The pay period that belongs to two months

A pay period runs from 27 April to 10 May and pays on 15 May. April owns four of its ten working days, May owns six, and the ledger sees nothing at all until pay day, unless somebody accrues. This page does the split on purpose.

RuleSplit a straddling period by working day: accrue the April share at close, reverse it on 1 May, let the pay run post the full amount on pay day.

Neverbook payroll cost on the pay date alone. A month that happens to contain three pay dates instead of two shows a cost spike that never happened.

One period, four dates. The red one is where the accrual keeps April honest; the run itself posts nothing until 15 May.

◆ Why the ledger is blind until pay daycost happens daily, posting happens on pay date.

People earn pay every working day, but the payroll run posts once, on the pay date. Without an accrual, April closes carrying none of the cost its last four working days created, and May carries all of it. Neither month is wrong twice the same way: a month with three pay dates overstates, the next understates.

The monthly numbers in the labor cost report are on the work-date basis precisely because of this: cost belongs to the days that created it, not to the Friday the bank file went out.

◆ The split, workedten working days, four April, six May.

Period 27 Apr to 10 May	Working days	Share
April share, 27 to 30 Apr	4	841,700.00
May share, 1 to 8 May	6	1,262,550.00
Full period gross cost	10	2,104,250.00

The split runs on working days from the shared date table, not calendar days: 27 April 2026 is a Monday, so April contributes Monday through Thursday and May contributes Friday the 1st plus the full week of the 4th. Each share is days over ten times the period cost, to the cent. Sample values are illustrative, never client data.

◆ The three entriesaccrue, reverse, post; May nets to its own share.

Date and entry	Amount
30 Apr, accrue the April share into April	841,700.00
1 May, reverse the accrual	-841,700.00
15 May, the pay run posts the full period	2,104,250.00
Net cost landing in May	1,262,550.00

The reversal is what makes the pattern safe: the run posts the whole period without anyone splitting the actual pay lines, and the two May entries net to exactly the May share. April keeps its 841,700.00, May keeps its 1,262,550.00, and nothing was booked twice.

◆ The owned answerthe calendar does the split, every period, no judgement calls.

The build keeps pay periods and the working-day calendar as tables, so the straddle share is a query result, not a controller's estimate. When a holiday moves a working day, the split moves with it, and the ledger tie proves the accrual and reversal both landed.

-- Working-day split for any straddling period
SELECT p.period_id, d.month_key, COUNT(*) AS work_days,
  ROUND(p.gross_cost * COUNT(*) * 1.0 /
    (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM dim_date x
     WHERE x.date_key BETWEEN p.start_date AND p.end_date
       AND x.is_working_day = 1), 2) AS month_share
FROM fct_pay_period p
JOIN dim_date d
  ON d.date_key BETWEEN p.start_date AND p.end_date
 AND d.is_working_day = 1
GROUP BY 1, 2

The same date table serves every module in this catalog, which is the quiet point: an accrual is only as defensible as the calendar underneath it.

Use case

Problem

Payroll posts on pay dates, so months with an extra pay date spike, straddling periods vanish from the month that earned them, and the accrual is a spreadsheet estimate.

What we build

Pay periods and a working-day calendar as tables, with the straddle share computed by query, accrued at close, reversed on the first, and proved by the ledger tie.

What you get

Months that carry the cost their days created, an accrual you can recompute on demand, and no more three-payday cost spikes to explain.

Does your payroll accrual live in a spreadsheet?

We build the calendar-driven split that accrues, reverses, and proves itself.

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Terms on this page

accrual: Cost booked into the month that earned it, ahead of the actual payment.
reversal: The equal, opposite entry on the first of the next month.
pay period: The date range a run pays for, here 27 April to 10 May.
pay date: The day the run posts and the money leaves, here 15 May.
work date: The day cost was actually earned; the basis the reports use.
straddling period: A pay period whose date range crosses a month end.
working day: A weekday the calendar counts for the split; ten in this period.
close: The point where a month's books are finalized, here 30 April.