Why it matters
This is the hand-off between FabWise and your payroll provider. FabWise captures and reviews the hours; your provider pays them. The pay-period export bundles a whole pay period into one file, so you make one clean hand-off instead of one per week — and you can only export hours you have already signed off, so the numbers you send are the numbers you approved.
How it works
The export covers one pay period — the schedule you set for payroll, which may span one or more workweeks. FabWise gathers every worker's Net Hours for the period, after your corrections and rounding, and writes one row per worker into a single CSV file.
The file lists Regular Hours only. FabWise does not classify overtime — your provider applies its own overtime rules to the hours you send. This keeps FabWise focused on an accurate record of who worked when, and lets your payroll system do the pay math.
Where to find it
- Page: Reports
- Path: Admin > Reports > Payroll Export
- Who can see it: Account owners and admins
What you'll see
A list of recent pay periods, each showing its date range and a Download CSV button.
A pay period's download is available only after every workweek in it is signed off. Until then, the button is unavailable and shows a "weeks pending sign-off" note — your reminder to finish reviewing and sign off the remaining weeks first.
The downloaded file has eleven columns:
| Employee | Pay Period Start | Pay Period End | Regular Hours | Vacation | Sick | Personal | Holiday | Benefit Hours | Other PTO | Notes |
|---|
Worked hours and each time-off category are separate columns, so your payroll provider can apply its own rules to each. Notes carries a plain-language summary of anything that was flagged on that worker's shifts in the period — a late arrival, an auto-ended shift — together with any note the supervisor wrote when resolving it. It's context for you, not an instruction to your provider; most shops ignore the column on import.
What to do
Export a pay period
- Review and sign off every workweek in the pay period. (See Reviewing and Approving Shifts.)
- Go to Reports > Payroll Export.
- Find the pay period and click Download CSV.
If the button is unavailable, a week in that period still needs sign-off. Finish signing it off, then come back.
Import the file into your provider
FabWise sends one generic CSV that every major provider can read. You match the columns to your provider's fields once during import — after that, future imports follow the same mapping.
Look for your provider's hours or time import, then map two things: Employee to whatever identifier it uses for a worker, and Regular Hours to its regular-hours field. Some providers match column names automatically and need almost no setup.
Whichever you use, you import Regular Hours, and the provider applies overtime, pay rates, and compliance on its side.
Common questions
Q: Why is the Download button unavailable?
A: A workweek in that pay period still needs sign-off. You can only export a pay period once every week in it is signed off — that is what guarantees the file matches the hours you approved.
Q: Where is the overtime column?
A: There isn't one. FabWise sends Regular Hours; your payroll provider classifies overtime and applies the right rates. Sending an overtime split would mean FabWise making a pay decision it doesn't make.
Q: What happened to the old provider-specific export?
A: It's replaced by this pay-period export. The old export could send numbers that didn't match your signed-off report. The new export only includes signed-off hours, so the file always matches what you reviewed.
Q: Can I still download a single week?
A: Yes. The per-week CSV on the hours report is unchanged. The pay-period export is the additional, period-wide hand-off.
Related
Last updated: 2026-08-29