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Attendance, leave, overtime, salary changes, joiners, leavers, reimbursements and recoveries. If each arrives as a spreadsheet emailed from somewhere else, the run is a transcription exercise.
Every transcription is a chance to be wrong, and the error is discovered by the employee rather than by the process.
Cut off inputs several days before the pay date. Run a draft, compare it against the previous period, and investigate every variance — a person whose net pay moved significantly is either a genuine change or an error.
The variance check catches more than recalculating does, because it looks at the whole population rather than at the arithmetic.
Variance against the previous period, per employee. It catches more than recalculating.
Far enough to investigate variances properly — typically several days before the pay date.
Because they must apply from their effective date, not the date they were entered. Dated records prevent it.
Half an hour with your own data usually saves reading three of these. The guides will still be here afterwards.