Payroll #

Read this first, because it saves you a wrong turn:

Bizuno does not calculate payroll. There is no tax engine, no withholding
tables, no pay-period or deduction setup, no check printing, no W-2/1099
generation. Bizuno’s “payroll” is an import that takes the finished numbers
from a real payroll service (Paychex, PayrollCentric, Patriot) and posts them to
your General Ledger.

That’s the honest scope. If you need software that runs payroll — computes gross
to net, withholds and remits taxes, files quarterly — Bizuno isn’t it, and you
should keep using your payroll provider. What Bizuno gives you is a clean way to
get the accounting of each payroll run into your books without hand-keying a
journal entry every pay period.

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How it actually works #

The flow is: your payroll service runs payroll → you download a CSV → Bizuno
imports it as a General Journal entry.

  Paychex / PayrollCentric / Patriot
            │  (run payroll, withhold & remit taxes, pay employees)
            ▼
        Download CSV
            │
            ▼
  Bizuno: General Journal (jID=2) toolbar → [provider] import
            │  parse CSV → build GL legs
            ▼
        Posted journal entry (Dr wages/taxes, Cr withholdings/net)

The provider does the work that matters legally — calculating taxes, paying
employees, filing returns. Bizuno records the result.

Supported providers #

Three import connectors ship in core (under
controllers/phreebooks/payroll/):

Provider	Import source
Paychex	CSV export from Paychex
PayrollCentric	CSV export from PayrollCentric
Patriot Payroll	CSV export from Patriot

Each is a thin parser: read the provider’s CSV, map columns to GL accounts, total
them, and post.

Running an import #

1. Open the General Journal (jID 2). Enabled payroll providers appear as
   buttons on its toolbar.
2. Click your provider. Upload the CSV you downloaded from them.
3. Bizuno parses it into debit/credit GL legs and posts a General Journal entry
   (requires journal-2 edit rights, j2_mgr level 2), described e.g. “Patriot
   Payroll for <date>”.

What posts to the GL #

A typical run debits the wage and employer-tax expense accounts and credits
the liability accounts (taxes withheld, garnishments, benefits) and the
cash/net-pay account. For example, the Patriot connector maps to accounts like:

Dr  Salaries & Wages (expense)
Dr  Payroll Tax Expense (employer share)
  Cr  Federal Taxes Withheld (liability)
  Cr  State Unemployment / FUTA (liability)
  Cr  Employee deductions — medical, garnishments (liability)
  Cr  Net Payroll Paid from Checking (cash)

The entry balances like any journal entry. No employee-level detail is kept —
the import aggregates by GL account, so Bizuno stores the company’s payroll
accounting, not a per-employee earnings record.

The connectors carry default account mappings that won’t match your chart
out of the box (the Patriot connector, for instance, hard-codes a specific set
of account numbers). Review and adjust the mapping to your
chart of accounts before relying on it.

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Employees #

Employees are contacts flagged with the employee
role (ctype_e = 1). The contact record holds basic identity — name, government
ID (SSN), address, hire/termination dates — but no payroll setup (no pay rate,
no withholding profile, no deduction templates). Those live in your payroll
provider, not Bizuno.

Because the payroll import aggregates by GL account, you do not need an
employee contact per person for the books to balance — employee records are for
your own reference and for non-payroll uses (expense reimbursements, contact
management).

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Year-end (W-2 / 1099) #

Bizuno generates no year-end payroll forms. W-2s, 1099-NEC, quarterly 941s,
and state filings all come from your payroll provider, who has the per-employee
earnings and withholding detail Bizuno never stored.

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When to outgrow this #

You’ve already outgrown “built-in payroll” the moment you need it to calculate
anything — Bizuno was never going to. The right architecture is:

• Payroll provider (Gusto, ADP, Paychex, Patriot, …) runs payroll and handles
  compliance.
• Bizuno records each run’s accounting via the import (or a manual General
  Journal entry if your provider isn’t one of the three connectors — the GL legs
  are simple enough to enter by hand).

If your provider isn’t supported, you’re not blocked: post the same debits and
credits as a normal General Journal
entry each pay period.

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Related #

• Journals (the journal_id reference) — payroll posts to jID 2
• Employees
• Users vs. employees vs. contacts