---
title: "Plan Payroll"
type: skill
id: "knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/plan-payroll"
category: "Small business"
publisher: "Anthropic"
license: "Apache-2.0"
source: "https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/tree/d900840"
canonical: "https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/plan-payroll"
open_in_pho: "https://pho.chat/customize?item=knowledge-work-plugins%2Fsmall-business%2Fplan-payroll&utm_source=labs&utm_medium=skill-page&utm_campaign=skills-library"
---

# Plan Payroll

Runs the payroll-confidence chain end to end — forecasts cash across the payroll window with cash-flow-snapshot, ranks and drafts overdue-invoice reminders with invoice-chase to close any gap, then assembles timesheets, flags every anomaly, and stages the run with payroll-prep. On Gusto the run is staged for the owner to submit; on QuickBooks Payroll, or with no payroll system, the last step is a validated run sheet the owner keys in. This chain never presses the payroll button. Builds on the ledger (MYOB, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, or Zoho Books), with Gmail or M365, PayPal, Square, Stripe, and either Gusto or QuickBooks Payroll adding detail, and falls back to CSV and timesheet uploads. Use it whenever payroll is the worry, including "can I make payroll," "payroll is due Friday," "plan payroll," "will I have enough to pay the crew," or "I need to run payroll but money is tight." Accepts optional horizon and payroll-date arguments.

Source: Anthropic (Apache 2.0), copied at a pinned commit. Free to use. Part of the Phở Skills library (https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills).
Skill set: Small business (https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business.md).

## What it covers
- Step 1 — Is payroll covered? (cash-flow-snapshot)
- Step 2 — Close the gap (invoice-chase)
- Step 3 — Stage the run (payroll-prep)
- Step 4 — Close the loop
- Output
- Connector failures
- What not to do
- After the chain
- Using a tool that isn't listed

