Payroll – Period Closing and Locking

When the month ends, the payroll period must be reviewed, approved, locked and sent on. The order matters: locking is what makes the figures authoritative, and several export routes require it to be done already.

The checklist applies when the pay is sent to Fortnox, PAXML or Visma. With Vendion Payroll you follow the payroll run's four steps under Personal ▸ Löner instead: you approve the whole pay with Godkänn lönen (approve the pay), and the period is then locked. See Vendion Payroll – How to Run Payroll.

Month-end checklist

Plan closing according to your payroll routine. The calendar month must have ended before you can lock it. Then check that clock entries, breaks and absence for the entire period have been reviewed.

You can complete the review a few days into the next month to allow for late corrections. Lock once the source records are ready.

Steps 1–3: review the source data

Time reports. Open Personal ▸ Tider and go through the period. Look especially for forgotten clock-outs, unusually long shifts and missing breaks. Approve row by row or for the whole employee.

Unapproved time blocks both locking and the payroll file. It is included in the data — excluding it would have caused silent underpayment — but the file cannot be created until the time is approved.

Absence. All pending requests with dates inside the period should have a decision. Remember that sick and childcare notifications are approved instantly and never sit waiting — there is nothing to decide there, only to check that the type is right.

Tips. Close the tip period and approve the distribution. A calculated but unapproved tip period gives everyone SEK 0 in tips in payroll, PAXml, AGI, FORA and SIE — you would have seen a finished distribution on screen that does not exist in payroll. Vendion warns if there is an unapproved period ending in the month.

Steps 4–6: approve the rows and run the reconciliation

Click each employee for the day-by-day breakdown and check the items that usually vary: the supplement buckets, sick days with the qualifying deduction, vacation days, childcare leave, meal deductions, the tip share and any manual adjustments.

Then approve row by row or with Godkänn alla (approve all). The status goes Ej godkänd → Godkänd → Utbetald (not approved → approved → paid).

Approval is bound to the row's amount. If something changes afterwards the row is flagged as changed and export is blocked until you approve again.

Run the reconciliation. Click Kör avstämning (run reconciliation). Vendion compares its own outputs for the same month — the screen, the SIE file, the PAXml file and the AGI and FORA files — and reports how many checkpoints agree.

A red checkpoint stops both locking and every export. The same applies if the reconciliation could not be run at all: silence must not be read as approval.

You can proceed anyway, but you must state why, and the reason is logged.

Step 7: lock the payroll period

The button is called Lås löneperioden. The period must have ended, all time entries must be approved and every relevant payroll row must be approved.

What locking does: the figures are stored as they looked at the moment of locking, and it is that frozen version PAXml, Fortnox, AGI, FORA and SIE read — not the live figures. At the same time, changes to time entries in the locked month are blocked. The page clearly shows Löneperioden är låst with a timestamp.

Lock every month. The locked months are also used later. Monthly-salaried staff's vacation pay is calculated on the pay during the earning year, hourly staff's vacation compensation when someone leaves on the pay since 1 April, and the SEK 1,000 limit in the AGI data on the year's earlier pay. If a locked month is missing, the vacation amounts are calculated provisionally and Löner says so, and the SEK 1,000 limit is not applied. Read more in Vacation Days and Vacation Pay.

Locking is blocked if there is unapproved time, if any row is not approved, or if the reconciliation is red. If the lock status cannot be read, the period is not locked — deliberately, since locking data nobody could verify is worse than not locking at all.

If anyone is missing an employment number you get a warning. It does not block — the number can be filled in on the staff record even after locking.

Who may lock: whoever has Redigera lönedata (edit payroll) for all employees. A manager whose payroll access is limited to certain groups (see Roles and Permissions) sees and approves pay for their own people, but the buttons for locking, unlocking and export are not shown to them. Locking covers all staff, so it is done by someone who sees the whole basis.

Steps 8–9: export, send and verify

Now, and not before, it is time to send the data on.

• Skicka till Fortnox Lön — the data goes straight into Fortnox, no file to carry. Requires a locked period
• PAXml — Lönefil (with Fortnox: PAXml-fil till Fortnox Lön (om överföringen inte fungerar)) — check import and wage-code mapping in the payroll system. Confirm support with the vendor before using the file in a payroll system other than Fortnox
• Visma Lön 600 — Lönefil (TLU) — payroll file for Visma Lön 600. It is read under Integrationer, and the bureau maps the codes the first time. See Payroll file for Visma Lön 600.
• SIE-fil — löneverifikat — only if you are not sending the data to a payroll system, otherwise the salary is posted twice
• AGI-underlag and FORA-underlag — reporting data to review before reporting. The AGI export is a CSV file, not a declaration-ready file or a submission to the Tax Agency
• CSV — Löneunderlag for your own processing

If you export an unlocked period the file is marked PRELIMINARY and you get a warning. Avoid it — a preliminary file imported for real is hard to undo.

Every export appears under Exporthistorik with format, period, timestamp and who exported it.

Verify afterwards. Check that salary, social contributions and the vacation liability are posted to the right accounts, and that the total in Vendion matches the total in the payroll system. Reconcile against the bank file once salaries have gone out. If you are unsure about the account structure, take it up with your accountant.

Employer's certificates are not produced here. You download the basis for the certificate on the staff record under Avslut och arbetsgivarintyg, and submit the certificate itself on arbetsgivarintyg.nu. See Ending Employment and Erasing Personal Data (GDPR). Exporting AGI data from Vendion does not send information to the Tax Agency or an unemployment fund.

If you find an error afterwards

• If you have not exported yet: click Lås upp (unlock), fix the error and lock again. Unlocking requires the edit-payroll permission for all employees and is confirmed in a dialog. The lock record is preserved — the evidence of what was exported does not disappear.
• If you have already sent the data on: coordinate with the payroll administrator so Vendion and the payroll system are corrected consistently. Check whether bookkeeping or a submitted employer declaration also needs correction. Avoid importing the same pay twice.

Unlocking and re-locking are told apart in Lönehistorik (payroll history), together with who did what and when.

Common pitfalls

• Forgotten clock-outs in the last week — go through the end of the month extra carefully
• An unapproved tip period — gives everyone zero tips, silently, in every file
• Exporting before locking — the file is marked PRELIMINARY
• Both PAXml and SIE for the same month — posts the salary cost twice
• Supplement rates changed mid-month — check that the rates applied on the days they should
• Staff without an employment number — they are left out of the PAXml file