How to correct a payslip already processed

What is it for?

A validated or paid payslip can no longer be changed. When there is a mistake (a raise that should have started earlier, a fact recorded late, too little IRS withheld), fiscaldoo creates a corrective payslip with the difference and opens a processing correction, which says what else must be corrected: the journal entry, the payment of the difference and the returns already submitted.

When to use it?

• A raise takes effect in a month already closed: use Retroactive change of the retribution.
• A fact of the period changed after the payslip was closed (contract, schedule or attendance): use Rectify.
• Only the IRS withheld was wrong: use Correct the IRS withheld.

For a payslip still in Draft, none of this is needed: change it and calculate again (see How to process the month's payroll).

Where to find it?

• On the validated or paid payslip: Payroll › Process › Payslips › open the payslip › Correct the IRS withheld and Rectify buttons, and the Actions button (at the top of the payslip) › Create corrective, Recalculate what changed, Retroactive change of the retribution, Check the snapshot and the three delivery records.
• Open corrections: Payroll › Process › Processing corrections (only shown to the Payroll Administrator).
• The payment of the difference: Payroll › Pay › Salary payments.

Before you start

• Your profile is Payroll Administrator (the profile that follows the correction to the end). Caution: the Payroll Processor sees and uses, on the payslip, Rectify, Correct the IRS withheld, Actions › Create corrective and Actions › Retroactive change of the retribution. The latter changes the employee's retribution: it creates a contract version with the new retribution and the corrective payslips. In a test, the Processor changed an employee's retribution from 1,150.00 € to 1,200.00 € and fiscaldoo created the contract version on 01/10/2026 and two corrective payslips (October and November). The Processor does not see the Processing corrections menu.
• Cancelling a correction does not undo the change of retribution. The Administrator cancelled both corrections in that test: the corrective payslips became Cancelled, but the 01/10/2026 contract version stayed in the Pay history. To restore the amount you need a new contract version, as in How to change an employee's salary. So only the Payroll Administrator should use Retroactive change of the retribution; for the raise itself, see that article.
• Have the reason for the correction in writing (for example, the date of the raise agreement): the reason is required and stays on the correction.

How to use it

Correcting a raise that started in a month already paid

1. Open Payroll › Process › Payslips and open the payslip of the first month affected, for example Carla Sofia Mendes's October 2026 payslip, in Paid.
2. At the top of the payslip, click Actions and choose Retroactive change of the retribution.
3. In the window, confirm Takes effect on (it comes with the first day of the payslip, 01/10/2026), enter the New monthly retribution (1950) and the Reason. Click Change and prepare the corrective. fiscaldoo creates a contract version with the new retribution and one corrective payslip for each closed month from that date: in the example, October (payslip Paid) and November (payslip Validated), and one correction for each. These steps follow the October one.
4. Open the October corrective payslip, in Draft, with the strip “Corrective payslip for: Carla Sofia Mendes (01/10/2026 — 31/10/2026)” and a Base remuneration line with the difference (50.00). Click Calculate. (The screenshot shows the November one, which is identical.)
5. Check the calculation in How the amounts were reached. Do not validate yet if the DMR for the month in which the payslip was paid has already been submitted (as in the example: the October payslip was paid on 01/11/2026 and the November DMR is Accepted): Validate is refused with “Invalid Operation. The corrective payslip cannot be validated before the replacement declaration exists. What happened: the original was already declared (Replacement DMR). How to fix it: generate those propagations in the correction event first.”
6. Open Payroll › Process › Processing corrections and open the correction, In progress. The Propagation list says, line by line, what remains to be corrected and Why it applies. On the Replacement DMR line (“the DMR of the payment month was already submitted”), click Generate and then Confirm; the line shows the replacement DMR (see Correcting a DMR already submitted). If the month's DMR has not been submitted yet, the line says “Not applicable: the DMR was not submitted yet: the corrective payslip enters it” and this step does not exist.
7. Go back to the corrective payslip and click Validate. In the correction, on the Journal Entry line, click Generate and then Confirm; the journal entry is only generated with the corrective payslip validated (“The corrective payslip is not validated yet”). On the Payment of the difference line, click Generate and then Confirm: the payment becomes Generated (in a batch) and the corrective payslip stays Validated.
8. Open Payroll › Pay › Salary payments and the payment of the difference (44.50 €, Generated (in a batch)). Fill in Value date (the date given by the bank) and click Run; without the date, “Invalid Operation. The execution of the payment of “Carla Sofia Mendes (01/10/2026 — 31/10/2026)” needs the value date given by the bank.” The payment becomes Executed and the corrective payslip Paid. The other salary payments are covered in How to pay the salaries.
9. Go back to the correction and click Complete. The correction becomes Done.

