Payroll Automation Hours, leave and changes validated before every run
Every pay period, hours, leave and expenses become one checked ledger the payroll manager approves in one place.
- Run for you$297/month
- Custom build · this process$4,000–6,000 one-time
- Starts whenSchedule Trigger (pay-period cut-off)
Priced per entity. Multi-country payroll with different providers per country is a custom build; the validation rules are the bulk of the work. Custom builds start at $2,000 site-wide; this band is for this process and its integrations.
Payroll Automation is an automation Agentmelt installs in Slack and Google Sheets. The free template is a file you import yourself; the kit ($49) adds the setup guide and prompts. Installed for you costs $249 one-time and is live within two working days of access, with a recorded walkthrough and 30 days of fixes. Run for you costs $297/month, with setup and maintenance included. A custom build of this process is $4,000–6,000 one-time; custom builds start at $2,000 site-wide. No call is needed for any option. Written by Max Zeshut; last revised 2026-09-18.
Reference stack: Claude + n8n. Node names are on each step; the file is under the template.
Founder at Agentmelt
Reviews every build before it goes live; the workflow escalates to a person, never past one.
What is payroll?
Payroll automation, as it is worth buying, does not replace the payroll provider — it removes the week of spreadsheet reconciliation before every run. The workflow pulls approved hours from the time tracker, leave from the HR system, expense claims and the change log for the period, builds one row per employee (base, hours, overtime, leave, allowances, deductions, one-offs), checks it against policy rules — missing approvals, hours over contract, rate changes without an HR record, leavers still being paid — and has an AI agent compare each line to the last six periods and explain any outlier in one sentence. It never changes a number. The payroll manager approves in Slack, the clean file goes to Gusto, ADP, Rippling, Deel or Xero Payroll, and the processed totals are reconciled before payslips go out.
- Payroll week is a spreadsheet with 14 tabs and one person who knows why.
- A rate change was agreed in a chat, never reached HR, and showed up as a discrepancy after payday.
- Managers approve timesheets after the cut-off, so every run starts with chasing.
- Someone who left in March was paid in April.
- We find the errors when the employees do.
If two of these are yours, this is the process to look at first. Free audit — or read on.
What it looks like once it runs.
Payroll automation does not replace your payroll provider — it removes the week of spreadsheet reconciliation before every run. the workflow pulls hours, leave and changes from their source systems, validates them against policy, uses an AI review step to flag anomalies in plain language, and pushes an approved, clean file to Gusto, ADP, Rippling or Deel.
- Cut-off day, 6:00 Approved hours, leave and expenses are pulled into one line per employee.
- 6:05 Rules check the lines — missing approvals, hours over contract, rate changes with no HR record — and anything unusual against the last six periods gets a one-line explanation.
- 8:00 The payroll manager gets the summary and the exceptions with approve / hold buttons.
- On approval The run goes to the payroll provider; the processed totals are checked against what was sent before payslips go out.
Payroll runs are late and error-prone because the inputs arrive from five places: the time-tracking tool, the HRIS for new hires and changes, the leave system, expense claims, and a manager's email about a bonus. Someone merges them in a spreadsheet, misses a rate change, and the correction costs more than the run.
By the cut-off date, every input is already merged, validated and annotated. The payroll manager reviews a short exceptions list — “Sam's overtime is 2.4× last month's”, “new starter has no tax code” — approves, and the run goes to the provider. Corrections drop because the errors are caught before the run, not after.
Trigger, then 8 steps.
Seven of the eight steps run without anyone. Step 06 waits for a person.
Schedule Trigger (pay-period cut-off)
Collect period inputs
Pulls approved hours from the time tracker (Deputy, Clockify, Harvest), leave from the HRIS, expense claims from Expensify or Ramp, and the change log (new hires, leavers, rate changes) from the HRIS.
Normalise into one employee ledger
One row per employee per period: base, hours, overtime, leave, allowances, deductions, one-offs. Currency and locale handled per entity.
Validate against policy
Deterministic rules: missing approvals, hours above contract limits, rate changes without an HRIS record, leavers with active pay, starters missing tax details. Each failure becomes an exception with the rule that fired.
Anomaly review
Compares each employee's line to their last six periods and explains outliers in one sentence with the evidence. It never changes a number — it annotates.
Send the exceptions report
Payroll manager receives the ledger summary and the exceptions list with approve/hold buttons; managers get their team's missing approvals.
Wait for approval
The workflow pauses until the payroll manager approves in Slack or the sheet. Nothing is sent to the provider without that click.
Push the run to the provider
Uploads the approved ledger to Gusto, ADP, Rippling, Deel or Xero Payroll via API or the provider's import format, and stores the submitted file with a hash for audit.
Reconcile after the run
Compares the provider's processed totals to the submitted ledger and alerts on any difference before payslips go out.
By the cut-off date, every input is already merged, validated and annotated
By the cut-off date, every input is already merged, validated and annotated.
One decision, at step 06. Seven steps ran without you.
Each pattern page explains it in plain words and lists every automation that uses it.
The template is built on n8n (how the n8n AI Agent node works); the same steps run on Make, Zapier or plain code. The tool is chosen to fit your accounts, you own the result, and the template comes in all three formats.
