Zoho Books won't accept a journal that doesn't balance. When this shows up on a payroll journal it's nearly always the chart of accounts mapping rather than anything wrong with the pay run.

Your pay run balances — gross, deductions, tax and super all reconcile in Employment Hero. The problem is on the way in. One or more lines have nowhere to go because an account is unmapped, or points at an account that's since been renamed or deleted. Drop a line and the totals no longer match, so Zoho refuses the whole journal. Nothing partial gets written.

The mapping screen. The five rows ringed in red have no account selected. Those are the lines that go missing from the journal, which is why the totals no longer match.

The fix

In Payroll Hub open Payroll Settings > Chart of Accounts and check every default account is set: Payment, Wages Expense, Default Payroll Liability, PAYG, Superannuation Expense, Superannuation Liability, Employee Expenses.

Look for anything blank, or showing a raw ID instead of an account name. A blank mapping is the usual culprit. Save, then tell us and we'll re-run the pay runs that failed.

If the dropdowns look empty

If the account list comes up blank right after a change, hard-refresh your browser — Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac — and reopen the page. The account list is cached in your browser session and a recent copy across takes a moment to show.

If it started after a payroll change

A new pay category, deduction or employer liability added in Employment Hero needs a matching account here. This error turning up straight after a payroll change is almost always that: the pay run is right, the mapping just hasn't caught up.