Correcting only the IRS withheld

1. Open the validated or paid payslip and click Correct the IRS withheld. (Today the Payroll Processor also sees this button and uses it: check with the Payroll Administrator before recording.)
2. The window shows the payslip's IRS withheld. Enter the IRS that was due and the Reason and click Register the correction.

The payslip does not change. As the window explains, the difference is carried by the following payslips of the year: added if too little was withheld, refunded if too much was withheld, never more than each payslip withholds, and never after the last withholding period of the year. After recording, the Correct the IRS withheld button disappears from that payslip and the payslip shows the warning “IRS error registered: the IRS withheld was wrong by 12.00; the following payslips of the year carry it (left to correct: 12.00). The reason is in the IRS tab.” With the same amount as withheld, the window refuses: “Invalid Operation. The IRS due is equal to the one withheld (17.0): there is nothing to correct.”

In the example, Eva Cristina Rocha's September payslip withheld 17.00 € and should have withheld 29.00 €. The first following payslip to be calculated, the November 2026 one, withholds 8.00 € (that month's normal withholding, with the November reduction) plus 12.00 € of correction = 20.00 €, and How was it calculated? in the IRS withholding block says “Correction of the IRS of Eva Cristina Rocha (01/09/2026 — 30/09/2026) (CIRS art. 98.º n.º 4): 12.00 added.” The October payslip, which was already calculated, did not change. The Income tax adjustments list stays empty: the adjustment is not shown there, it is shown on the payslip that carries it. Pending validation by a certified accountant: adjustment of the withholding in the following months of the same year and its effect on the DMR.

Correcting after recording a late fact

If the contract, schedule or attendance for the month changed after the payslip was closed, click Rectify on the payslip, enter the Reason of the correction and click Prepare the corrective. fiscaldoo compares the period with what existed at closing and prepares the corrective payslip with the difference; from there, follow steps 4 to 9 above.

Example. Carla Sofia Mendes's raise, from 1,900.00 € to 1,950.00 €, was agreed on 20/10/2026 with effect from 01/10/2026. The October corrective payslip has:

• Base remuneration: 50.00 €;
• Social Security (worker): 11 % of 50.00 € = 5.50 €; paid by the company, 23.75 % = 11.88 €;
• IRS withheld: 0.00 €. How the amounts were reached says “IRS: table I of 2026; base 50.00 €; rate 0 %…” and “This payslip corrects an earlier one, which had withheld 248.00 € of IRS.”;
• Net to pay: 44.50 €.

Paid on 01/11/2026, the October corrective goes into the November DMR, on Carla's line: after generating the replacement DMR again, the Summary changes to 12,578.63 € of income and 1,277.10 € of contributions, with 875.00 € of IRS, and the fields Difference: income and Difference: contributions show 50.00 and 5.50. Pending validation by a certified accountant: IRS withholding on a salary difference for a previous month calculated only on the difference (50.00 €, rate 0 %) and not on the corrected month's retribution (CIRS art. 99.º-C); DMR month in which the difference is declared.

Journal entry SAL/2026/00006, posted with the date 31/10/2026 (the end of the corrected month), has these lines, checked in the ledger:

Account	Debit	Credit
632 Staff remuneration	50.00
231290		50.00
231290	50.00
2312 To staff		44.50
245 Social Security contributions		5.50
635 Charges on remuneration	11.88
245 Social Security contributions		11.88
Total	111.88	111.88

Pending validation by a certified accountant: date of the correction's journal entry in the corrected month (31/10/2026) and not in the month in which the correction is made; accounts 2312/231290 for remuneration payable (see also How to post the payroll to the accounts).

