100% QuebecA pay run is the official closing of a period. It freezes the timesheets of the chosen range, locks in their calculations, records the hour bank movements, and leaves a dated, signed line in the history.
It is also the only operation in the product that undoes by leaving a trace: not by erasing itself. Hence the shape of this article: the list, then the three steps of creation, then what becomes of a run once it exists.
- What it freezes
- The period's approved timesheets
- What it ignores
- Everything not approved
- Going back
- Unlocking, with a mandatory reason
Before you start
- An administrator account with the “Manage payroll and decrees” permission.
- The “Pay runs” module enabled for your organisation.
- The period's timesheets approved: otherwise there will be nothing to lock.
- 1
Open the list of runs
“Pay runs”, in the Payroll section of the Exports menu. The list is the complete history of your closings: one line per run, the most recent on top.
An amber banner appears at the top as soon as a run is reopened for revision. It only goes away once the run is closed again, and that is deliberate: an unlocked run leaves timesheets editable, so figures that can still move under your feet.
The banner flags a run under revision; the Status column says which one. Ten columns per line: the period, the payment date, the clients covered, the counters, the gross total, the status, and who created it when. - 2
Choose a creation mode
“Create a run” opens a three-step wizard: the mode, the period and the filters, then the preview.
Two modes. “Suggested period” takes the last complete period from the cadence configured for your organisation and jumps straight to the preview: the normal path, the one taken every two weeks. “Custom” opens the dates and the filters.
The rest of this article goes through “Custom”, because that is the route that shows everything.
The thread of the three steps stays visible at the top: you always know where you are, and locking only happens at the end. No shortcut? Then the cadence is not set
When “Suggested period” shows “Configure a suggested cadence in Settings › Payroll”, your organisation has no declared pay cycle. The shortcut then has nothing to propose, and neither does the dashboard: it falls back on a default fortnight.
- 3
Set the period and name the run
Three dates. The first two bound the period covered, inclusively. The payment date is the one that will appear on the payroll files: it changes no calculation, it documents.
The name is optional and worth writing. It is what shows in the list, in search, and in the audit trail; “Payroll 2026-08-17 to 2026-08-23” can be found again, “Run 4” cannot.
Dates are typed as YYYY-MM-DD or picked from the calendar. - 4
Narrow the scope, or leave it alone
Five filters: client, project, employee, job class, worker type. Left empty (the normal case) the run takes the whole workforce of the period.
Filling them serves a partial closing: a client billed separately, a crew paid on another cycle. But a filtered run is not a small run: it is a different run, and the box below says why.
“Empty = the whole workforce of the period”: the sentence to remember from this step. A filtered run does not feed the hour banks
It does freeze the timesheets it covers, but it neither credits nor debits the banks: weekly overtime and averaging are computed over the organisation's whole period, not over a subset. Filtering is therefore a billing choice, never a way to cut payroll into pieces.
- 5
Read the preview before committing
The preview computes everything locking would do, without writing anything. Three counters: the timesheets that will be frozen, the employees concerned, the gross total.
Below, the warnings. They are what matter, and they come in two kinds: those that inform you of an exclusion, and those that block.
The exclusions: timesheets awaiting approval will be neither exported nor locked; those already caught in another run are ignored. The blocks: nothing to lock, a range that cuts through an averaging period, or timesheets held by a run under revision.
Here the preview refuses: the period's six timesheets are still waiting for approval, so the “Timesheets to freeze” counter stays at zero. That is the most common outcome of a first attempt
“No approved, unlocked timesheet matches” does not mean the period is empty: the Employees and Gross total counters are filled in. It means approval has not been done. Approve the timesheets, come back, and the preview will change.
- 6
Lock
“Create and lock” is the only button in the whole wizard that writes anything. It stays disabled as long as a block remains, and it asks for a confirmation that repeats the timesheet count and the dates.
What happens then, all at once: the timesheets go to locked, their calculations are frozen, the hour banks are credited or debited, and the run appears in the list.
Greyed out as long as the preview blocks; “Cancel” and “Back” cost nothing. - 7
Reread an existing run
A run's record gathers what it froze: the period, the number of employees, the number of timesheets, the gross total. Those four figures no longer move.
Two shortcuts at the top lead elsewhere: “Export this period” reopens pre-payroll on the same dates, “File in the history” finds the file already produced.
A reopened run carries its banner and the name of whoever reopened it; the four totals stay those of the locking. - 8
Reopen a run to correct it
“Unlock the run” asks for a reason, and it is mandatory. Unlocking rewinds the hour banks (exactly the reverse of the locking movements) makes the timesheets editable again, and writes every change into the audit trail.
A reopened run then has two outcomes, and only one is a return to normal. “Re-lock” freezes everything again from the corrected data; timesheets that fell back to awaiting approval are not taken up. “Abandon this run”, on the contrary, releases its timesheets, which become eligible for another period: the run stays in the history, marked “Cancelled”, and that is final.
1 close the run · 2 empty it and leave it dead in the history. A reopened run blocks the period
Until it is closed again, its timesheets belong to it: a new run over the same dates would come out empty, and therefore impossible to lock afterwards. The preview refuses to create that run anyway. Close first, create next.
- 9
Look at the unlock history
Every open → close cycle leaves its line: who, when, why, and when the run was closed again. It is the exhibit you show in an inspection when a payroll was corrected after the fact.
The reason is reproduced there exactly as it was typed. One more argument for writing it for somebody other than yourself.
One entry per unlock, with its reason. - 10
See the attached timesheets
At the foot of the record, the list of the run's timesheets: date, employee, project, hours, amount paid, status.
During a revision, two mentions appear in that list and are worth telling apart. “Editable during the run's revision” says a timesheet can still change; “Changed since the unlock” says it actually has: and therefore that the run's total will no longer match after re-locking.
The counter at the top right of the block repeats the run's timesheet count.
What to remember
Unlocking is not always allowed
Unlocking is set per organisation, in Settings › Payroll. It is also refused on runs predating the feature: their bank movements were never logged, so there is nothing to rewind, and Clic Horaire would rather refuse than undo blind.
The run and the export are two different things
Locking closes the period; exporting produces the file for your payroll software. You can export without having locked (that is what pre-payroll does) but the reverse is the right order: locking first freezes what the file will contain.
The run is what decides the dashboard's period
As soon as a run exists for a date range, the dashboard aligns with it and says so under its title: “Pay run period”. That is the most common reason the home screen does not show the period you expected.
Go further
Generating a pre-payroll export
Assemble the columns your payroll software expects, check what goes into the file, and understand what a preview does not freeze.
LireApproving a week of timesheets
Review punched hours against the planned schedule, understand what the decree adds, and approve: knowing what approval locks in.
LireReading your dashboard
What each card answers, where the displayed period comes from, and how to arrange the screen so it shows first what you look at every morning.
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