## Other skills in this set
- [Ad Manager](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/ad-manager.md): The ads consultant that becomes an ads agent. Reads paid-ad performance natively through the TikTok Ads connector, or via a build-connector Zapier connection for other ad platforms, explains in…
- [AP Processor](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/ap-processor.md): Works the bill pile end to end: reads bills and vendor statements out of the AP inbox or from uploaded PDFs and phone photos, pulls out vendor, amount, due date, and line detail, codes each one to…
- [Brand Style](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/brand-style.md): Sets and updates the owner's brand look and output preferences, which every page and document the plugin produces then follows automatically. Captures the brand from a pasted website link or a…
- [Business Pulse](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/business-pulse.md): Produces a one-page cross-functional business snapshot for SMB owners — cash position (the ledger: MYOB, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, or Zoho Books), sales trend (PayPal/Square/Stripe), pipeline…
- [Call list](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/call-list.md): Builds today's call list. Runs lead-triage to rank the top-5 leads most worth calling, supplies talking points from email history, blocks time on the calendar, and drafts follow-up messages. Trigger…
- [Cash Flow Snapshot](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/cash-flow-snapshot.md): Reads AR/AP, historical cash timing, and known fixed costs from the ledger (MYOB, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, or Zoho Books) or from PayPal, Square, or Stripe — or a CSV upload — and produces a…
- [Close month](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/close-month.md): Closes the books and turns them into a decision as a three-link chain — month-end-prep reconciles the ledger against every connected payment processor and writes the P&L narrative…
- [Content Strategy](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/content-strategy.md): Analyzes sales data from PayPal and QuickBooks to find top performers and slow movers, layers in seasonality, and produces a prioritized 30-day content brief: what to push, what offers to run, what…
- [Contract Review](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/contract-review.md): Lightweight NDA, MSA, and vendor contract review for SMBs without legal on staff. Reads contracts from local files, mail attachments (Gmail or M365), a connected file store (Google Drive or M365)…
- [CRM Autopilot](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/crm-autopilot.md): Keeps the CRM current without the owner ever opening it. Creates and updates contacts and deals from email, calendar, and call transcripts; logs activity automatically; drafts follow-ups on deals…
- [Grant and RFP Writer](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/grant-rfp-writer.md): Finds grant and solicitation opportunities the organization actually qualifies for, runs a hard go/no-go before anyone starts writing, drafts the application or response from past submissions and…
- [Grow pipeline](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/grow-pipeline.md): Fills the funnel end to end without the owner babysitting it — reads the market and the competition for context, builds a ranked list of named prospects with a reason attached to each, writes…
- [Growth Pulse](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/growth-pulse.md): Answers one question for an SMB owner — is the growth engine actually working? Pulls sales trend by channel, funnel conversion, campaign return, best and worst performing products, and customer…
- [Hiring Screener](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/hiring-screener.md): Takes a pile of applications and turns it into a ranked shortlist, scored only against the job's stated rubric, with drafted replies to every candidate, scheduled interviews, and an onboarding…
- [Inbox Manager](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/inbox-manager.md): Turns a full inbox into a short, ranked list of what actually needs the owner. Reads the mail, sorts it into needs-you, drafted-and-waiting, and handled, writes replies in the owner's own voice…
- [Inventory Planner](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/inventory-planner.md): Works out what to reorder and when, from what is actually selling: pulls sales history and stock on hand from Shopify, Square, NetSuite, or an uploaded CSV, computes 7-day and 28-day sales velocity…
- [Invoice Chase](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/invoice-chase.md): Drafts overdue-invoice reminder emails from the ledger (MYOB, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, or Zoho Books) plus PayPal, Stripe, and Airwallex data, matched to each customer's payment history and tone…
- [Job Post Builder](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/job-post-builder.md): Builds end-to-end hiring packets — job post, structured interview guide with scoring rubric, and offer letter template — from a hiring brief. Triggers on: "help me hire", "we're hiring for", "write…
- [Lead Finder](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/lead-finder.md): Builds a ranked list of prospects worth contacting. Works out the owner's ideal customer profile from the customers they already have, finds look-alike companies and the right contact at each…
- [Lead Triage](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/lead-triage.md): Scores inbound HubSpot leads by engagement signals, company fit, and urgency markers, ranks the ones worth a call today with talking points, drafts the follow-ups, and proposes calendar times for…
- [Marketing monday](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/marketing-monday.md): Delivers the weekly growth briefing as one merged read — whether the growth engine is working, what customers are saying in public and private, what competitors actually changed, and the three…
- [Monday brief](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/monday-brief.md): Runs the owner's Monday morning briefing as a two-link chain — business-pulse for the cross-connector snapshot of cash, sales, and pipeline, and report-builder for any saved KPI reports the owner…
- [Month End Prep](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/month-end-prep.md): Reconciles the accounting ledger (MYOB, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, or Zoho Books) against PayPal, Shopify, Square, and Stripe settlements, flags transactions that need attention, suspicious…
- [Outreach Composer](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/outreach-composer.md): Writes prospect outreach and follow-up sequences that sound like the owner wrote them, not like an AI did. Learns a voice profile from the owner's own sent mail, grounds every message in something…
- [Pay The Bills](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/pay-the-bills.md): Works the bill pile from the AP inbox all the way to a staged payment run — reads and codes every bill, then checks the cash position before a dollar is committed, then stages the run for one-click…
- [Payroll Prep](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/payroll-prep.md): Gets payroll ready to run without anyone getting shorted: pulls timesheets from Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll, or an uploaded spreadsheet, totals regular, overtime, and PTO hours by person, flags every…
- [Proposal Builder](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/proposal-builder.md): Turns whatever came out of a discovery conversation — a call transcript, a voice memo, jobsite photos, an RFP document, a set of drawings, or scrappy notes — into a branded, costed proposal…
- [Reactivate](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/reactivate.md): Wins back customers who have quietly stopped buying — finds the ones whose gap has stretched past their own normal rhythm or who are showing churn signals, ranks them by what the relationship was…
- [Report Builder](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/report-builder.md): Turns a plain-English description of a recurring report into a real, repeatable report — defines the metrics, pulls them from whatever data sources are connected, delivers a chat summary plus an…
- [Report Pack](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/report-pack.md): Delivers the owner's custom recurring report pack on a set cadence — runs the saved report definition from report-builder, wraps it in a business-pulse snapshot so the numbers have context, and…
- [Restock](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/restock.md): Turns what is actually selling into a reorder decision and gets it all the way into the books — computes sales velocity and conservative stockout dates per item, sizes the reorder, drafts the…
- [Review and Reputation](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/review-reputation.md): Watches what customers are saying in public and in private, then does something about it. Aggregates Google, Yelp, and Facebook reviews alongside disputes, tickets, and email into themes backed by…
- [SEO and AI Visibility](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/seo-ai-visibility.md): Audits and fixes both halves of being found — classic search and AI answers. Search side: rankings, site structure, page speed, titles and descriptions, and content that answers what customers…
- [Speed to Lead](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/speed-to-lead.md): Makes sure no inbound lead goes unanswered. Watches web forms, the shared inbox, and the CRM for new inquiries, qualifies each one against the owner's criteria, drafts a reply in the owner's voice…
- [Tax prep](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/tax-prep.md): Prepares tax materials as a two-link chain — month-end-prep confirms the books are closed and reconciled first, then tax-season-organizer calculates the quarterly estimated payment or builds the…
- [Tax Season Organizer](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/tax-season-organizer.md): Prepares tax-season materials for the owner's accountant, not tax advice. US federal tax; a non-US business gets its closed-books packet instead. Two modes: (1) quarterly estimated tax from YTD net…
- [Ticket Deflector](https://labs.pho.chat/en/skills/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/ticket-deflector.md): Reads a forwarded customer email or ticket, pulls order and refund status from a payments connector (PayPal, Square, or Stripe) or Shopify, account history from the CRM, and open tickets from a…

## Use it
- In Phở: open https://pho.chat/customize?item=knowledge-work-plugins%2Fsmall-business%2Fplan-payroll&utm_source=labs&utm_medium=skill-page&utm_campaign=skills-library and press Try, or add it so Phở loads it whenever a request matches. Phở works with your own API key (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others).
- Full instructions (original SKILL.md, unchanged): https://labs.pho.chat/skills/raw/knowledge-work-plugins/small-business/skills/plan-payroll/SKILL.md
- Original files: https://github.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/tree/d900840 (Apache 2.0).
- Full machine-readable index: https://labs.pho.chat/skills.json