Data it touches
- Time tracking (Deputy, Clockify, Harvest, BambooHR Time)
- HRIS change log and leave balances
- Expense platform (Expensify, Ramp, Pleo)
- Payroll provider API (Gusto, ADP, Rippling, Deel, Xero)
- Policy rules sheet (limits, allowances, entity settings)
Guardrails
- The workflow never submits without an explicit human approval; the Wait node is the control.
- The AI step annotates only; it has no write access to amounts.
- Every submitted file is stored with a hash and the approver's identity for audit.
- Provider totals are reconciled against the submitted ledger before payslips release.
Automate the reconciliation, not the payroll
Payroll providers already calculate tax and pay people correctly. What they cannot do is know that a manager forgot to approve overtime, that a rate change was agreed in an email but never entered, or that a leaver is still on the file. That is the reconciliation work that eats the week before every run, and it is entirely about merging and checking inputs — which is exactly what a workflow is for.
The design rule is that the workflow prepares and the human approves. Every automated payroll story that went wrong involved a system that submitted without a person looking at an exceptions list. The Wait node before submission is not optional.
Where the AI step earns its place
Rules catch known errors. The AI review catches the ones you have not written a rule for: an employee whose hours doubled, a bonus that is ten times the usual, a deduction that appeared for the first time. It compares each line to the employee's own history and writes one sentence per anomaly, with the numbers. The payroll manager reads a list of sentences instead of scanning 200 rows — and can still ignore the ones that are fine.
What to measure
Corrections per run (target: near zero after the second period). Hours spent preparing the run (typically from two or three days to under two hours). Approval lead time: how many days before the cut-off all manager approvals are in, which the preview run steadily improves.
What it connects to.
| Tool | Role in this workflow |
|---|---|
| n8n | Collection, validation, approval gate, submission |
| Gusto / ADP / Rippling / Deel | Payroll processing (unchanged) |
| Claude | Anomaly explanation in plain language |
| Slack | Approvals and manager nudges |
| Google Sheets | Policy rules HR can edit |
Want this running without building it?
$297/month
We set it up in your tools, run it on our servershost it on our n8n cloud (or deploy it to your own n8n, Make or Zapier), watch it, and fix it when something changes. Setup included, cancel monthly; the automation stays yours if you leave.
$4,000–6,000 one-time
Your systems, your rules, your edge cases. A one-off build delivered into your accounts to keepon Claude and n8n, delivered into your accounts to keep, with documentation and a recorded walkthrough.
Priced per entity. Multi-country payroll with different providers per country is a custom build; the validation rules are the bulk of the work.
One-time, in your own accounts
Do it yourself $49 — the workflow file for your automation toolthe n8n workflow and the Make blueprint with the setup guide, prompts, message templates and test checklist; you import it. Installed for you $249 — we put it into your accounts within $two working days of access, in your voice, with 30 days of fixes. The first is credited in full against the second for 30 days. No call for either.
When this becomes a custom build.
The subscription covers the standard version — $297/month, setup and maintenance included. Three things move it to a custom build ($4,000–6,000 one-time), delivered into your accounts to keep. If one of them is you, say so on the audit and the plan prices both.
Payroll in more than one country, with a different provider per country.
Validation rules that encode your own policies — overtime, allowances, contractor classification.
More than one entity, or a payroll system without an API.
Running the standard version first is the usual path: the exceptions it logs in the first month are the scope of the custom build, with your own numbers. How custom builds work.
Frequently asked questions.
Does this replace our payroll provider?
No. It replaces the spreadsheet work before the provider. Your provider still calculates tax, pays people and files returns.
Can it handle multiple countries?
Yes, as a custom build: one ledger per entity, entity-specific rules, and a provider integration per country. The validation and approval flow is shared.
What happens if the provider's API is down at cut-off?
The workflow retries, then falls back to producing the provider's import file for manual upload and alerts the payroll manager. The approved ledger is never lost.
Can an AI agent handle payroll discrepancies?
It can find and explain them before the run, which is the useful part: a line that differs from the employee’s last six periods gets a one-sentence explanation with the evidence — “overtime 22 h against a usual 4 h; timesheet approved by a different manager”. Deciding what to do stays with the payroll manager; the agent annotates, it does not edit.
How does payroll automation handle employee changes — starters, leavers, rate changes?
From the HR system’s change log for the period, matched against what payroll is about to pay. Starters missing tax details, leavers with active pay and rate changes with no HR record are hard stops in the validation rules; the exceptions report shows them to the payroll manager and to the managers who need to fix an approval before the cut-off.
Does payroll automation work with our provider?
Gusto, ADP, Rippling, Deel and Xero Payroll are supported directly; a provider that only accepts an import file gets the same approved ledger in its format. Several countries with a different provider each, or policy rules of your own, are a custom build on the same steps.
What this blueprint is built on.
Vendor documentation the steps rely on, and the rules the guardrails are written against.
- Gusto — API documentation docs.gusto.com/
- IRS — Publication 15, Employer's Tax Guide www.irs.gov/publications/p15
- n8n docs — Wait node (approval steps) docs.n8n.io/integrations/builtin/core-nodes/n8n-nodes-base.wait/