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Agent skill

Payroll Operations

by cbrock84 in cbrock84/headcount

Runs the pay cycle so it is right, on time, and provable — the calendar and cutoffs, what feeds pay from the HRIS and time systems, gross-to-net and the deductions in it, multi-jurisdiction…

MITAuto-check passedBusiness, Finance & HR

Install Payroll Operations

skills CLI
$ npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill payroll-operations -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install cbrock84/headcount payroll-operations --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/cbrock84/headcount.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/plugins/people/skills/payroll-operations .claude/skills/payroll-operations && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
payroll-operations
GitHub stars
2k
Token cost
~1.1k tokens
SKILL.md length
617 words
Files
2 (incl. references)
Skills in repo
178
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Runs the pay cycle so it is right, on time, and provable — the calendar and cutoffs, what feeds pay from the HRIS and time systems, gross-to-net and the deductions in it, multi-jurisdiction…

  • Tasks that involve Accounting and bookkeeping
  • SKILL.md covers The calendar is the control, Know what feeds pay, and make…, Gross to net, and what sits… and Every new jurisdiction is a…, plus 4 more sections
  • Instructions only: no scripts, shell commands, URLs or credentials in SKILL.md
  • Tasks that involve Tax preparation

What it does

Payroll Operations is an agent skill from cbrock84/headcount. Runs the pay cycle so it is right, on time, and provable — the calendar and cutoffs, what feeds pay from the HRIS and time systems, gross-to-net and the deductions in it, multi-jurisdiction registration and tax filing, off-cycle payments and corrections, and the reconciliation to the general ledger. Use this to design or audit a payroll process, work out what happens when someone is paid wrong, or understand what changes when you hire in a new state or country.

Its SKILL.md is about 1.1k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 2 other files, including reference files (for example `references/sources.md`).

It sits in Business, Finance & HR, covering Accounting and bookkeeping and Tax preparation. The repository describes itself as: An agent organization structured as a company — 15+ departments, 125+ skills, each independently installable, citing the standards and regulators that settle the question. Runs… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Tasks that involve Accounting and bookkeeping
  • Tasks that involve Tax preparation

Example prompts

  • “/payroll-operations”

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 98d1c17. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    No scripts in the folder and no shell commands in SKILL.md.

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Payroll Operations loads about 1.1k tokens when it runs, and up to ~1.6k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 121 tokens; SKILL.md has 617 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~121
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~1.1k
With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them
~1.6k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from cbrock84/headcount at commit 98d1c17, republished under its MIT licence (© cbrock84). 617 words, ~1,135 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/payroll-operations/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 1 other file; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
payroll-operations
description
Runs the pay cycle so it is right, on time, and provable — the calendar and cutoffs, what feeds pay from the HRIS and time systems, gross-to-net and the deductions in it, multi-jurisdiction registration and tax filing, off-cycle payments and corrections, and the reconciliation to the general ledger. Use this to design or audit a payroll process, work out what happens when someone is paid wrong, or understand what changes when you hire in a new state or country.

Payroll operations

Payroll is the process with the least tolerance for error and the least visibility until it breaks. Nobody notices it working; everybody notices a late or wrong payment, and trust recovers slowly.

Payroll tax registration, withholding and filing obligations vary by jurisdiction and change frequently. Get a qualified adviser or a provider who takes filing responsibility, and confirm where liability actually sits.

The calendar is the control

Work backwards from the pay date: funding date, approval, processing cutoff, time-entry deadline, change deadline. Publish it, and treat the change deadline as real — the alternative is a correction cycle running permanently alongside the pay cycle.

Bank holidays, month-end, and year-end all move cutoffs. A calendar that was right in January quietly stops being right, and the first sign is a late funding.

Know what feeds pay, and make the HRIS the source

Every input is a place errors enter: new hires and terminations, pay changes, hours from time systems, commissions and bonuses, expense reimbursements, benefit deductions, garnishments.

The failure that produces most wrong payments is two systems disagreeing about someone's status — a leaver still active in payroll, a pay change entered in one place. Identity, employment status, and pay data should originate in one system and flow outward. Where a feed is manual, it needs a reconciliation, not a reminder.

Gross to net, and what sits between

Gross pay, pre-tax deductions, taxable wages, withholding, post-tax deductions, net. Understanding the order matters because it determines what a change actually costs and why a raise produces a smaller increase than expected.

Employer cost is not gross pay. Employer taxes, benefit contributions, and mandated insurances sit on top, and a hiring plan built on salary alone understates cost materially.

Garnishments and support orders have legal priority and limits on how much can be taken. They are one of the few payroll items where getting it wrong exposes the employer directly.

