About Runbook Payroll
Payroll is a promise. Runbook keeps the record.
Payday is the most important recurring promise a small business makes. When it goes right, it is an exhale. When it goes wrong, it is someone's rent. And when a tax agency asks questions — sometimes years later — the difference between a bad week and a bad year is whether you can prove what happened.
Most buyers do not ask for "provable payroll" in those words. They ask why a check changed, why a tax notice arrived, whether a CPA can verify the numbers, or whether a mid-year provider switch will break year-end. Those questions are common enough to be counted: New York’s tax department could not verify the withholding records of 10% of filers served by the largest payroll providers, and the IRS assessed more than 4.4 million employment-tax penalties in fiscal year 2025. Runbook is built for that practical anxiety: when payroll goes wrong, show exactly what happened. The figures and their sources are on the homepage.
Runbook is being built as provable payroll around a stricter record: each fact carries two dates, each amount keeps its source facts and rule snapshot, and each approved run can produce a sealed proof artifact. The goal is practical payroll with institutional-grade evidence, not a prettier dashboard over mutable numbers.
About the founder
Matthew Heintz
Founder, Runbook Payroll
Matthew is a finance professional with hands-on experience in real estate operations, including self-storage and mobile home parks. That operator’s perspective shapes Runbook: payroll should be clear on payday and explainable long afterward.
He is building Runbook Payroll as a national, full-service payroll company with proof built into the record. The aim is straightforward: help employers understand what they are approving, help workers understand their pay, and preserve a clear account of what changed when a correction is needed.
- Finance professional
- Real estate operator
- Self-storage & MHP experience
Built on Carl Heintz’s work.
Runbook carries forward the work of Carl Heintz, CPA, who developed software for payroll, accounting, billing, and business operations. His son, Matthew, is building on that practical foundation with modern technology and a national, full-service payroll vision: clear paydays, understandable corrections, and records that remain useful afterward.
Carl’s archive reaches from payroll and accounting to time billing, property management, contact tracking, and order entry. It reflects a CPA’s understanding that paying people, serving clients, and keeping the books are connected work.
That connection guides what we build next. We are adapting the useful business practices for today, with clearer workflows, stronger controls, and records that preserve the history when something changes. National payroll is the focus; the broader archive informs the work, while current product status states what is available today.
What is available now
You can explore Runbook with fictional data and no account. The interactive demo includes payroll review, an employer preview of the Payday Statement, and a simulated Payroll Close. The proof demo and verifier show how a record can be checked independently.
Live payroll processing, direct deposit, tax payments, and tax filing are not yet available. The demos do not move money or submit filings. See the current product screens and complete availability details.
Our principles
- Show the work. Every user-visible number is a projection of engine lineage.
- Rules are content, not code. Tax parameters live in effective-dated snapshots with citations.
- Corrections are derived. The ledger is append-only; late facts create recomputed deltas, not patched history.
- No AI in the calculation path. Agents propose, humans approve, Runbook computes, and the sealed payroll proof (Quittance) preserves what happened.
- Payroll must become operationally complete. Live funds, filings, support, and notice workflows are product obligations, not footnotes.
Where we are
Runbook is building national, full-service payroll: the ordinary payday, the tax and accounting work around it, and the corrections and support that follow. We are developing the service and proving its readiness before asking an employer or worker to depend on it for payday.