Before you approve a payroll run, Wagepoint can generate a short AI-written summary that highlights what changed and what looks unusual in that run. The goal is to help you catch errors faster, so you can be more confident in your pay runs.
This feature is in beta and may not be available to all users. The summary should be used as a prompt to double-check your payroll, not as a substitute for your own review. The AI summary currently only displays in English.
How do I use the AI Payroll Summary?
1. Begin the payroll process as normal.
2. On the Review and approve step, click View my summary.
3. The Payroll Summary panel will open. After loading, it contains two sections:
- Payroll Snapshot: a quick overview of key figures for this pay run, including the top earner, current pay run gross, and number of employees paid
- Insights & Considerations: individual cards flagging anything that looks unusual, each one with an explanation you can expand
4. To read the details of an insight, click the arrow on an insight card to expand it. Each card includes an Explanation section with a description, and a comparison table showing figures across recent pay periods.
5. Review the insight and decide whether any action is needed. If an insight is not relevant, click Dismiss to remove it from the panel.
6. If you go back and make changes to the payroll run after the summary has loaded, the summary will not update automatically. Look for the banner near the top of the panel that indicates the results are from your last review, and click the refresh icon to update the summary with your changes.
7. When you are done reviewing, close the panel and proceed to approve your payroll as normal.
What does it look for?
The summary compares the current run against up to one year of payroll history. This is a list of some payroll anomalies it will pick up:
If an employee's pay lands well outside the normal range of variation for them historically — technically, more than two standard deviations from their average.
If a pay amount lands well outside that employee's normal range compared to previous periods.
If vacation hours are more than 10% outside what is typical for that employee based on their history.
If an employee appears to have been skipped for two or more consecutive pay periods.
If an active employee is included in a pay run but has $0 in earnings and zero hours.
If any employee has hours logged that seem abnormal, such as an employee with over 120 hours in a single week.
If one employee's gross pay is significantly higher or lower than the rest of the group in the same run.
If a net pay change is detected that isn't explained by historical hours or by EI and CPP contributions being maxed out.
If an employee's province of employment on file doesn't match their place of work.
FAQs: AI Summary
No. Before surfacing an insight, the AI will attempt to check whether the item is part of a normal payroll pattern. For example, if there is a pay rate change, the AI may connect it with a scheduled raise and leave it out of the summary.
In addition, the system will not analyze an employee who has fewer than three pay runs in Wagepoint, as there won't be enough data to make a comparison.
Review the summary and details for yourself. Not everything flagged requires action; some insights are warnings or recommendations, but others are simply informational.
Note: The summary cannot detect address or banking changes. The system only has access to the current details on file, so there is no way to compare against a previous version.
No. If the summary fails to generate for any reason, payroll approval still works normally.
No. The AI Summary insights serve only as an extra set of eyes on your payroll and will not block you from processing your payroll in any way.
FAQs: Data use and compliance
No. The AI Payroll Summary will never make changes to the data in your Wagepoint account. It will only surface insights for your review.
Your employees' names are never sent to the AI. The system replaces names with anonymized identifiers before analysis, and only the payroll data needed to generate the summary is used. This is the minimum necessary to spot anomalies and changes.
The AI only sees payroll figures, hours, and patterns. It does not see full names, and sensitive details such as full banking or account numbers are excluded.
Yes, a third-party AI service generates the summary. As a condition of Wagepoint's agreement with that provider, your data cannot be used to train shared AI models. All data is encrypted in transit, and a Data Processing Agreement is in place.
Yes. Wagepoint operates under PIPEDA, and applicable requirements were confirmed with Wagepoint's compliance team before the feature was made available to customers.
If you have questions or need a hand, reach out to the Wagepoint support team — we're happy to help.