The Month With an Extra Run
Weekly and fortnightly payrolls produce months with one more run than usual. It is knowable a year ahead and is nearly always discovered in the week.
Written downif the person who does this is away
The two runs in one month, and what each needed
Done by: The owner
Done by: The owner
Done by: The owner
Done by: Nobody
Done by: The owner
Done by: The bank, on a standing instruction
Two runs in one month is a cash event before it is an administrative one, and it is knowable a year ahead. One small employer's own record of a five-week month; not a benchmark.
Weekly and fortnightly payrolls produce occasional months containing one more run than usual — five weekly runs instead of four, three fortnightly instead of two. The dates are knowable a year ahead and are nearly always noticed in the week they happen.
The practical lesson in “The Month With an Extra Run” is that payroll depends on a sequence somebody can explain. When a small team reviews see how the product handles this for pay periods in a year, the useful role is to organise time and project evidence before approval, with proportional settings and a clear correction route for employees.
It is a cash problem first and an administrative one second.
Additional context for “The Month With an Extra Run” is available from SHRM compensation resources. A sound review distinguishes general practice from the rules and records that apply to one employer.
Why it happens
Months are not four weeks long. A weekly payroll produces fifty-two payments across twelve months, so four months in most years contain five.
Fortnightly payrolls produce twenty-six payments, which gives two months with three.
What it does to cash
The month's wage cost rises by a quarter or a half against a month of ordinary revenue. For a business running close to its working capital this is the single largest predictable cash event in its year.
Why it surprises people
Because budgets are built monthly and payroll is run weekly, and nothing in the ordinary rhythm flags the mismatch until the money is due.
The business has not overspent. It has simply met a cost it had implicitly annualised at the wrong rate.
The fix, which costs nothing
Identify the months a year ahead and mark them. They are fixed by the calendar and the pay date and can be worked out in ten minutes.
Knowing in January that May and August are the five-run months is the whole of managing it.
What it does to the person running it
An extra gathering cycle in a month that felt finished. The chasing is harder in these weeks because nobody expects to be asked again so soon, and timesheets arrive late.
The administrative trap
Annual figures that assume twelve or twenty-six periods. Anything calculated per period and expected to total a year — an allowance, a deduction spread evenly, a budget line — behaves differently in a five-run month.
How that should be handled is a matter for whoever maintains the arrangement, and for somebody qualified where you are.
What not to do about it
Skip a run, combine two into one, or move a pay date to tidy the month. Each of those changes what people are paid and when, for the convenience of a budget, and none of them is yours to do quietly.
What the accounts should show
The cost in the month it falls. Smoothing it in the management accounts is a reasonable accounting decision and a poor cash decision, because the money still leaves when it leaves.
The conversation worth having once
With whoever watches cash: here are the four months this year with an extra run, here is roughly what the difference is, here is when it lands.
Ten minutes, once a year, and it converts a recurring shock into a line on a forecast.
The version of this that catches monthly payrolls
Rare but real: a month where a pay date falls at the very start and another at the very end, because the date moved for a weekend or a holiday.
Two payments land inside one calendar month even though nothing about the arrangement changed.
What to look at in your own calendar
Count the pay dates between January and December. If the total is not twelve, twenty-six or fifty-two, something has moved and the months it moved into are the ones to look at.
The thing worth writing on the calendar
Not "five-week month" but the figure: roughly what the extra run costs. A date with a number against it gets planned for; a date with a label gets noticed and forgotten.
Working out which months they are
Take the pay date, list every one in the calendar year, and count them by month. Ten minutes with a calendar, and the answer is fixed for the whole year.
For a weekly payroll paid on a Friday, four months will contain five Fridays. For a fortnightly one, two months will contain three pay dates. Which ones depends entirely on where the year's first pay date falls.
Telling the people who need to know
Whoever watches cash, and whoever approves spending. The finding is not "May is a five-week month" — it is a figure, on a date, in a forecast.
It is also worth telling whoever runs payroll, because the gathering burden in those months is higher and the extra cycle arrives in a week nobody expected to be asked.
What this looks like a year later
A business that marked the months in January meets them as planned events. One that did not meets the same four months as four separate surprises and concludes that payroll is unpredictable.
Nothing about the payroll changed between those two businesses.
A known event met as a surprise
An extra run is not a problem. It is a known, dated, calculable event that most small businesses meet as a surprise because nobody spent the ten minutes.