Review and approve a payroll run
What this achieves
Section titled “What this achieves”A payroll run submitted for review waits for a second administrator to approve it before it can be finalised. This exists so no single person can prepare and release a company’s pay on their own.
Required role: Administrator. The person who initiated the run cannot approve it, unless your workspace has turned that requirement off.
- Go to Payroll → Payroll Runs.
- Open the run showing as In review.
- Check the totals and the draft payslips.
- Select Approve, or Reject to send it back.
By default, you cannot approve your own run
Section titled “By default, you cannot approve your own run”Separation of duties is enforced by default. If you initiated the run, the approve action is unavailable to you and Humavera says so directly — a different administrator has to approve it.
Example: Priya Raman prepares HC Corp UK Ltd’s March 2026 run. She cannot approve it, so Daniel Okonkwo does.
Where one administrator handles pay
Section titled “Where one administrator handles pay”Settings → Payroll carries a Payroll approval setting. Its Two people must approve switch is on to start with; turning it off lets the same administrator run payroll and approve it, which is what a small company with one person on pay needs.
Turning it off asks you to confirm first, because it removes the control that stops a single person paying money out alone, by mistake or otherwise. What you get in return is a permanent record: a run approved this way is stamped with the fact that the same person started and approved it, and that stamp stays on the run even after you switch the requirement back on.
Switching back on is the safer direction and asks nothing of you.
Where an approval workflow is bound to payroll, approval is handled through the workflow instead, and the assigned approver acts on it from their own task list rather than from the run. The workflow decides who approves, so this setting does not change it — both screens say so.
What to check
Section titled “What to check”Approving is a decision, not a formality. The run is about to become immutable.
| Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Employees | Does the headcount match what you expect for this group and period? |
| Gross | Does gross pay move as expected against the prior period? |
| Deductions | Are statutory deductions present and plausible for the jurisdiction? |
| Net | Is anyone’s net pay unexpectedly zero or unusually large? |
| Employer cost | Does the employer’s own cost move with gross, or has something diverged? |
Example: at HC Corp UK Ltd, a gross figure that jumps without a corresponding headcount change usually means a new eligibility rule reached more people than intended — worth resolving before approval rather than after finalisation.
Explain this run narrates the variance against the prior period and flags anomalies such as a net pay swing, a large element change, or a new loan deduction. Use it as a prompt for where to look. It is advisory and changes nothing.
Rejecting
Section titled “Rejecting”Rejecting returns the run so it can be corrected and recalculated. Prefer rejecting over approving something you do not understand — a run that has not been finalised is still cheap to fix.
What happens next
Section titled “What happens next”Once approved, the run is ready to finalise. Finalising locks every payslip as immutable and closes the pay period, and cannot be undone. A correction after that point becomes an off-cycle run or an adjustment in a later period rather than an edit.
Related
Section titled “Related”© 2025-2026 Humavera Documentation - BPilot Ltd. All Rights Reserved