Submitting and approving a payroll

Every payroll in Sahora is prepared by one person and approved by another before anyone is paid. This guide shows how a payroll moves from Draft to For approval to Approved · locked, and what to do when the approver sends it back.

Who does what

Preparer: an Owner / Management user or a payroll officer computes the payroll and submits it.
Approver: an Owner / Management user or a payroll approver reviews it and approves it. The approver must be someone other than the person who prepared it. Sahora checks this itself, not only on the screen.
If your company has only one user who can prepare and approve, that person may approve their own payroll. Sahora records it as a self-approval.

Submit a payroll for approval

Open Payroll and choose the pay period.
Compute the payroll (see Computing a payroll) and check the register and the notes beside each employee.
Click Submit for approval. The status changes to For approval and the approvers are notified.

Sahora won't accept the payroll for approval while:

an employee's net pay is below zero. Fix the deductions and compute again.
an employee in the payroll has no SSS, PhilHealth, Pag-IBIG or TIN on file. Enter the numbers, or mark them as not available yet on the employee's record (see Government and bank numbers).
the payroll was not saved completely. Compute it again.

To change something after submitting, click Recall. The payroll goes back to Draft.

Approve a payroll

Open Payroll and choose the pay period. The status shows For approval.
Read the register, the notes on flagged employees and the comparison with the previous pay.
If some employees have notes to check, or the payroll used statutory values not yet verified, tick the box that you have reviewed them. The approve button stays off until you do.
Click Approve and lock, then confirm.

The payroll and its pay period are now locked. If your company uses the employee portal, employees can now see their payslips there, and payslip emails go out if your company sends them.

After approval, corrections go into the next payroll

A locked payroll can't be edited. Corrections are made through an adjustment run (see Adjustment runs and back pay). An owner can unlock a payroll only in the cases described in Unlocking a payroll.

Send a payroll back

Click Return.
Type what needs to be fixed, then click Return to preparer.

The payroll goes back to Draft, and the preparer sees your note on the payroll page under "Returned by the approver".

If you prepared it yourself

If you computed or submitted the payroll, you see "Someone other than you must approve this payroll." instead of the approve button. Ask another approver.

If you are your company's only user who can prepare and approve, you see Approve my own payroll instead, with a reminder that it will be recorded as a self-approval.

Screenshot to come: The payroll page of a submitted payroll, with the Approve and lock and Return buttons

Good to know

An approver limited to some branches or departments can approve only a payroll whose employees are all within their scope.
If a billing statement is overdue, new payrolls are paused, but a payroll already submitted can still be approved and paid.
A company that signed up through HR, Finance or Accounting can't approve its first payroll until its owner or finance head has joined Sahora and signed in. See Your first payroll and the owner-level rule.
After approval, the payroll is released before payout files are made. See Releasing a payroll.

Where this guide gives a rate, limit or number of days set by law, it is the one in force today, 24 October 2026, from the official tables Sahora uses for payroll.