Payroll journal entries

Detects payroll journal postings: pay-run journals, wages journals, payroll accruals and payroll GL exports with populated ledger lines (wages expense, PAYG withholding payable, superannuation payable, net wages payable, payroll clearing) and a journal reference or posting/period date. Aggregate ledger data, capped at 75.

Type: regex
Engine: boost_regex
Confidence: low
Confidence justification: Low: payroll journals are aggregate general-ledger postings (wages expense, PAYG payable, super payable, clearing accounts) that normally carry no employee-level data. The pattern is capped at 75: it needs a populated ledger line with an amount plus a populated journal reference or posting/period date, which separates real postings from accounting textbooks, but it never claims 85 because the record itself is low sensitivity. If a journal lists individual employees, other HR classifiers (pay slip, payroll master file) will detect that content.
Detection quality: Topic false positive
Jurisdictions: global
Regulations: Taxation Administration Act 1953 (Cth), Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 (Cth), Fair Work Regulations 2009 (Cth)
Frameworks: ISO 27001, ISO 27701
Data categories: financial
Scope: wide
Risk rating: 4
Platform compatibility: Purview: Compatible, GCP DLP: Compatible, Macie: Compatible, Zscaler: Compatible, Palo Alto: Degraded, Netskope: Unsupported

Pattern

(?i)\b(?:payroll\s+journal(?:\s+entr(?:y|ies))?|wages?\s+journal(?:\s+entr(?:y|ies))?|payroll\s+(?:accruals?|clearing\s+account|GL\s+posting|general\s+ledger\s+(?:posting|export)|posting\s+(?:summary|report))|salar(?:y|ies)\s+and\s+wages\s+journal|journal\s+entry\s+(?:for|-)\s+(?:the\s+)?pay\s+run|pay\s+run\s+journal)\b

Corroborative evidence keywords

debit, credit, general ledger, cost centre, accrual, reversal

Proximity: 300 characters

Should match

Payroll journal - pay run 2026-19 Posting date: 25/09/2026 6100 Wages and salaries expense Dr $412,880.00 2150 PAYG withholding payable Cr $98,411.00 2160 Superannuation payable Cr $49,545.60 2170 Net wages payable Cr $264,923.40 — 75: pay-run journal with posting date and ledger lines (capped at 75)
Wages journal entry Journal number: JE-26-0412 Wages payable: $182,300.00 Payroll clearing account: $182,300.00 — 75: wages journal entry with journal number and payable lines (capped at 75)
Payroll accrual Period ending: 30/06/2026 Accrued wages expense: $64,210.00 Superannuation expense: $7,383.00 — 75: payroll accrual with period end and expense lines (capped at 75)
payroll journal — 65: bare phrase only - discovery tier

Should not match

A payroll journal entry records wages expense as a debit and PAYG withholding payable as a credit. This training module walks through the steps. — Accounting textbook / training - must stay at or below 65
Payroll journal Posting date: __/__/____ Wages and salaries expense Dr $______ — Blank journal template - must stay at or below 65
The company restated its payroll accruals after an audit, according to a media release. — News - must stay at or below 65
unrelated generic text without domain phrases — No relevant topic phrases present

Known false positives

Accounting textbooks, training and ERP documentation describing payroll journals. Mitigation: Enforce requires a ledger line with a real amount plus a journal reference or posting date; training/textbook framing is excluded.
Blank forms, templates and system configuration screens. Mitigation: Blank lines, bracket placeholders, XXX and n/a/tbc values are rejected by the placeholder guard; template/fixture words are excluded by template-exclusion.
News, statistics and vendor marketing. Mitigation: No populated person or record fields, so these stay at 65 discovery.