Gusto payroll export
A per-run payroll journal / payroll-details CSV from Gusto, wrongly read as the company's complete labor spend for the period.
The shape, how the file is really laid out
A wide CSV with one row per employee per payroll run, and a column for every
earning, reimbursement, employee tax, employer tax, and benefit deduction,
so most cells are blank rather than zero. Columns typically include Gross
Pay, per-type earnings, Reimbursements, employee taxes, Net Pay, then
employer-side Employer Taxes and Employer Benefits, and a run-level Total
Payroll Cost / Debit Amount. Rows are keyed by pay date; off-cycle, bonus,
and dismissal runs are separate payrolls with their own rows. Some exports
render money as strings with "$" and commas; negatives appear on
corrections.
The traps
Gross Pay is not the company debit and Net Pay is not the cost: the bank debit is Total Payroll Cost = employee net + all tax deposits + employer taxes + Gusto's fees, and only the employer-side columns capture the burden.
- Every trap in this export, worked through
- The reconciliation anchor, the total the file asserts about itself
- The refusal cases, when to stop and ask instead of guess
Reference: Gusto Help Center payroll journal / reports documentation · Gusto payroll reports export reference