Expected result

• The original payslip stays as it was, in Paid. The corrective payslip, with Kind of payslip “Corrective”, appears in the list of payslips for the same period and becomes Paid once the payment of the difference has been executed.
• The correction is Done in Processing corrections, with the Payslip to correct, the Corrective payslip, the Revision (1 for the payslip's first correction), who started it and when, and the reason.
• The difference appears in Payroll › Pay › Salary payments with the net amount (44.50 € in the example), Generated (in a batch) and, after Run with the Value date, Executed.
• There is one corrective payslip for each month closed since the effective date (October and November in the example); the November one, with the payslip still Validated, is “Not applicable” for the payment (“the payslip was not paid yet”).

Important notes

• What the correction propagates. The Propagation list has four lines: Replacement DMR, Corrective Social Security declaration, Journal Entry and Payment of the difference. In the October example, the Social Security declaration was “Not applicable” (“the Social Security declaration was not submitted yet”) and the Replacement DMR was Pending (“the DMR of the payment month was already submitted”), with the Generate button: after Generate and Confirm, the line shows “DMR 2026-11 (Replacement return)”. If the DMR has not been submitted yet, the line says “Not applicable: the DMR was not submitted yet: the corrective payslip enters it”. The replacement DMR is prepared like the month's one (see How to send the monthly remuneration statement (DMR) to the AT), with Kind of declaration (Quadro 6) › Replacement return.
• Creating a corrective by hand. Actions › Create corrective creates an empty corrective payslip. When you click Calculate, lines added by hand are recalculated from the period's data: an Overtime line of 4 hours, with no hours recorded in the period, went back to 0.00. Do not use this route to pay hours or bonuses that are not recorded; record the fact first and use Rectify.
• A closed month does not accept new facts. Recording overtime on a day of a month already paid is refused (see “Common problems”).
• The annual statements only count what was paid. Until the payment of the difference is executed, Carla's annual statement does not include the 50.00 €.
• The payslip's “Actions” menu. On a Paid payslip: Create corrective, Recalculate what changed, Retroactive change of the retribution, Check the snapshot and the delivery records (Delivered by e-mail, Delivered in the portal, Delivered on paper). On a Validated corrective payslip, the menu also has Generate payment and Cancel, and the bar has Pay and Account. Check the snapshot stores the state of the payslip to compare in a future correction. Pending validation on screen: the effect of Check the snapshot.

Common problems

“Nothing changed since this payslip was closed” when clicking Rectify

• Symptom: “Invalid Operation. Nothing changed since this payslip was closed. What happened: the contract, the schedule and the presences of the period are as they were. How to fix it: nothing to do; to pay something else create a corrective payslip by hand.” It also appears in Actions › Recalculate what changed.
• Cause: the fact that changed is not recorded in fiscaldoo, or it is a raise.
• What to do: for a raise, use Retroactive change of the retribution. For another fact, record it first and click Rectify again.

“A presence cannot be created in a closed period”

• Symptom: when recording overtime on a day of a month already paid: “Invalid Operation. A presence cannot be created in a closed period. What happened: a validated or paid payslip of Bruno Miguel Teixeira already covers 15/09/2026. How to fix it: correct the presence that exists with the action “Correct” (it creates a new presence that points to the original). The attempt was registered in the audit trail.”
• Cause: the month is closed by the validated or paid payslip.
• What to do: follow the message's “How to fix it” and then Rectify on the month's payslip.

“Invalid Operation … still has propagations pending” when clicking Complete

• Symptom: “Invalid Operation. The correction “Correção de Carla Sofia Mendes (01/10/2026 — 31/10/2026)” still has propagations pending: Payment of the difference. What happened: a half-propagated correction leaves the declarations and the books out of step. How to fix it: generate each one (or mark it not applicable with the reason).” The English expression is the name of the Payment of the difference line.
• Cause: a Propagation line still has to be generated and confirmed, in this case the payment of the difference.
• What to do: generate and confirm the line the message points to and click Complete again.

The corrective payslip cannot be validated before the replacement DMR

• Symptom: on Validate, “Invalid Operation. The corrective payslip cannot be validated before the replacement declaration exists. …”
• Cause: the original payslip was already declared in a submitted DMR.
• What to do: in the correction, Generate and Confirm the Replacement DMR line, then validate the corrective payslip (steps 6 and 7).

The reason is not kept and the window does not close

• Symptom: “Some required fields are empty. Fill in the fields marked in red to be able to save.” on Rectify or Retroactive change of the retribution.
• Cause: the Reason of the correction, the Reason or the New monthly retribution is missing.
• What to do: fill in the field in red and click the window's button again.