Service 01

Payroll and filings

A pay run that produces the right numbers and never reaches the agency is worth nothing. Every run here ends with a filing confirmation, and you are copied on it the same day it goes.

The calendar

Every pay date: Federal deposit under the semi-weekly or monthly rule, whichever the lookback period puts you on. Most small employers are monthly and do not know it, which is fine until the day they cross the hundred thousand next-day threshold.
15th monthly: Missouri withholding for the previous month. Where the 15th falls on a weekend or a holiday it posts the next business day. We file the Friday before rather than the Monday after.Late filing here is the single most common thing we find on a new client.
30 Apr, 31 Jul, 31 Oct, 31 Jan: Federal Form 941 and the Missouri MODES-4-7 contribution and wage report. Both go together, from this office, in the same week. They are never split across two.
31 January: Form 940 for the prior year, W-2 to every employee and W-3 to the Social Security Administration. Your own copy of the W-2 pack reaches you on the 20th so there are ten days to query a number rather than ten minutes.
Within 20 days of a hire: Missouri new hire reporting. It is small, it is easy to forget, and the penalty for forgetting it is not large but it is embarrassing to explain.

In every run

Gross to net for salaried, hourly and mixed staff
Federal, Missouri and local withholding calculated and deposited
Employer share of FICA and unemployment accrued and posted
Payslips issued the way your people already receive them
Payroll journal posted to the ledger the same day, not at month end
Filing confirmation copied to you, every time, without asking

Not in the fee

Garnishment administration, which is billed at the hourly rate
Multi-state registration outside Missouri
Benefits brokerage of any kind, which we do not do at all
Penalty or interest assessed by an agency, unless the error was ours
Representation in an audit, which needs a CPA or an enrolled agent

A pay run being checked before it is submitted

What a run day looks like

Hours in by noon, two days before

However you send them. A spreadsheet, a photograph of a timesheet, a message saying nothing changed. Nothing changed is a perfectly good submission and takes four seconds.

Draft back the same afternoon

Gross, net and the employer cost, per person and in total. This is the moment to catch a wrong rate, and about one run in eight has something worth catching.

You approve it, or you do not

Nothing submits on silence. If we have not heard by the morning of the run we telephone, because a run that goes out wrong costs far more to unwind than a phone call costs to make.

Submitted, deposited, filed

Net pay instructed, deposits made on your schedule, returns filed on theirs. Confirmations forwarded to you and filed against the period in your own folder.

Posted to the ledger that day

The payroll journal does not wait for month end. It is the biggest single entry most small businesses make and leaving it until the close is how a month ends up looking profitable when it was not.