A guy who quit in September is still getting paid

Here is how it usually goes. It is Thursday night. You pull up the hours. Seven people, two weeks, a few hundred punches. You scan it, it looks about right, you hit run, and you go to bed.

Monday, Dana texts you. Her check is a day short. She forgot to clock out Wednesday, the system counted that day as zero, and nobody caught it. Now you are doing a fix-up check, she is wondering if you noticed, and you are wondering what else you missed.

Or it goes the other way. Payroll was $900 higher than normal and you do not know why. You find out in November that a guy who quit in September kept getting hours because his login was still on the timeclock.

Nobody is stealing. Nobody is careless. The hours are just a pile of numbers, and a pile of numbers does not tell you which one is wrong.

I built a skill that goes through the pile before you run it.

What it does

It pulls the hours from Gusto, from QuickBooks, or from a spreadsheet you upload. It adds up regular, overtime, and PTO for each person. Then it runs every line through a list of the things that get people shorted or overpaid:

• A clock-in with no clock-out.
• Hours after somebody's last day, or before their first.
• Overtime that jumped: 27 hours this period, zero last period.
• A rate that changed since last time.
• Hours on a Saturday when nobody is scheduled Saturdays.
• Punches that are 7:00 and 15:00 every single day, to the minute, which usually means somebody typed them in later.

For each thing it finds, it tells you who, what it found, the exact dates and hours, what it probably means, and the one thing to check. Like this:

Dana Ortiz — missed clock-out. Clocked in Wed Sep 16 at 07:05, no clock-out. That day counted as 0 hours. Probably forgot; she worked Thu and Fri as normal. Check with her or Marcus what time she left.

Then it lays the whole run out as one table, one row per person, and you go down it. Approve. Hold. Change. A person with a missed punch is marked HOLD so you cannot approve them by accident. When you are done, it reads the whole thing back to you, the count and the total, and asks "run it?"

Only then does anything happen. And what happens is: you get the run file for your payroll tool, and it drafts the journal entry for your books or the email to your bookkeeper, which you also have to say yes to.

The one rule that matters

It never fixes anything quietly.

It would be easy to fill in Dana's missing clock-out with 3:30, since that is when she leaves every other day. A lot of software does exactly that. I do not want a machine deciding what my people get paid. So it says: "Her other days end at 3:30. Want me to use 3:30? Say yes and I'll re-total her line." And it waits.

Same with the guy who quit. It does not drop his hours. It holds his line and says: "Pay it, drop it, or fix his end date. Tell me which."

What it will not do

It never pays anyone. It prepares the run. Your payroll tool pays.

It never files a tax form, never posts taxes to your books, never quotes a net check. Taxes are the payroll tool's job and it says so.

It never guesses an overtime rule. It uses the federal one (over 40 in a week, at time and a half) unless you tell it your state has its own, and it tells you to ask your payroll company if you are not sure. It is not a lawyer.

What it caught on mine

I tested it on a made-up fence company, seven people, two weeks. I put six problems in the timesheet on purpose. It found all six, plus one I had not planned: Labor Day was in the period, nobody had hours that day, and the company pays holidays. Nobody had holiday pay entered. Six people would have been shorted eight hours each.

It also found the one that scares me most: a punch dated four days after a guy's last day. It held that line and would not let it through.

How to try it

1. Download the skill at the top of this page. Add it to Claude or ChatGPT. The steps are in the box, and inside the zip.
2. Say "run payroll" or "check the timecards." The first time, it asks two short rounds of questions about how your payroll works, then saves them.
3. Give it the hours. Connected tool, or a file.
4. Go down the table. Say what to check. Then say run it.

If you are not sure the money is there for this payroll, do the Cash Flow Snapshot first. It tells you the day and the number. This one makes sure the run itself is right.

Dana should never have to text you on Monday. My email is on the contact page.