Managing a Draft Run
Everything you can do to a pay run before it is posted — reopen it, change its dates, duplicate it, or throw it away.
A draft pay run is completely malleable. Nothing has been posted, nobody has been paid, and no payslip exists. That is the whole point of the Draft state: it is where a payroll is allowed to be wrong.
What is offered, and when
The actions on the pay run workspace change with the run's status. Draft-only actions are not rendered at all on an approved run — they are absent, not disabled.
| Action | Draft | Approved |
|---|---|---|
| Post payroll | Yes — the primary action | No, it has been posted |
| Edit | Yes — reopens the four-step editor | No |
| More → Edit details | Yes | No |
| More → Duplicate | Yes | Yes |
| More → Delete | Yes | No |
| More → Bank file | No | Yes |
| Download all payslips | No | Yes |
| Email payslips | No | Yes |
Reopening the editor
Edit takes the run back into the four-step editor with everything as you left it — the people, the pay items, the overrides. Use it when the change is structural: someone needs adding or removing, an item needs to go on the run, a rate needs overriding for one person.
Changing the dates or the name
More → Edit details changes the run's subject, period start, period end and pay date without reopening the editor. All four are required; the period end cannot precede the period start.
The pay date orders payment history, decides which year a payslip counts towards, becomes the date of the journal when the run is posted, and decides which earlier run each person is compared against in Review. Change it before posting, deliberately — not as a tidy-up.
Duplicating
More → Duplicate opens a new draft in the editor, seeded from this run — the same people, the same pay items — with the dates ready for a new period. It copies the structure, never a posted result, and it works from a draft or an approved run.
This is how a monthly payroll should be built: post August, duplicate it, adjust what changed, post September. It also means the posting account mapping is offered back, because the groups are the same.
The original stays exactly as it is. Duplicate reads it and hands a copy to the editor; the new run does not exist until you save it as a draft.
Deleting
More → Delete on a draft, after a confirmation that says plainly that it cannot be undone.
Nothing was posted, so nothing is reversed — there is no journal to void and no payslip to withdraw. The run simply stops existing as far as every list and report is concerned.
Delete is not offered on an approved run, and the server refuses it independently of what the screen shows. A posted run has journal entries and payslips behind it; removing it would leave the ledger describing a payroll that no longer exists. Correct a posted run through Finance, the way you correct any other posting.
The pay schedules list can also delete a selection. The same rule applies there — only drafts are removed. If you select an approved run it stays exactly where it is.
The one-way door
Edit, re-date, duplicate, delete. Change your mind as often as you like.
Journals are written, the run becomes Approved, and every payslip is generated. See Posting payroll & journals.
The run is a record of what happened. It is not edited after the fact.
This is why the Review step exists, and why it compares every person against their own previous run. Spending two minutes there is the entire defence against a mistake that has to be unpicked in the ledger.