The three payout channels

Not everyone at your studio is paid the same way, and the pay run knows that. When you run a period, InstructorHUB reads how each person is engaged and sends their pay down the right channel automatically. You never have to move someone into a payroll list or remember who invoices you, the routing follows the employment type you set on their staff record.

There are three channels, and the pay run groups everyone into them as three lanes so you can see at a glance who is being paid which way.

Payroll

Employees are paid through payroll. The pay run produces each employee's gross pay, the hours they worked at their rate, and that gross figure is what you carry into your payroll system. Alongside it InstructorHUB can show an estimated employer contribution, worked out from a contribution rate you set, so you have an indicative on-cost to plan around. That estimate is for visibility only: the exact contribution, and any tax, are worked out by your payroll or bookkeeping system, not by InstructorHUB. This is the lane for anyone on your books as an employee.

Contractor invoices

Contractors are not payrolled, they invoice you. For each contractor with hours in the period, InstructorHUB assembles the approved sessions into an invoice rather than a payroll line. You review and issue it, then pay it like any other supplier bill. See Contractor vs employee pay for why the two are handled differently.

Account credit

Some studios pay certain staff in teaching credit rather than cash, for example a parent whose teaching offsets their child's fees. For these people the amount is recorded as credit for you to enter in your studio's billing, instead of going to a payroll run or an invoice. Credit is usually reconciled per teaching block rather than per pay cycle, so it has its own view where you can mark each person as added to billing once the credit is entered.

How a person lands in a lane

The channel is set by the employment type on the staff record, so the way to change how someone is paid is to change their employment type, not to override it inside a single run. An employee routes to payroll, a contractor to an invoice, and a credit staff member to account credit. A studio owner is left out of the pay run by default, since owners usually draw pay another way, though you can choose to include owner labor where you want to see it costed. To change how a person is engaged, see Employment types explained.