The Payroll changes report helps you track all changes relevant to payroll processing. It shows what changed, when the change was made, and when it takes effect — making it ideal for feeding accurate data into your payroll system.
Overview
The Payroll changes report is similar to the Change log report but is specifically designed for payroll workflows. Key differences include:
Uses an Effective period and Include changes since date instead of a single input period
Downloads as XLSX (Excel) instead of CSV
Focuses on payroll-relevant data changes
Creating a Payroll changes report
Go to Reports and either click the Payroll changes template or click Create custom report and select Payroll changes from the Report type dropdown.
Configure the date controls (see below).
Set up Identifier fields to identify each employee in the report rows.
Apply any Filters to narrow down the employees.
Select the Data fields you want to track changes for.
Click Download XLSX.
Date controls
The Payroll changes report has two date controls:
Effective period
This determines which changes are included based on when they take effect. For example, if you set the effective period to "Current month", only changes that come into effect during the current month will be included.
Available presets: Current month, Current year, Previous month, Previous 3 months, Previous 12 months, All time, or Custom.
Include changes since
This is a specific date that acts as a cutoff for which changes are included. Only changes that were made after this date will appear in the report, regardless of when they take effect.
You can set this to any date using the date picker. By default, it follows the start of your selected effective period.
Example: If your effective period is the current month and you set "Include changes since" to the 15th of the previous month, the report will include all changes made from the 15th onwards that come into effect in the current month. This helps you catch any late changes that were entered after your last payroll run.
Available data fields
The Payroll changes report tracks changes across the same categories as the Change log report:
Basics — Name, email, phone, address, gender, nationality, etc.
Employment — Job title, department, manager, contract type, employment dates, etc.
Banking — Bank details, account numbers
Compensation — All configured compensation types (salary, bonus, etc.)
Social — Custom social fields
Diversity — Custom diversity fields
Identifier fields
Just like the Change log report, you must configure identifier fields that appear at the beginning of each row to identify the employee. Available identifiers include first name, last name, email, department, teams, employee ID, status, and custom fields.
Scheduling for payroll cycles
The Payroll changes report is particularly useful when scheduled to run automatically. A common setup is:
Save the report with your preferred data fields and filters.
Enable Scheduled report.
Set the frequency to Monthly and choose a day that aligns with your payroll cutoff.
Set the Effective period to Current month and Include changes since to match your payroll cycle start.
Add your payroll team's email addresses as recipients, or configure SFTP delivery to automatically upload to your payroll system.
Tip: For SFTP delivery, you can configure the remote path to include a filename pattern that works with your payroll provider's import requirements.
Incomplete data notice
If you select data fields that Humaans only started recording after the start of your selected period, an information bar will appear showing the earliest date from which complete data is available. Data before this date may be incomplete for those specific fields.