Payroll setup
Company registrations, tax accounts, pay schedules, worker records, pay methods, and prior-provider carryforward.
Education
Understand payroll before it becomes a problem.
Clear explanations for compensation decisions, setup, payday, taxes, worker changes, corrections, filings, and the records an employer, worker, or advisor will need later.
EDUCATION MAPPayroll topics
Employerssetup, taxes, notices
Workerspaystubs, time, changes
Advisorsrecords, proof, corrections
Core lessons.
These are the education pages Runbook needs before it looks like a complete payroll company.
Pay runs
Regular, off-cycle, bonus, contractor, final, correction, reimbursement, and manual-check workflows.
Payroll tax
Withholding, employer taxes, deposits, filings, W-2s, 1099s, agency accounts, amendments, and notices.
Timecards and hourly work
Punchcards, employee-submitted time, manager approval, overtime, breaks, job codes, PTO, and missing-time stops.
Tips and tip credit
Tip reporting, tip-credit notices, minimum cash wage, tip pools, service charges, state-law differences, and proof.
Certified payroll
Public-work jobs, Davis-Bacon-style wage/fringe evidence, weekly reports, statement-of-compliance workflow, and job classification.
Employment types
W-2, 1099, hourly, salary, tipped, multi-state, remote, seasonal, final pay, certified payroll, and advisor-managed clients.
Corrections and notices
Late facts, corrected checks, agency claims, provider tickets, open gaps, and advisor-ready response packets.
Compensation integrity
Legal floors, public wage context, total compensation, internal consistency, worker questions, and a documented human decision.
Worker economic integrity
Fee-free wage access, purpose-bound payroll data, durable pay promises, accountable support, and records that survive a provider change.
Compensation Integrity Guide · Source review: July 30, 2026
Set compensation responsibly without pricing the worker.
Public labor data can inform a decision. It cannot reveal what one person is worth or the least that person will accept.
Runbook's boundary
Runbook records and explains compensation. It does not price workers. A responsible process combines lawful constraints, public reference distributions, job-related factors, internal consistency, and a human decision. It never turns payroll or behavioral data into a measure of a worker's desperation or bargaining power.
A five-part employer decision process.
The outcome is a reviewable decision record, not a wage recommendation.
1Establish the legal floorIdentify every applicable federal, state, local, prevailing-wage, collective-bargaining, and contractual requirement. A market estimate never overrides a legal obligation.
2Read public labor-market contextUse occupation, geography, industry, and a visible wage distribution. Preserve the source period and methodology instead of presenting one number as the correct wage.
3Consider total compensationReview base pay together with paid leave, insurance, retirement, differentials, and other benefits. Do not use benefits to obscure an inadequate or unlawful cash wage.
4Check internal consistencyCompare substantially similar work using disclosed job-related factors such as responsibility, experience, credentials, shift, location, and documented performance.
5Make and record the human decisionRecord the amount, effective date, decision-maker, sources, basis, reason, automation involvement, and a path for the worker to question the result.
Use each public source for what it can actually say.
A benchmark is context. It is not a ceiling, fairness certificate, or substitute for examining the job and the employer's own decisions.
SourceUseful forDo not claim
BLS Occupational Employment and Wage StatisticsPublic wage distributions by occupation and available geographic or industry groupings.That the median is the correct wage, that an estimate determines an individual's value, or that separate annual estimates form a precise time series.
BLS Employer Costs for Employee CompensationUnderstanding average employer costs for wages, salaries, and major benefit categories.That a broad average determines the right package for a particular job or worker.
Labor Department and jurisdiction sourcesFinding minimum-wage, overtime, prevailing-wage, and other applicable legal requirements.That meeting a legal minimum alone makes compensation competitive, equitable, or sufficient.
Employer's own recordsReviewing consistency among substantially similar roles and preserving the stated reason for differences.That historical differences are automatically legitimate or that worker vulnerability is a job-related factor.
The red lines.
These practices turn payroll infrastructure into worker-pricing infrastructure.
No lowest-acceptable-wage output
Do not estimate a worker's reservation wage, willingness to accept, or probability of rejecting an offer.
