Understanding payroll runs

When you pay approved invoices, Flamingo groups them into a payroll run — a single batch that’s charged to your payment method once, then paid out to each contractor. Every payment you make becomes a run you can track.

What is a payroll run?

• It’s created automatically when you pay invoices (via Pay or Quick Pay) — you don’t create one manually.
• One run can cover many invoices and contractors, charged together as a single transaction.
• Each run has a reference code and groups the contractor payouts plus the fees and any currency conversion into one total.

For the underlying timing, see How invoice funding works and how long it takes.

The Payroll Runs list

Open Billing → Payroll Runs to see every run, with summary metrics (paid year-to-date, pending funding, contractors paid, open runs, next scheduled run). You can search and filter by status, and use quick filters like Needs Action, In Progress, and Completed. Each row shows the run, its status, the period, funding progress, and the total charged.

Run statuses

• Draft — created, not yet submitted.
• Scheduled — approved and waiting for a future execution date (a pay-later run).
• Approved — ready to fund.
• Funding — your charge is being processed.
• Funded — your charge settled; payouts are being distributed.
• Funding failed — the charge didn’t go through — see What to do if a payment fails to fund.
• Completed — all contractor payouts in the run have been paid.

(You may also see Canceled or Reversed runs.)

Inside a run

Open a run to see its full detail:

• Cost breakdown — contractor payout, funding fee, FX spread, and FX buffer adding up to the total charged, with the exchange rate used. See Payment processing fees (card vs ACH).
• Funding progress — how many contractor payouts are funded, transferring, queued, or failed.
• Contractors (line items) — each contractor’s invoice, destination, amount, and payout status.
• Timeline — a full history of the run’s events.

Run-level vs contractor-level issues

Two different things can fail, and they’re handled separately:

• Run-level funding failed — the charge to *your* payment method didn’t go through. Fix it and Retry funding (you can switch payment method).
• A contractor’s payout failed — the run was funded, but the transfer to one contractor’s bank didn’t complete (often wrong or unverified bank details). Retry that payout individually or in bulk from the run’s line items.

For payout timing and why a transfer may still be processing, see How the payout date is calculated.

Canceling and refunding a run

• Cancel a scheduled run — cancel a pay-later run before its execution date.
• Discard a failed run — close out a run whose funding failed and you don’t intend to retry.
• Refund a payroll run — available on a Funded run; it reverses the charge (and fees). It’s blocked if any contractor payout has already transferred to their bank, since that money is already on its way.