When you open a draft payroll from the Payroll page, Freedom checks whether each worker's pay is enough to cover their deductions. If a paycheck can't cover them all, a warning titled Deductions adjusted to prevent negative pay appears above the payroll before you approve it.
For each affected employee, the warning shows:
Their resulting take-home pay after the adjustments.
Any deduction that was reduced, and the amount it dropped from and to.
Any deduction that was skipped, and the amount that won't be withheld.
Freedom automatically reduces or skips these deductions so no one's take-home pay goes below $0. The worker still receives their pay; only the deductions are adjusted for this pay period. A reduced or skipped deduction can be a tax withholding, a benefit contribution, or a post-tax deduction.
What to do:
If the adjustments look correct, approve the payroll as usual — take-home pay is already protected.
If anything looks unexpected, review the affected employees' pay, benefit contributions, and tax withholding elections before you approve.
Note: If you instead see This payroll can't be calculated yet, a pre-tax retirement contribution (such as a 401(k)) is larger than an employee's remaining pay for this period, so Freedom can't finish calculating the payroll. Contact support and we'll help you resolve it — for example, by skipping that contribution for this pay period.