Who it’s for: Administrators
Platform: Sense HR Web app
Available on: All plans
Before you begin, make sure you’re:
☑️ Logged into Sense HR
☑️ Assigned administrator permissions
☑️ Clear on your organisation’s payroll period dates
☑️ Familiar with your working hours, pay elements, and event types
Overview
The Payroll Extract report allows administrators to compile all payroll-relevant data into a single, structured dataset for a defined pay period.
Unlike a simple summary report, a Payroll Extract can combine:
Personal and employment identifiers
Contracted and actual working hours
Time & attendance data (including overtime and anomalies)
Holiday, sickness, TOIL, and other event durations
Pay rates and effective dates
Benefits and allowances
Departmental or contractual grouping data
Because Payroll Extract reports pull directly from live employee records, planners, and attendance data, they provide a reliable, audit-ready view of what should be paid — and why.
⚠️ Known issue:
Leave requests that are still awaiting approval and fall within the selected payroll date range are currently treated as approved in Payroll Extract reports.
Before running payroll analysis, ensure all leave requests within the pay period have been reviewed and either approved or declined.
Additional report fields to identify pending leave requests are planned for release to address this behaviour.
What can Payroll Extract reports be used for?
Payroll Extract reports are typically used for:
1️⃣ Payroll processing
Verifying worked hours and overtime
Confirming holiday and sickness deductions
Checking leavers within a pay period
Providing payroll departments with structured CSV exports
2️⃣ Financial forecasting
Estimating wage costs for upcoming pay periods
Projecting overtime spend by department
Analysing absence cost impact
Modelling workforce costs before approving additional shifts or hires
3️⃣ Compliance and audit
Supporting payroll audits
Reviewing historical pay-affecting changes
Verifying effective dates of pay amendments
Cross-checking contract types and entitlements
4️⃣ Operational insight
When combined with Sense HR reporting features and AMI, Payroll Extract data can be analysed to:
Build payroll summaries
Compare departments
Identify anomaly patterns
Generate executive-ready cost breakdowns
Create predictive staffing cost models
💡 Tip: A well-structured Payroll Extract can be saved and reused each pay cycle, reducing manual setup and improving payroll consistency.
Navigation path
Dashboard > Reports > Payroll Extract
Create and prepare your Payroll Extract report
Navigate to Payroll Extract reports
1. Open Reports from the left-hand navigation menu.
2. Scroll down to Payroll extract and select it.
3. Click Create.
Create your report
1. Choose the fields required for your purpose.
A Payroll Extract can include data from multiple areas, including:
Personal and Employment details
Full name
Employee ID
National Insurance number
Contract type
Start and end dates
Department and location
Pay details
Effective date
Salary or hourly rate
Pay period
Additional pay elements
Benefits and allowances
Working hours and attendance
Schedule duration
Net worked duration
Overtime duration
Attendance anomalies
Clock entries
Time-off and entitlement
Holiday duration
Sickness duration
Maternity/Paternity duration
TOIL
Other absence types
2. Once fields are selected, click Next to generate a draft.
💡 Best practice:
Include all fields that payroll or finance may require for validation or reconciliation.
You can use Add fields at any time to add or remove fields and adjust your selection.
Filter the report for the correct payroll population
1. Apply filters to ensure only relevant employees and dates are included.
For example, for a specific payroll run, you may want to filter by status or date:
Status filter
Select:
Active
Future leavers
This ensures only employees who should be paid in the selected period are included.
Date filter
Select the payroll period:
Use a preset (e.g. Last month), or
Enter specific From and To dates
This ensures time-based data (attendance, overtime, events) is limited to the correct pay window.
2. Apply additional payroll filters (if required)
Depending on your payroll structure, you may also filter by:
Department
Contract type
Location
Specific pay groups
Event types
Example use cases:
Running overtime-only extracts for warehouse teams
Producing separate extracts for weekly and monthly payroll groups
Forecasting costs for a single division
🖊️ Note: Required fields and filters depend on your organisation’s configuration, licensed features, and payroll model.
Save your reusable Payroll Extract
Once the report accurately reflects your payroll requirements:
Click Next
Enter a clear report name
Example: Payroll Extract – Monthly (Core Data)(Optional) Add a description
(Optional) Add a custom AMI prompt for analysis
This can also be done after saving the reportClick Save
🖊️ Note: Analyse with AMI is available on Elite and Enterprise plans only.
💡 Tip: Use consistent naming conventions so the same report can be reused each pay cycle.
Use your Payroll Extract report
After saving, you can:
Export as CSV for payroll submission
Create charts to visualise trends
Analyse with AMI to generate summaries and forecasts (Elite and Enterprise only)
Duplicate and adapt for department-level payroll modelling