Hi Jim,
Let me suggest a low tech approach
Make your perfect report which had an ask the user. for the pay period ending date.
Answer the question and observe the URL.
On another tab, build this formula to mimic the URL
URLRoot() & "db/" & dbid() & "?a=q&qid=xx&nv=1&v0=" & ToText([Pay Prriod Ending])
That will run the report and answer the ask the user question from data on the record.
Substitute the query id# for the xx