Was everyone who should be paid actually paid?

The run finished, the totals tied, and one worker was still not paid. A total cannot catch a person who is missing from it. This control counts both directions: every active worker accounted for in the run, every payment mapped to an active worker.

RuleReconcile people before money: active workers to run members, run members back to active workers, both directions, every run.

Nevertreat a tied total as proof of completeness. A missing worker leaves no difference behind to find, and that is the whole problem.

◆ The failure the money checks cannot seea missing person is invisible to a sum.

Every money control in this module compares two versions of the same population: payroll lines against ledger lines, this month against last month. If a worker fell out of the run entirely, both sides of every comparison are equally short, everything ties, and the first alert is the worker at the door on pay day.

The fix is a count with a roster behind it, not another total. The missing timesheets control does the same job one step earlier, for hours; this one does it for the payments themselves.

◆ Forward: every active worker accounted forthe May pay date, 351 people, three buckets.

May 2026 pay date	Workers
In the May runs and paid	348
On approved unpaid leave, no pay due	2
In no run at all, the finding	1
Active workers on the pay date	351

The 351 is the same population the headcount report counts, and the two on leave reconcile to the workers on leave report. Every active worker lands in exactly one bucket, so the one who fell through has a row instead of an absence. Counts are illustrative, never client data.

◆ Reverse: every payment mapped to a workerthe same check, pointed the other way.

May 2026 payments	Workers
Paid and active on the pay date	348
Paid but no longer active, final pay	2
Workers paid in the May runs	350

The reverse direction catches the opposite failure: money leaving for someone who should no longer receive it. Here the two are April leavers receiving a legitimate final payment. When a name shows up in this bucket without a matching termination, that is the payment to stop before it recurs.

◆ The owned answertwo outer joins, run on a schedule, exceptions kept.

The build lands the run membership beside the worker roster and runs both directions as one query after every run. Exceptions are stored with the run they belong to, so the answer to when did we last miss someone is a table, not a memory.

-- Both directions in one pass, kept per run
SELECT 'active, not in the run' AS direction, w.worker_id
FROM dim_worker w
LEFT JOIN stg_pay_run_worker r ON r.worker_id = w.worker_id
WHERE w.active_on_pay_date = 1 AND w.on_unpaid_leave = 0
  AND r.worker_id IS NULL
UNION ALL
SELECT 'paid, not active', r.worker_id
FROM stg_pay_run_worker r
LEFT JOIN dim_worker w ON w.worker_id = r.worker_id
WHERE w.worker_id IS NULL OR w.active_on_pay_date = 0

Zero rows is the good result, and it is stored too. A control that only speaks up on failure cannot prove it ran.

Use case

Problem

Payroll totals tie perfectly while a worker misses a paycheck, because a person missing from both sides of a reconciliation leaves no difference to detect.

What we build

A person-level completeness check joining the worker roster to run membership in both directions after every run, with exceptions stored per run.

What you get

A named list instead of a surprise: who was active and unpaid, who was paid and gone, and proof the check ran even when the answer was nobody.

Found out about a missed paycheck from the worker?

We build the both-directions completeness check that finds them before pay day.

Talk to us

Terms on this page

completeness: Proof that everyone who belongs in a process is actually in it.
pay run: One execution of payroll; a worker can be in several runs a period.
run membership: The roster of workers a run actually picked up and paid.
active worker: A worker employed and in pay status on the pay date.
unpaid leave: An approved absence with no payment due, excluded on purpose.
final pay: A leaver's last payment, legitimately after their end date.
exception: A worker on one side of the reconciliation with no match on the other.
both directions: Roster to run and run to roster; each catches what the other cannot.