Payroll Processing

Payroll has the least forgiving deadlines in bookkeeping. Employees expect to be paid on a date they can count on, and tax agencies expect their filings on dates that do not move. Missing either has consequences that arrive quickly.

I handle payroll processing end to end. That covers calculating gross and net pay, federal and state income tax withholding, Social Security and Medicare, unemployment insurance, and any other deductions that apply to your employees. Direct deposit is set up so people are paid on schedule without anyone cutting checks.

Withholding is where payroll gets genuinely technical. The amounts depend on each employee's filing status and elections, on current federal and state rates, and on wage thresholds that change from year to year. Getting it wrong is rarely caught at the time. It surfaces later, when an employee's return does not reconcile or an agency notices the discrepancy, and by then it involves amendments and correspondence.

Quarterly and annual filings are handled on schedule rather than assembled at the deadline, along with year-end wage statements for your employees. Because these obligations recur on fixed dates, they are well suited to being someone else's responsibility rather than a standing item on your own calendar.

Payroll also has to agree with the rest of your books. Wages, employer taxes, and withholdings each belong in specific accounts, and when payroll runs separately from bookkeeping those entries often do not carry across cleanly. Handling both means the payroll expense on your Profit and Loss reflects what actually left the business.

If you are hiring your first employee, or moving from paying contractors to running real payroll, that transition is worth talking through before it happens rather than after. The setup decisions are much easier to make correctly the first time than to unwind later.