From the moment your business hires its first employee, you’re responsible for calculating and paying that person’s payroll taxes every week or every other week (or whenever they’re paid). However, no one wants to spend countless hours performing these calculations and filing all the paperwork necessary to pay an employee properly.
Luckily, there are tons of great strategies you can use to make your payroll processes easier and more efficient, saving you time and money in the process. Use these 6 payroll hacks to get more done in less time with less hassle.
Automate Taxes
As a business owner, you’re responsible for your company’s payroll. If your employees are paid via direct deposit, filing their taxes is incredibly simple. However, if you have employees who are paid with paper checks, manually filing taxes will eat up far more time than it should.
Either way, automating these tasks can save you time throughout tax season. Make sure to invest in HR tools that will save you headaches later on—and give yourself enough time to actually relax during tax season!
Go Paperless
Paying employees in cash every week is a pain. It’s time-consuming, requires you to gather everyone at one location, and best of all? Each time you hand over a stack of bills, it’s money out of your pocket! Make payroll simpler by going digital. Online payroll solutions have been around for decades now, making it easier than ever to pay employees digitally while keeping up with tax regulations.
Not only does going paperless save you a ton of time each week, but it also helps protect your company against fraud—something that could land you in big trouble if left unchecked. Don’t have a system in place? Find a solution today—your employees will thank you.
Implement Direct Deposit
Direct deposit is a free feature offered by payroll companies that allows you to have your employee’s paycheck deposited directly into their bank account. This can save you a lot of time processing payroll, especially if your company has several employees who work odd hours or weekends.
All they need to do is fill out some paperwork to set up direct deposit, which takes about 10 minutes to complete. This way, employees don’t have to worry about getting to work on time (because it’s already in their bank accounts), but you don’t have to chase down late or missing checks either. The best part? It saves both you and your employee’s money since there are no paper checks involved.
Switch To Payroll Software
If you have a small business, you’ll definitely want to look into payroll software. While a big organization may have a dedicated payroll department, a small one doesn’t necessarily need to spend thousands on hardware and software. In fact, it can do payroll on its own!
The first step is moving away from an outdated system that requires manual calculations—whether that means ditching paper checks or getting rid of stacks of invoices that require adding up hours by hand. With an easy-to-use program, employees can enter their own hours, which makes for quick record keeping and super accurate data entry.
Calculate Year-End Deductions
When you pay an employee, you have to make a lot of deductions from their paycheck. The amount you owe in federal taxes is determined by a number of different factors, including your employee’s filing status, whether they were born before January 2, 1951 (meaning they are entitled to extra retirement money from Social Security), how much they earned that year, and what state they live in.
Calculating all these deductions can be tricky, so it’s good to sit down with payroll software every now and then just to double-check that everything adds up correctly. There may also be certain tax breaks available to your employees that you’re not taking advantage of–such as local commuter transit benefits or deductions for parking costs–and keeping track of those will save them some cash come tax time.
Don’t miss the deadlines
Missing deadlines is a surefire way to tank your career in accounting. It’s also an easy problem to avoid: just put in a little extra time and effort each week. If you’re constantly scrambling to complete your work, it might be because you haven’t planned for enough time to do it properly. Make time in your schedule (say, 2 hours per week) to plan ahead for unexpected tasks.
These contingency hours will allow you more time for unexpected events, like when payrolls are done earlier than expected or if there’s a delay due to an audit. No matter what happens, you’ll always have enough time (and energy) for important tasks that can make or break your career—like meeting payroll deadlines!