Every new jurisdiction is a registration, not just a line item

Hiring one person in a new state or country typically means registering as an employer there, withholding under that jurisdiction's rules, filing its returns, and often carrying insurance specific to it. Remote hires create this quietly, and the cost is usually discovered after the fact.

Track where employees actually work rather than where they were hired. Someone who moved is a registration question the day they moved.

Show full SKILL.md (222 more words)Show less

Corrections, off-cycles, and overpayments

Decide in advance what triggers an off-cycle payment rather than waiting for the next run, because that decision made under pressure defaults to whatever is fastest.

Underpayments get corrected quickly, and usually should. Overpayment recovery is the harder one — rules on recovering from future pay vary and are often restrictive, so the practical answer is usually a written agreement rather than an adjustment made unilaterally.

Reconcile every cycle, and reconcile the year

Payroll register to general ledger, and the sum of the cycles to the annual filings. Reconciling each cycle takes minutes; reconciling a year of unreconciled cycles at year-end takes weeks and finds errors too late to correct cleanly.

Sources

references/sources.md in this skill lists the outside authorities that settle the questions here — what each one is authoritative for, and what you may do with it. Check them before answering on anything they cover, and cite what you used. Most are free to read and not free to reproduce; the use note on each is binding.

Never

  • Pay from a spreadsheet that has not been reconciled to the system of record.
  • Process a change that arrived after cutoff without deciding whether it is an off-cycle.
  • Recover an overpayment by unilaterally adjusting the next payment.
  • Add an employee in a new jurisdiction without checking what registering there requires.

© cbrock84, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 1 other file (references) in plugins/people/skills/payroll-operations of cbrock84/headcount.

  • SKILL.md
  • references/sources.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 98d1c17

Compare with similar skills

Payroll Operations next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

Payroll Operations compared with similar skills
SkillStarsUsed inTokensAuto-checkLicenceRepo updated
Payroll Operations this skillcbrock84/headcount2k—~1.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Invoice Organizerdavila7/claude-code-templates32k12 repos~2.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Kanchi Dividend Us Tax Accountingtradermonty/claude-trading-skills3k1 repos~1.1kAutomated safety check: PassMIT
Financial Retentionmukul975/Privacy-Data-Protection-Skills297—~3.5kAutomated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Fondo Install Authjeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace2.8k—~883Automated safety check: PassMIT
Tax Ebookkeeping Contextkazukinagata/shinkoku365—~242Automated safety check: PassMIT

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Categories

Questions about Payroll Operations

What does Payroll Operations do?

Runs the pay cycle so it is right, on time, and provable — the calendar and cutoffs, what feeds pay from the HRIS and time systems, gross-to-net and the deductions in it, multi-jurisdiction…. Payroll Operations is an agent skill from cbrock84/headcount. Runs the pay cycle so it is right, on time, and provable — the calendar and cutoffs, what feeds pay from the HRIS and time systems, gross-to-net and the deductions in it, multi-jurisdiction registration and tax filing, off-cycle payments and corrections, and the reconciliation to the general ledger.

When should I use Payroll Operations?

Payroll Operations fits situations like: tasks that involve Accounting and bookkeeping; tasks that involve Tax preparation.

How do I install Payroll Operations in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill payroll-operations -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (plugins/people/skills/payroll-operations in cbrock84/headcount) into .claude/skills/payroll-operations in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Payroll Operations in Codex?

Run `npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill payroll-operations -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (plugins/people/skills/payroll-operations in cbrock84/headcount) into .agents/skills/payroll-operations in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Payroll Operations in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add cbrock84/headcount --skill payroll-operations -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/payroll-operations, .gemini/skills/payroll-operations, .github/skills/payroll-operations and .opencode/skills/payroll-operations in your project.

What does Payroll Operations need to run?

SKILL.md names no scripts, command-line tools or credentials: Payroll Operations is instructions for the agent only.

Does Payroll Operations access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Payroll Operations safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. Review the folder before installing.

What licence does Payroll Operations use?

Payroll Operations is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Payroll Operations use?

About 1.1k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 4.5k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full. Its references folder adds about 497 tokens, read only when the agent opens those files.

What are the alternatives to Payroll Operations?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Payroll Operations: Invoice Organizer (davila7/claude-code-templates, 32k stars), Kanchi Dividend Us Tax Accounting (tradermonty/claude-trading-skills, 3k stars), Financial Retention (mukul975/Privacy-Data-Protection-Skills, 297 stars) and Fondo Install Auth (jeremylongshore/tons-of-skills-marketplace, 2.8k stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Payroll Operations?

cbrock84 (a GitHub user) maintains it in cbrock84/headcount, which has 2,016 GitHub stars. The repository holds 178 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on September 17, 2026.

Source: cbrock84/headcount on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.