Wages do not match the payroll

Wages in the trial balance do not match the payroll

“The payroll says RM 582,580 for March and the trial balance does not.” In BigLedger, wages reach the trial balance only through a general journal that a person posts from the payroll result. Nothing computes payroll here, and Payroll Admin’s Post GL writes to payroll’s own tables, not your ledger. So when the two disagree, check the payroll summary first, then the journal: it is missing, dated into the wrong month, posted twice or built differently from the summary. This page is for whoever posts the payroll journal or closes the month.

The fast path.

Work out the payroll cost the trial balance should show for the month, for that company only: gross pay plus the employer’s contributions, after checking that the summary’s own net pay comes out of its gross. If your chart keeps employer contributions on their own expense accounts, compare wages and those accounts together.
In Ledger And Journal, open the journal listing, set the date range to the month and the month after, and leave the Type filter empty. A search for MANUAL or for AUTO misses an imported journal.
Count the payroll journals you find. None, one in the wrong month, or two: the table below names the fix. One in the right month: compare its lines with the summary.
If the company total agrees and one branch reads nil, a line most likely has no branch, or was keyed to another branch.

Meet GadgetSphere

GadgetSphere Sdn Bhd’s (GS) bureau summary for March is gross pay RM 512,400 plus employer’s contributions RM 70,180: RM 582,580 of wages. The trial balance for March shows RM 1,165,160, twice the figure. The figures are illustrative.

What went wrong, and what the listing shows

What the listing shows	What happened	GadgetSphere
No payroll journal for the month	Nobody posted it, or it was posted for another company	March shows nil
One journal, dated the month after	It was dated the day it was posted or the day salaries were paid, not the last day of the month the work was done	March shows nil, and April carries March’s RM 582,580 on top of its own
Two journals for the same summary	A `FAILED` import file was uploaded again. Once its rows pass validation, a journal the server refuses is skipped while the others post, so a `FAILED` file may already have posted most of them. Or the month was keyed and also imported	March shows RM 1,165,160
One journal, the right month, a different total	It was built differently from the summary: the employer’s contributions left out, or salary-paid expense claims added into the wages line	Wages read RM 512,400, or RM 592,450.40 with the claims inside
The company total agrees, a branch reads nil	Usually that branch’s line has no branch, though it may have been keyed to another. The branch is optional on the line and in the import file, the header’s branch is not copied down, and a per-branch report drops a line with none	`GS-PEN-01` shows no wages
A pay run reads `POSTED` in Payroll Admin, and nothing moved	Post GL is not a ledger posting. It wrote three lines into payroll’s own journal	—

Correct it without posting the month twice

First decide whether the wrong journal has been reported. BigLedger lets you edit or remove a posted manual journal whatever the month, so the rule is yours to keep, not the screen’s. A period lock refuses a new keyed journal dated into a locked month. It does not stop an edit, a date change, a VOID, an import, a clone or a line deleted in View.

Not yet on any report, and the month still open: fix it in place. Change a wrong date or wrong lines and press UPDATE, which stays greyed out until debits equal credits. Set a missing branch the same way. Remove a duplicate by ticking it on the listing and pressing VOID: VOID deletes the journal and writes no reversal, so tick the copy, one row at a time, because the select-all box ticks automatic journals too.
Already on a report, or in a month that is closed: leave the original on record. Reverse it by cloning it and swapping every debit and credit, or post a correcting journal that moves the amount to the right account or branch, with a description that names the original (Journal entries, Steps 7 and 8). Which month the correction lands in is a decision for whoever signed the month off.
Missing: post it, dated the last day of the month the work was done (Posting the month’s payroll journal). If that month is locked, the post is refused until whoever closed it reopens it.
Built differently from the summary: move salary-paid claims out of wages and onto the claim items’ accounts, and add the employer’s contributions if they were left out, by either route above.
A pay run reads POSTED: post the general journal anyway. Nothing in Payroll Admin will.

What success looks like

For the month, in that company’s trial balance, the payroll cost (wages, and the employer-contribution accounts if you keep them apart) equals the payroll’s gross plus employer contributions, RM 582,580, and the month after holds only its own payroll. Every payroll journal line names a branch. A second check after pay day and the 15th: the net-pay payable and each statutory liability read nil.

Who checks this, and when

The trial balance does not know what the payroll said, so this check is finance’s, on the day the journal is posted, for each company, and again before the month is closed. It takes two minutes: the trial balance figure against the summary, and one per-branch report. A month that passes on the posting day and fails at the close has had a second journal or a date change since.

Common mistakes

What people do	What to do instead
Search the listing for MANUAL journals only	Leave the Type filter empty; an imported journal matches neither type
Upload a `FAILED` file again at once	Look in the listing first; most of its journals may have posted
VOID or edit a journal that has already been reported	Leave it on record and post a reversal or correction
Add the claims into the wages line	Debit them to the claim items’ own accounts
Wait for Payroll Admin’s Post GL to reach the ledger	It does not; post the general journal