From clock-out to ADP in under ten minutes.

Payroll Export for Fabrication Shops — ADP, Gusto, QuickBooks

FabWise exports your signed-off pay period time records as a CSV your payroll provider can ingest. Workers clock in and out throughout the week; the admin signs off the weeks; the export file goes to ADP, Gusto, QuickBooks Payroll, or any other system that takes a CSV. Your payroll provider handles overtime classification, tax calculation, and compliance. FabWise handles the accurate time capture that makes their calculations correct.

The Payroll Integration Problem for Fab Shops

Most fabrication shops using modern payroll providers (ADP, Gusto, QuickBooks) still have a manual step in the middle: someone has to take raw time data — from time cards, spreadsheets, or a generic time tracking tool — and convert it into the format the payroll provider expects.

That conversion step introduces errors. Hours get transcribed wrong. Rounding rules get applied inconsistently. Overtime hours get miscounted. Workers get paid the wrong amount, or the payroll run has to be reversed and rerun — a process that costs administrative time and generates accounting corrections.

FabWise eliminates the manual conversion step. The export is generated from signed-off shift records in a clean, consistent shape your provider can map once and ingest every period after. No transcription, no rebuilding a spreadsheet, no manual overtime calculation.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, payroll errors cost U.S. employers billions annually in corrections, reprocessing, and associated administrative labor. For small fabrication shops, a single payroll correction can take two to four hours of admin time.

Supported Payroll Providers

FabWise exports are tested with the payroll providers most commonly used in fabrication shops:

FabWise produces one CSV per pay period, with a stable set of columns: employee, pay period start and end, regular hours, and time off split into vacation, sick, personal, holiday, and other. Every major provider ingests a file like this through its own import column-mapping step, which you configure once on the provider's side.

ADP — Imports through the time import in RUN Powered by ADP and ADP Workforce Now.

Gusto — Imports through Gusto's hours import for manual time entry.

QuickBooks Payroll — Imports through QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) CSV import.

Anyone else — The same file works with any regional or proprietary system that accepts a CSV of hours per worker per period.

Note what the file does not contain: overtime, doubletime, or any other pay classification. That is deliberate. FabWise reports the hours worked; your provider applies its own overtime and pay rules to them. A time system that pre-classifies overtime is a time system that can get your payroll wrong.

The Approval Workflow Before Export

FabWise does not allow export of unapproved records. The workflow:

1. Throughout the week: Workers clock in and out from the kiosk or workstation. Supervisors review flagged records — missed breaks, corrections, unscheduled overtime — in real time.

2. Pay period close: The admin opens the pay period review screen. Every shift for the period is visible: regular time, overtime, meal break declarations, any supervisor corrections. Shifts that need review are flagged.

3. Sign-off: The admin signs off each worker's week once its flagged records are resolved — a week with an open exception cannot be signed. Sign-off locks that week: no further edits without an explicit unlock, which is itself recorded.

4. Export: Once every week in the period is signed off, the period's download unlocks and the CSV is generated from the signed-off records.

5. Upload: Admin uploads to the payroll provider's portal. The provider processes payroll from the file.

The typical time from period approval to export file download is under one minute. Upload to the payroll provider portal adds two to five minutes depending on provider. Total payroll processing time from review start to upload: under ten minutes for most shops.

What's in the Export File

The export includes, per worker, per pay period:

• Worker identifier (name, employee ID, or the field your provider uses)
• Regular hours (post-rounding, per your configured rounding rule)
• Overtime hours (hours above 40 for the week, or above your configured threshold)
• Doubletime hours (where applicable per your schedule configuration)
• Period start and end dates

The export reflects corrected values where a supervisor has attached a documented correction to a shift record. Original captures and corrections are preserved in FabWise's audit trail; the export uses the final approved values.

The file does not include pay rates, tax information, or worker personal data beyond the identifier your provider uses. Pay rates stay in your payroll provider's system. FabWise handles hours; your provider handles money.

Time Rounding — Consistent, Configurable, Automatic

Payroll systems expect time in rounded increments. Inconsistent rounding — some records rounded to 15 minutes, others to the nearest 6 minutes, others not rounded at all — produces payroll discrepancies that require manual correction.

FabWise applies a single, account-wide rounding rule configured at setup: 5, 6, 10, 15, or 30-minute intervals. Every clock-in and clock-out is rounded to that interval before the shift record is finalized. The rounding is consistent across all workers and all shifts.

The raw capture time is preserved on the shift record for reference. The rounded time appears in the export. Your payroll provider receives consistently rounded data.

Overtime Handling — FabWise Captures, Your Provider Classifies

FabWise tracks hours per worker per week. When a worker's hours exceed 40 for the week (or your configured threshold), FabWise flags the excess as overtime hours in the export. The export separates regular hours from overtime hours in the fields your payroll provider expects.

Your payroll provider handles overtime pay calculation, rate multipliers, and compliance with applicable labor law. FabWise does not calculate pay rates or apply overtime rate rules — that's the payroll provider's domain. The Department of Labor's FLSA overtime rules govern what your provider must calculate; FabWise gives them the hours they need to do it correctly.

For shops in states with daily overtime rules (California's 8-hour daily overtime is the most common), FabWise supports configurable overtime thresholds. The export reflects the threshold you configure; your provider applies the rate rules.

Audit Trail — Every Record Is Traceable

Every record in the export is traceable to its original capture. If a worker questions their hours, or a payroll auditor asks for documentation, FabWise provides:

• Original clock-in and clock-out times (before rounding)
• Rounded times (as exported)
• Any supervisor corrections: adjusted value, reason, corrector name, timestamp
• Meal break declaration (for each shift where applicable)
• Approval record: who approved the period, when

This audit trail is stored in FabWise and is not included in the export file (it's internal documentation, not payroll input). It answers the question "where did these hours come from?" for any record in any historical pay period.

Setup and Onboarding

Payroll export setup is part of FabWise's standard onboarding. The onboarding process:

1. Configure your worker list (names, employee IDs matching your payroll provider's records)
2. Set your pay period length and start date
3. Configure your rounding rule
4. Map the export's columns once inside your payroll provider's import screen
5. Run a test export against a sample pay period before going live

FabWise's onboarding team is a one-call-away resource for setup and any provider-specific formatting questions. The onboarding package includes same-day setup and a test run of the full workflow before the first live payroll.

For the full time capture workflow that feeds the export, see time tracking and kiosk time clock.