Payroll inputs assembled on schedule,
payroll itself stays with you
We do not run payroll. A provider or your accountant should always do that. What eats time every cycle is gathering the inputs: hours from a time tracker, leave from HR, expense claims, bonuses from a spreadsheet someone forgot to update. We build an agent that pulls all of it into one clean, checked file on a schedule.
Everything that happens before payroll runs
Running payroll is a provider’s or an accountant’s job, and we leave it there. What eats a surprising amount of time every cycle is everything that happens before payroll runs. Hours and overtime pulled from a time tracker. Leave approvals from HR. Expense claims due by the fifth that trickle in until the twentieth. Bonus amounts sitting in a spreadsheet nobody updated since last quarter. Someone has to chase all of it down and assemble one clean file, and that chase repeats every cycle.
Errors are the second cost, and these are expensive precisely because they touch people’s pay. An approved leave day missing from the hours total. A bonus applied to the wrong person. An expense claim counted twice because it appeared in two source files. These mistakes are more stressful to fix after the fact than almost any other finance error, because they land in someone’s paycheck.
The third is timing. The chase always compresses into the last two or three days before the payroll deadline, exactly when mistakes are most likely.
What the agent does
The agent pulls hours and leave from your time-tracking and HR tools. It merges in expense claims and bonus inputs from wherever they live, and checks the combined total against the prior cycle. It flags anything that looks like a jump worth a second look. A sudden spike in overtime. A leave balance that does not match what HR approved. A bonus entry that appears twice. It assembles a clean, payroll-ready file in the exact format your provider or accountant expects, days ahead of the deadline instead of the night before.
Where approvals are missing, the agent sends a reminder to the specific manager who owes a sign-off, with a deadline. Not a generic nag to the whole team. Every input is logged with its source. If a number looks wrong later, tracing it back takes seconds, not a reconstruction project.
What stays with humans
The agent assembles inputs. It never calculates payroll, applies tax rules, or submits anything to a provider. Every payroll run gets signed off by a person before it goes anywhere. Any flagged variance, hours or bonuses that look unusual, gets a human decision on whether it is correct before it makes the final file.
Guards
Every input is logged with its source system and timestamp, giving a full audit trail for a number that ends up in someone’s pay. The variance check against the prior cycle runs automatically, and anything outside the normal range gets flagged rather than silently included. No payroll file leaves this process without a human sign-off, every cycle, no exceptions.
Price and timeline
| Option | Price | What it covers | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single automation | from $600 | One time-tracking source, one payroll format, variance check | 3 to 10 days |
| Department package | from $2,500 | Payroll input prep plus expense categorisation and employee onboarding across HR and finance | 2 to 4 weeks |
Running cost is usually $10 to $40 a month in model usage depending on headcount, with a budget cap set before launch.
Related
Pair this with expense categorisation so expense inputs feeding payroll are already clean. It also pairs with employee onboarding, so new hires are correctly set up in the time-tracking and HR systems this pulls from. For the scheduling that feeds hours in the first place, see interview scheduling. The full package breakdown is on the AI agents service page and the automation-everything overview. For a real HR data pipeline, see the recruitment AI bot case study and the factory ERP recovery case study.
Ready to stop chasing payroll inputs the week before the deadline? Get in touch and we will map your current sources in the first call.
Tired of doing this by hand? We can take the whole routine off your team, not only this step: Routine takeover, from $400 →
FAQ
How much does payroll input automation cost?
From $600 for one time-tracking source and one payroll provider format. More sources add time, quoted after a short review.
How long does it take to go live?
3 to 10 days once we have access to your time tracker, HR system and the file format your payroll provider or accountant expects.
What tools does it connect to?
Time-tracking tools like Deel or BambooHR, your HR system, and the import format your payroll provider uses.
What if the AI gets an input wrong?
Any variance against the prior cycle, a sudden jump in hours or a missing approval, is flagged for a human before the file is finalized. The agent never calculates or submits payroll itself.
Is payroll data handled securely?
Payroll inputs stay within your HR and payroll systems. We do not store salary data outside the file we help assemble for your provider.