Payroll contains sensitive employee information, so GrantLink limits payroll to organization admins. Only admins can use the payroll page, the payroll tools in chat, payroll imports, payroll evidence, and payroll reports. Members and viewers cannot see payroll details or change them.

Payroll registers and evidence files that you attach for payroll become admin-only files in GrantLink.

Include only the data GrantLink needs

Include:

a stable employee ID and the employee's name;
the payroll run, pay period, and pay date;
accepted earnings components and their amounts;
one entity and one currency in each file; and
evidence that shows where the employee worked.

Leave out Social Security numbers, bank details, home addresses, birth dates, tax elections, medical information, and unrelated HR records. Do not copy payroll details into shared reports or general notes.

GrantLink treats CSV headers and cells as data. Text in a file cannot instruct the assistant, change access, or skip the checks. The assistant only proposes which column holds which fact. GrantLink checks the original file and calculates each amount to the cent.

What GrantLink supports today

GrantLink supports:

payroll register imports from CSV files;
one cost for each employee and earnings component;
work evidence linked to an Initiative;
allocation across eligible grants, with any unassigned amount kept visible;
corrections that keep the full history;
reports by employee and grant, and saved snapshots; and
matching payroll runs to QuickBooks expense lines without changing QuickBooks.

GrantLink does not support:

connections to payroll providers, or XLSX imports;
payroll calculation, paychecks, tax filing, or timekeeping;
deductions, withholding, net pay, liabilities, negative reversals, taxes, benefits, or fringe pools;
earnings types other than gross pay or wages, salary, regular pay, overtime, bonuses, and stipends;
payroll in a currency other than your organization's accounting currency, or files with more than one currency or entity;
importing part of a file that has a rejected row;
payroll report export to PDF or Excel, or sending payroll reports to funders;
a screen for picking QuickBooks lines, or payroll journal entries;
payroll access for anyone other than organization admins; or
payroll amounts in reports outside the payroll page and the payroll sections of grant pages.

Common problems

GrantLink asks what a column means

Answer only when you know the fact, and name the person or source that confirms it. If your export layout changed, review the new mapping instead of assuming that the old mapping still applies.

The file does not import

Read the row and field in the error message. Remove deductions, taxes, benefits, liabilities, net pay, other rejected components, and negative amounts. Fix any malformed required data. Then import the complete file again, because GrantLink does not import part of a file.

If the error says the currency does not match, check that the file uses your organization's accounting currency.

A cost has no eligible grants

Confirm that the cost has the correct Initiative. Then check that an active grant funds the Initiative and allows expenses on the pay date. See Creating and Managing Programs and Initiatives. Do not choose an unrelated grant just to clear the unresolved amount.

A report stays Working

Open Needs attention to record work evidence and assign grant amounts. Then choose Report and use Resolve QuickBooks matching. You can save the current state as a Working snapshot, and the snapshot keeps its open items.

The source run was replaced or voided

Import changed source content with the same run identifier, and GrantLink saves it as a new revision. Ask GrantLink to void a run only when the payroll run itself was voided. Do not delete history or offset it with a negative row.

You are not sure what to do next

Ask GrantLink in chat: "What does payroll still need from me?" The assistant can read the current payroll allocations. It can explain missing evidence, open grant decisions, and QuickBooks matching.