As mentioned in the previous blog, payroll is more like a constantly moving system. This dynamic system involves various people and agencies and their needs and requirements, including you, your company, employees, state and federal agencies, the IRS, your CPA, bookkeeper, and more.
There is an idea running around that says payroll is just simple math, tracking and totaling hours. That might have been true at one point, but now, payroll also requires the time and ability to track and understand the various needs and requirements of the people listed above. Undiagnosed problems in your payroll system will affect your company and your employees — and could turn into a larger accounting mess later.
Here are just some problems we see (If you keep seeing these issues, it’s probably time to call.):
- Incorrect deductions from paychecks
- Overpayments or underpayments of federal and/or state taxes
- Missed tax payments
- Incorrect payroll entries in Quickbooks
These issues are often unintentional. They are more likely to happen when a very busy company does not have a dedicated professional managing the payroll system. In addition to the payroll processing itself, this person would monitor information, track down data, ask questions, update entries, etc.
If no one is managing the payroll system …
Undiagnosed payroll problems corrupt future data, leaking into your organization’s accounting and skewing the information you review to make planning decisions. When the problems are discovered later, fixing your books will take a bite out of your budget. But the more disappointing aspect of an accounting and payroll clean-up is seeing the business owner realize that many dollars and hours were misused and some opportunities were lost.
In a dynamic system, problems happen. The question becomes: do you want to dedicate time and money to training in-house staff to quickly recognize and fix payroll issues?
Even for those who are keeping on top of payroll, they often realize they do not want to continue to dedicate so many resources to payroll management; this resource reallocation often makes sense/cents for small and midsized LLCs and corporations, as they tend to have staff doing multiple jobs and don’t have a large in-house accounting department.
At CHK Payroll Services, we want to show people that payroll isn’t static, raising their awareness in order for each company to make the best decision about how their payroll system should run.
If you’re interested in collaborating with a dedicated professional who would free up your time — and help you track down those hidden issues — contact your payroll lifeline at CHK Payroll Services today.
