Finalise a pay run in QuickBooks Online Advanced Payroll

Once you've made all the necessary changes to your pay run, you can finalise it. This action makes all the information in the pay run available in your reports.

Employees can also view their payslips through the self-setup portal. Additionally, it exports an automatically generated a journal entry in QuickBooks that mirrors the pay run.

This article will cover:

• Finalise a pay run
• Edit finalised pay run

Finalise a pay run

Before you continue, it's important to know that finalising a pay run locks the pay run to prevent it from being edited in the future.

Tip: You can double check that everything is calculating correctly by using HMRC's PAYE and NI calculator.

1. Go to Payroll, and select the Pay Runs tab.
2. Open the pay run you wish to finalise.
3. Select Finalise Pay Run.
4. Select the Date Paid.
5. Next to Publish payslips, select the pencil icon.
6. Select the one of the following options:
   • Do not make payslips available until the "Publish payslips" button is clicked: This means that payslips will remain private and inaccessible to employees until published.
   • Make payslips available to employees now: This will make payslips available to employees.
   • If you decide to publish the payslips at a later date, select the date and time.
7. Select the appropriate HMRC and pension submission option.
8. If you want to apply these settings to future pay runs that you finalise, check the box.
9. Select Finalise.

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Edit finalised pay run

If you need to make changes to a pay run or one from a previous tax year, you can unlock it. Unlocking the pay run will allow you to edit, update and recalculate the values associated with the pay run.

However, once you've submitted pension information to HMRC through PensionSync, you won't be able to unlock or make any changes to that pay run. But don't worry, you can always make any necessary adjustments in the next pay period. 

Learn how to unlock or delete a pay run.

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