a recommended timeline in Toast Payroll: Prepare to Run Payroll.

Note: If you are not yet using your Toast POS devices and handhelds, you must post payroll four days before your check date. Once you are live on Toast POS, this date becomes more flexible, but before going live, this deadline must be enforced for security reasons.

Back to top

Steps to Run Payroll

For a quick walkthrough of the steps you should take to review and complete a payroll run, watch this shorter video.

If you'd like a more in-depth look at the steps for a successful payroll run, check out this longer video complete with troubleshooting steps towards the end.

1. If you use Toast Tips Manager, ensure that you approve and send tips to payroll before approving timesheets (if applicable). Any tips added after timesheet approval will require unapproving the timesheet(s), reverting or unsending the tips, making the corrections if not completed yet, resending the tips, and reapproving the timesheets.
   1. If multiple timesheets are created due to delayed tip submissions, manually approving them is necessary to process the tips correctly.
2. Before you start to run payroll, you may need to approve timesheets for your staff. Navigate to Time and take note of the toggle at the top. If it's enabled, the time entries from Toast Web will automatically appear on the Employee Earnings step of payroll (step 5 below). If the toggle is disabled, we strongly recommend filtering the page to the current pay period to approve timesheets (use the drop-down menu above the Payroll column). See Toast Payroll: Manage Timesheets to learn more.
   1. Whether you have the automatically approve timesheets feature enabled or disabled, you should always review the time entries in Toast Web for accuracy so you can make any necessary adjustments prior to payroll. To do this, open Toast Web and navigate to Reports > Labor > Labor summary. Set the date range to match your pay period. If any time entries need to be adjusted, do that here in Toast Web rather than in Toast Payroll. This way, the reporting will be correct in both systems since this data immediately syncs to Toast Payroll upon saving.
      
      
      
      
3. To open payroll, select Payroll from the left navigation rail or select View payroll from the tile on the main dashboard.
   
   
   
   
4. Select Preview to start a payroll from the beginning.
   1. The badge indicated by the orange arrow below gives you quick insight into what steps need to be taken before running this payroll. Until the highlighted badge says Ready to Run, follow the steps outlined in the Prepare to Run Payroll section above.
      
       
      
      
5. You will be brought to the Preview Payroll step. In the Action Item card, you can review the list of action items you need to complete before processing the payroll. You will see three types of action items (employee, tips, and timesheet), depending on your settings, along with any missing information. You may also view hours versus last pay period and recent activity of previous actions taken (payroll to-do's, voids, and manual checks) relating to this payroll run. Select Start Payroll to advance.
   1. Consider these important items regarding the Preview Payroll step:
      1. The number of unapproved tips and/or timesheets will be displayed to let you know if you may not be quite ready to process payroll.
      2. The Tips tile will not appear if your company does not have a tips integration with Toast Web.
      3. The Insights card (next to the Action Item card) will only be visible if there are manual checks or bonuses associated with the pay cycle.
      4. You may proceed with the payroll process without approving these items. However, if you select Next to proceed with running payroll, you will receive a warning showing that those unapproved hours will not be paid on the payroll. If you move past the warnings but decide to go back and get those hours into payroll, you will need to approve timesheets and then select Next on the Preview Payroll step again.
      5. Use the Hours graph in the middle to get an idea of your period-over-period labor. This can help with visibility into any employees who might not have clocked in or any timesheets that may be missing from this payroll.
         
         
         
         
6. Up next is the Employee Earnings step where you can make one-time changes to the payroll. Changes made here will not carry over to the employee's record going forward; they will only affect the current payroll. Some examples of one-time changes are:
   1. Adding or editing one-time earnings and deductions.
   2. Adding or removing an employee on the payroll (if you have recently hired or terminated an employee, they may not initially be on a payroll run).
   3. Forcing paper checks instead of direct deposit.
      
      
      
      
7. You are almost there! Once all changes, updates, and additions have been made to the payroll, select the blue Next button to calculate the payroll. You will receive a Calculating Payroll message which lets you know what is happening behind the scenes to get your payroll processed. This page may take up to 5 minutes to load, but it typically takes less than 30 seconds.
   
