Solved
payroll marked "electronic payment" actually paid in "cash" via bank deposits
thanks for any help or if you can point me in the right direction! When the payroll was set up, the employees were listed as getting paid via "electronic payment" by mistake. I've discovered this...
To anyone in the future looking to remedy the same problem I went "match transaction" "add adjustment" and categorised/matched from there as I was able to do partial allocations, where I couldn't elsewhere. For transactions that had nothing to math to I simply allocated the "electronic clearing account"
