A restaurant payroll approval checklist for every pay cycle

Payroll approval in a restaurant almost never fails because someone did the arithmetic wrong. It fails because the approval happens at the worst possible moment — a Sunday night, a Monday morning before a delivery, or on a phone between covers — and the person approving is looking at a total rather than at the six things that actually go wrong.

The checklist below is ordered by how often each item causes a correction, not by how the payroll screen is laid out. Run it in this order and the expensive mistakes surface first.

1. Every shift is closed, and every edit has a reason

Open shifts and missing clock-outs are the most common single cause of a payroll correction. They are also the easiest to catch, because the system already knows about them.

• No open or missing clock-outs anywhere in the period.
• Every manual time edit has a note explaining it. An edit without a reason is indistinguishable from an error a year from now, and it is the one thing you will wish you had written down.
• Breaks recorded consistently with how your rooms actually operate — not as a default the system applied on its own.
• Anyone whose hours are dramatically different from their normal pattern has been looked at deliberately, not skimmed past.

2. Declared tips reconcile to the POS

Card tips, cash declarations, and pooled distributions all have to agree with each other and with what the POS reports. When they do not, the difference needs an explanation before the run — a difference explained after the fact is a correction.

• Card tips from the POS match what is entered in payroll.
• Cash tip declarations are present for everyone who should have one.
• Tip pool or tip share distributions follow the policy you published to staff, not an informal arrangement that evolved on the floor.
• Tip-credit check: for each tipped employee, cash wage plus tips clears full minimum wage for the period. Per person, every period.

The mechanics of assembling these inputs are covered in the tipped-payroll workflow guide.

3. New hires exist, and were reported

Two separate failures hide here, and only the first one is visible in payroll.

• Everyone who worked in the period has an employee record. Someone who worked a week before anyone opened a record is both a payroll problem and a documentation problem.
• Tax forms are complete, so withholding is not running on a default.
• State new-hire reporting has been done. This runs on a deadline tied to the hire date, and nothing in a restaurant reminds you it exists — see the Massachusetts onboarding checklist.
• First-period pay reflects the correct start date and rate.

4. Terminations are dated and final pay is handled

• Every separation in the period is entered with the correct final work date.
• Final pay timing has been decided deliberately. Timing requirements differ by state and by how the separation happened — this is a decision to make, not a default to accept.
• Accrued balances that must be paid out have been calculated, and ones that need not be have been treated consistently with your policy.
• Nobody who has left is still active in the system and about to be paid.

5. Rate and role changes applied from the right date

This is the quiet one. A raise agreed verbally on the floor and entered into the schedule but never into payroll can run for months before anyone notices, and the correction is retroactive.

• Every rate change is applied from the date it actually took effect, not the date somebody entered it.
• Staff working multiple roles have hours allocated to the right rate for each role.
• Promotions that change exemption status or tip-pool participation have been handled as more than a pay-rate edit.

6. Deductions still match a signed authorization

• Every recurring deduction traces to a current, signed authorization on file.
• Garnishments and support orders are applied at the correct amount and priority.
• Meal, uniform, or similar deductions are treated consistently with your written policy and applicable rules.
• A deduction nobody can produce paperwork for is stopped and asked about, not carried forward one more cycle.

What to do when something fails the check

The useful instinct is to fix it before the run rather than after — but that depends entirely on where you are relative to the cutoff. So the practical rule is about time, not about the item:

1. Before cutoff: fix it in the source system, so the same error does not recur next period.
2. After cutoff, material: decide explicitly whether it warrants an off-cycle run or a correction. Both are legitimate; guessing is not.
3. After cutoff, immaterial: correct it next cycle and write down why, so the next person to see the discrepancy knows it was deliberate.

In every case, record what caused it. A correction log that shows the same cause three quarters running is telling you about a process problem, not a payroll problem.

Who should actually run this

Someone who is not the person who entered the data. That is the entire reason an approval gate exists — a second look by someone with a different view of the period. In a small restaurant that usually means the owner reviews what a manager prepared.

When BOHO runs payroll coordination, this checklist is what happens before your review arrives: exceptions are surfaced as specific questions with enough context to answer them, and nothing is submitted until a named approver at your restaurant signs off.