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Module · Payroll

Payroll that knows ministry rules.

Full payroll processing — from pay-run creation through NACHA direct deposit, tax withholding, and accounting export. Ministry rules baked in, not bolted on.

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Core capabilities

A complete payroll engine with ministry-aware defaults.

Full pay-run workflow

Create a pay run, import or enter hours, review and adjust, generate pay stubs, submit, generate NACHA and journal entries.

Symmetry Tax Engine

Federal, state, and local tax calculations through Symmetry — location-aware, up-to-date with current tax tables.

Configurable pay profiles

Set up as many pay profiles as your org needs. Each one drives its own schedule, pay rules, and the employees mapped to it — all on the same payroll engine.

NACHA direct deposit

Standards-compliant NACHA file generation for ACH payments. Per-employee multi-account split supported.

Housing & 403(b) native

Clergy housing allowance, 403(b) retirement plans, Form 4361 exemption — not workarounds. First-class concepts in the model.

Pay-run overview

Every pay run, every status, on one screen.

The Pay-run Overview is where admins live during payroll week. Every regular and supplemental run shows two independent status stages — time locked and payroll processed — so you can see at a glance which run needs attention.

1
Time locked Hours are frozen. No more edits to the timesheets feeding this run.
2
Payroll processed Calculations complete: gross, taxes, withholdings, net pay.
Pay profiles

Profiles set the schedule. Once.

Each pay profile holds the cadence (period start/end, approval date, pay date, pre-pay window), the pay rules (Full Time Employee hours, min/max hours per week), and the employees mapped to it. Configure once. Every subsequent run inherits the schedule.

Pre-pay model

Pay employees in advance. Handle the true-up automatically.

Some ministries pay employees at the beginning of the month for the month ahead. Known as the pre-pay model, it inverts the usual pay-in-arrears assumption baked into most payroll software.

CarbonHRM supports this natively via the PrePayFTE pay profile. The calculation engine runs forward-looking payroll and carries over the previous month’s overtime and adjustments into the next pay cycle — so your staff is paid on time and your books reconcile.

Read more on ministry payroll
Forward-looking Pay is generated before the month begins
Auto-carry Prior-month OT and adjustments true-up automatically
Reconciles NACHA + JE totals match your accounting system
Two run modes

Regular runs for cycles. Supplemental runs for bonuses.

Most runs are regular: pick a profile, confirm the dates, run payroll. Supplemental runs handle anything off-cycle — Christmas bonuses, year-end gifts, a special distribution — calculated as a percentage of a lookback period.

Post-payroll

Everything that happens after the pay run.

Journal entries

Completed pay runs generate journal entries with GL codes mapped to your chart of accounts. Campus/department distribution built in.

Tax forms

W-2, 1099-NEC, 1095-C, and 941 flow from payroll data into the Tax Reporting module. No double-entry.

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AI payroll validation *

AI flags pay runs that diverge from historical patterns for this employee or this period — before you submit. Catches data-entry errors.

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Payroll alerts *

Threshold-based alerts fire when a run crosses a configured boundary — pay variance, missing checklist items, late approvals. Catches issues before pay date.

* Coming soon — currently on the roadmap.

Talk to us See Tax Reporting