   
   
   
8. Once payroll has been calculated, the Review and Submit step will give you information you can use to confirm payroll is accurate before submitting. Use the payroll reports in the bottom left corner and the Highlights and Exceptions card to assist you. If any Highlights and Exceptions items are blue, select that link to review the employees in that category. 
   1. If you need to make adjustments, use the Previous button to make edits on the Employee Earnings step. Some items to look for are:
      1. Are the number of employees on the payroll in line with my expectations?
      2. Are the number of hours on the payroll in line with my expectations?
      3. Are the total payroll expenses in line with my expectations?
      4. Are all tips present, if applicable?
      5. Is anyone receiving tip makeup?
      6. Have any one-off adjustments I need on this payroll been entered and reviewed?
9. Once you have confirmed payroll is accurate, it's time to submit! Select the Submit payroll button and press Submit Payroll on the confirmation pop-up to finalize your work. 
   
   
   
   
   1. Note: If this is your very first payroll or if you have recently changed your company bank account on file, you will see an alternate, one-time message indicating Toast Payroll needs your authorization to perform ACH transactions with your company bank account. To continue, select the checkbox and press Submit payroll.
      
      
      
      
10. Congratulations! You will receive confirmation that payroll has been processed when the Payroll posted successfully! message appears. You will also have access to the same payroll reports, an estimated payroll withdrawal receipt (temporary), and a payroll audit which will show when payroll was opened, if/when it was reset, and when payroll was posted.
    1. If any social security numbers (SSNs) are missing for employees in this payroll, you will see a yellow banner at the top of this page. It will notify you of the implications and direct you to add this data to the system. Learn more about missing data.
       1. Inaccurate or missing SSNs may result in inaccurate tax filings, tax filings not accepted by agencies, and/or financial penalties. 
    2. A line item will appear on the Estimated Payroll Withdrawal for NY and HI customers. Toast Payroll will calculate and withhold SDI and FLI from applicable employee checks, but the amounts withheld from employee paychecks are not included in the amount debited from customers by Toast. The total amount will appear as a non-Debited Tax. Toast does not pay not file for these with the state. Customers can allocate the withheld funds to the appropriate insurance policies as permitted by the state. Visit Toast Payroll: Tax Management in New York for more details.
       
       
       
       
11. After posting payroll, you may see a new button labeled Connect to QuickBooks. If you use QuickBooks Online and Toast Payroll, customers can now directly sync their payroll data to QuickBooks Online (more accounting software connections will be available in the future). Visit Get Started With Payroll Accounting Sync to learn how you can integrate the two systems.
12. All HR+ users with access to this specific pay group will receive an email notification that includes the date and time the payroll was submitted and an estimated Toast Payroll withdrawal amount. You can also confirm payroll was submitted by following the steps in Toast Payroll: Verify Payroll Was Submitted. To double-check exactly when your employees will be paid, take a look at Toast Payroll: Get Help With When Employees Are Paid.
13. At the end of each non-federal holiday business day, Toast Payroll pulls the ACH Files from all payrolls that have been submitted and sends them to the bank. This includes the debits Toast will collect from customer bank accounts for those payrolls. This function is known as payroll being swept and it occurs around 5:30 pm EST (4:30 pm CST) on each of these days. Once that is finished, the Toast Payroll Withdrawal Receipt will replace the Estimated Payroll Withdrawal Receipt and will be available on the Review & Submit page. It offers finalized details of what was sent to the bank and when you may expect the debits to take place. Once these files have been sent to the bank, you may also find Toast Payroll Withdrawal Receipts by navigating to Payroll > Past Payrolls tab > View.
    
    

Back to top

Troubleshoot Your Payroll Run

Still have questions? Check out Toast Payroll: Get Help with Your Payroll or Toast Payroll: Payroll Process FAQ. Additionally, we highly recommend viewing the short overview video or the longer, on-demand Toast Classroom video above.

Back to top

This content is for informational purposes and is not intended as legal, tax, HR, or any other professional advice. Please contact an attorney or other professional for advice.