About PostBooks
Payroll providers give you a report after every pay run. They do not give you a journal entry. Someone has to read that report, figure out which accounts to debit and credit, type the numbers into QuickBooks or Xero, and make sure everything balances. That takes time, and one wrong number throws off the whole trial balance.
PostBooks automates that step. Upload your payroll CSV or PDF, map the line items to your chart of accounts (once, then it is saved), and get a balanced journal entry ready to import or sync. IIF for QuickBooks Desktop, direct integration for QuickBooks Online and Xero, or universal CSV for everything else.
Who PostBooks is for
Solo bookkeepers
Who handle payroll for multiple clients and need to turn Gusto, ADP, or Paychex reports into journal entries every pay period.
Small accounting firms
Where multiple bookkeepers process payroll for dozens of clients. The Firm plan lets the team share mapping templates and keep an audit trail.
Anyone building payroll journal entries by hand
If you are copying numbers from a payroll report into QuickBooks line by line, PostBooks replaces that entire workflow.
What is a payroll journal entry?
A payroll journal entry is the accounting record that moves payroll costs into your general ledger. It takes the numbers from your payroll provider's report and splits them into debits and credits across the right accounts: salary expense, tax liabilities, employer contributions, and the cash account for net pay.
Here is a simplified example. Say you run payroll and the total gross pay is $5,000. Federal withholding is $750, state withholding is $250, and the employee FICA share is $382.50. The employer also owes $382.50 in FICA. Net pay (what hits the employee's bank account) is $3,617.50. The journal entry would look like this:
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Salary Expense | 5,000.00 | |
| FICA Expense (Employer) | 382.50 | |
| Federal Tax Payable | 750.00 | |
| State Tax Payable | 250.00 | |
| FICA Payable | 765.00 | |
| Cash | 3,617.50 | |
| Totals | 5,382.50 | 5,382.50 |
Debits equal credits. That is what "balanced" means. PostBooks builds this entry automatically from whatever payroll report you upload, using the account mapping you set up. No manual math, no transposed numbers.
How we think about the product
- Get the math right
- Every journal entry is automatically balanced. Debits equal credits before you can export.
- Stay out of the way
- Upload, map, export. Three steps. PostBooks fits into the workflow you already have.
- Protect payroll data
- Payroll reports contain sensitive employee data. Files are encrypted in transit and at rest, never shared, and you can delete them at any time.
- Work every time
- Payroll runs on a schedule and so should your tools. PostBooks handles the same report format consistently, period after period.