No vulnerability inputs
Do not use garnishments, debt, bank activity, dependents, benefits, health, leave, payment failures, or payday timing to set compensation.
No behavioral leverage
Do not use negotiation behavior, prior acceptance, likelihood to complain, retention predictions, or inferred desperation to lower an amount.
No hidden experiments
Do not run undisclosed compensation tests or dynamically vary wages to discover how little a worker will accept.
No private wage coordination
Do not pool customer payroll data to recommend, coordinate, cap, or suppress wages. Public aggregate sources require their own stated limitations.
No fairness by assertion
A human click, a market median, or a documented reason does not by itself prove that a compensation decision is fair or lawful.
Questions a worker should be able to ask.
A compensation record is incomplete if only the employer can understand it.
1What amount and effective date were recorded?
2What job, band, agreement, schedule, or other basis was used?
3Which public sources were consulted, and from what reference period?
4What explains a difference from substantially similar work?
5Did automation influence the amount?
6How can I question or correct this record without retaliation?
Primary sources.
This guide is educational, not legal, human-resources, compensation, accounting, or financial advice. Applicable law and current source data require separate review.
Worker Economic Integrity · Source review: July 30, 2026
The paycheck should not become an extraction platform.
Payroll software should help deliver and prove wages—not turn access, vulnerability, or switching costs into a new source of leverage.
Runbook's boundary
Runbook must not extract value from a worker's need to be paid. The record should preserve the promise, show what happened, support a real dispute path, and remain usable when an employer changes providers.
Five promises for payroll infrastructure.
These constraints apply to Runbook itself, its integrations, and future revenue models.
1No pay-to-be-paidA worker should not owe Runbook a fee merely to receive ordinary wages, see required records, question a paycheck, or correct a Runbook error.
2Payroll-purpose limitationDo not repurpose payroll facts for discipline, unrelated eligibility, or vulnerability-based financial targeting.
3Durable pay promisesPreserve the amount, basis, effective date, authorization, applicable conditions, and later amendments. Do not silently rewrite the promise after work is performed.
4Accountable human supportA chatbot is not the final wage-dispute authority. A named human owner must be able to review evidence, explain the decision, and correct an error.
5Exit with the record intactOrdinary exports, worker access, and proof should not be degraded, withheld, or made punitive to obstruct a provider change.
The traps to design against now.
A payroll system can become extractive without ever changing its headline subscription price.
Paycheck junk fees
Fees for wage delivery, balance access, required records, support, or correcting the provider's own mistake.
Financial targeting
Using garnishment, leave, payment timing, or other distress signals to market or price credit and financial products.
Algorithmic management
Letting opaque scores shape schedules, discipline, work allocation, or termination without disclosed facts and accountable review.
Mutable pay terms
Changing rates, incentives, deductions, or conditions after the worker has relied on them or performed the work.
Cost shifting
Moving ordinary business costs onto workers through deductions, misclassification, equipment charges, or reimbursement friction.
Record hostage-taking
Using incomplete exports, disappearing history, or punitive access terms to make switching providers unsafe.
Sources and further reading.
These sources describe emerging extraction patterns and regulatory concerns. This guide is educational, not legal, employment, financial, or compliance advice.
Templates to build.
Education should lead into concrete payroll artifacts.
1Employer setup checklistEntity facts, tax accounts, bank authorization, pay schedule, prior-provider records, and owner approvals.
2Employee onboarding checklistWorker identity, tax forms, direct deposit path, work location, rate, role, policy acknowledgments, and effective dates.
3Timecard approval templateEmployee submission, manager review, edits, missing breaks, overtime, tip declarations, and approval event.
4Notice evidence packetAgency letter, period, tax type, asserted amount, payroll record, deposits, filings, and response owner.
5Compensation decision recordLegal floor, public-source context, internal comparison, amount, basis, reason, decision-maker, automation disclosure, and worker question path.
Education should move people into the right payroll path.
Explore setup, switch, notice, correction, advisor, or proof-demo routing without submitting information.
Explore setup prototype