Localized reading guide
payroll-prepPurpose, usage and source
Gets payroll ready to run without anyone getting shorted: pulls timesheets from Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll, or an uploaded spreadsheet, totals regular, overtime, and PTO hours by person, flags every anomaly it finds — missed punches, overtime spikes, rate changes, mid-period hires and terminations, hours off the schedule — and stages the run for the owner to approve line by line before a dollar moves. Anomalies are always raised, never quietly corrected. Once the owner runs it, the journal posts to the ledger or goes to the bookkeeper. Reach for this whenever payroll comes up at all — "run payroll," "payroll is due," "check the timecards," "did everyone clock out," "how many hours did the crew put in," "why is payroll so high this week," "I need to pay the guys Friday" — and use it after cash-flow-snapshot when the owner is worried about whether payroll clears.
Source retrieved:
- Source repository
- anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins
- SKILL.md
small-business/skills/payroll-prep/SKILL.md- Repository stars
- 34,049
- Repository updated
- 2026-10-30
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License: Apache-2.0
Workflow excerpts are reading aids, not executable instructions from Codez. No third-party Skill was run to produce this page.
The purpose and workflow passages below are upstream material, organized and translated for reading. They are distinct from the separately labeled Codez editorial analysis.
What this Skill does
Gets payroll ready to run without anyone getting shorted: pulls timesheets from Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll, or an uploaded spreadsheet, totals regular, overtime, and PTO hours by person, flags every anomaly it finds — missed punches, overtime spikes, rate changes, mid-period hires and terminations, hours off the schedule — and stages the run for the owner to approve line by line before a dollar moves. Anomalies are always raised, never quietly corrected. Once the owner runs it, the journal posts to the ledger or goes to the bookkeeper. Reach for this whenever payroll comes up at all — "run payroll," "payroll is due," "check the timecards," "did everyone clock out," "how many hours did the crew put in," "why is payroll so high this week," "I need to pay the guys Friday" — and use it after cash-flow-snapshot when the owner is worried about whether payroll clears.
How the upstream workflow works
Step 1 — Fix the period before anything else
Confirm the pay period start and end dates, the pay date, and who is in this run. Getting the period wrong duplicates or skips a week of someone's pay, and it is a surprisingly easy mistake when a period straddles a month end. Confirm the roster too: new hires who started mid-period, anyone terminated, anyone on leave. See reference/timesheet_intake.md.
Step 2 — Pull the timesheets
With Gusto connected, first ask Gusto itself what stands in the way: call its payroll-blockers check (list_payroll_blockers) before building anything. If blockers come back, translate each into plain English — what it means, who fixes it, and where. For example: "check payments unsupported" means this company pays by paper check, which the integration cannot stage, so the owner runs that part in Gusto directly; "bank account not connected via Plaid" means the owner connects the bank in Gusto's settings; "hourly employees unsupported" can block at the account level even when this run is salaried-only. Blockers are a routing signal, not a failure — the run still gets built and validated here, and the deliverable becomes the run sheet with the blocker list riding along.
Step 3 — Total the hours
Compute regular, overtime, double time, PTO, holiday, and unpaid time per person, then per crew, then for the run. Overtime rules vary by state and by how the business classifies people, and getting them wrong underpays someone. Use the owner's stated rule, and when there isn't one, use the plain weekly-overtime default and say which rule you applied. reference/anomaly_rules.md covers the calculation edges — mid-week rate changes, multi-job days, and shifts crossing midnight. Never fill a missing punch with an assumed time. A shift with a clock-in and no clock-out has unknown hours, and unknown hours is what gets reported.
Requirements and setup
No short requirements passage was selected from this file. This does not mean the Skill has no dependencies. Check the repository setup instructions and referenced files.
Limits and quality checks
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Start with a safe trial
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Read further in the source
- Payroll Prep
- Step 1 — Fix the period before anything else
- Step 2 — Pull the timesheets
- Step 3 — Total the hours
- Step 4 — Flag every anomaly
- Step 5 — Show the run before approving it
- Step 6 — Resolve the flags, one at a time
- Step 7 — The approval gate
- Step 8 — Sync to the books
- What not to do
- Output
- After the run
- Reference files
- Using a tool that isn't listed
Related Skills
Translation and scope
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