Payroll Prep

# Payroll Prep

Get the hours right before anyone gets paid.

Payroll is the finance workflow with the least room for error. A wrong invoice gets corrected next week. A wrong paycheck is a person who cannot cover rent, and it is the fastest way for an owner to lose a crew. Everything in this skill is built around that asymmetry: the machine assembles and checks, the owner decides.

## 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.

Then pull the period's inputs, each from its own tool. **Hours:** `list_time_records` for the pay period; read its `source` field before anything else. `native` returns shifts with clock-in, clock-out, and breaks; `third_party` returns timesheets from the company's time-tracking partner, and `get_time_sheet` gives the per-day line items for any one of them (it refuses native shift ids); `none` means Gusto holds no hours for this company, so the spreadsheet path below supplies them. **Leave:** `list_time_off_requests` for the period with `status: approved` — every approved day is paid as PTO or sick, never as worked, and a pending request is a flag, not a paid day. **Balances:** `get_time_off_balances`, which is what the "PTO beyond available balance" check in Step 4 reads against. **Rates and classifications:** the roster from `list_employees` with each person's compensations. Rates come from Gusto, never from a timesheet. Call shapes for these are in `../../shared/connector-call-shapes.md`.

**A missing punch the owner can fill.** When Step 4 flags a shift with no clock-out and the owner gives the real times, `record_time` writes them — only the times the owner stated, shown to them first, and as an `update` of the existing shift rather than a second entry. The parameters that refuse if missing (timezone, job on Gusto's own tracking, which id counts as the shift) and the one re-read trap (a contractor's confirmed hours come back with blank clock times; do not write again) are in the `record_time` row of `../../shared/connector-call-shapes.md`. Read that row before the call. This is the only way the skill ever changes a punch; an assumed time is never written.

**Then prove the source is returning its data before anything is staged.** Pull the roster (`list_employees`) and the schedules (`list_pay_schedules`). A company that reports a headcount while either list comes back empty, or a blockers call that errors instead of answering, is a payroll source that is connected but not delivering. Stop the staging path, say so in one line ("Gusto is connected but returned no employees or pay schedules, so I cannot stage a run against it"), and offer the spreadsheet path below. Never build a run from an empty roster, and never treat a green connection badge as proof the data is there.

**With QuickBooks Payroll connected**, pull the same fields from there. Two different failures look alike here, and the owner hears them differently. An **empty source** (Gusto's lists come back with no rows on a company that reports a headcount) is a data gap: say so and use the run sheet. A **self-contradicting source** is a tool defect: `qbo_payroll_get_company_payroll_readiness` answering `has_employees: false` and `run_payroll_ready: false` while `qbo_payroll_get_employees` on the same company returns a `total_count` of 50 cannot both be true. This is independent of how much data the company has. When that happens, use the employee list for the roster (it is the call that returned rows), do not stage a run while readiness says not ready, and say both numbers to the owner in one line so the contradiction is on record rather than hidden behind "not ready." Then take the spreadsheet path below with that roster: a validated run sheet the owner keys into QuickBooks Payroll is the outcome, the same as for an empty source. This is a first-class source, not