- Confirm your payroll and federal/state deposit dates. The rash of holidays between now and year end wreaks havoc on banking and tax deposit dates. Plan, shift check dates accordingly and be sure to let your employees know what to expect.
- Schedule bonuses and verify that you have included all bonuses in your employees’ wages before year end. Remember that all cash bonuses and gifts over $25.00 need to be included in taxable income. If your bonuses run large (and why wouldn’t they!) and generate a federal tax deposit of greater than $100,000, be prepared to make a tax deposit on the day after your pay date.
- Review and correct, as needed, employee names, addresses and social security numbers.
- Start to gather information on these often forgotten items that need to be reported on W-2s:
- If you are a corporation, personal usage of corporate-owned vehicles by any employee
- If you are an S corporation, amounts paid during the year for your officer’s health insurance coverage.
- Third Party Sick pay
- If you are a Multi-state employer, keep an eye on whether any of the states that you pay state unemployment to fail to pay back their federal loans (http://workforcesecurity.doleta.gov/unemploy/budget.asp#tfloans). If so, you will need to be prepared to possibly pay an increased FUTA rate on their 4th Quarter return retroactive to the beginning of 2012.
- Check your employees’ paid time off balances and plans to use or get paid for unused balances
- Make sure you are armed with information for 2013 as it becomes available including Social Security wage bases, 401(k) pretax limits and state unemployment/disability wage bases (depending on the state).
- Prepare your list of 1099 recipients. Independent contractors who don’t do business as corporations and who are paid at least $600 in cash must receive a form 1099-MISC by Jan. 31, 2013. Don’t forget these potential recipients: outside lawyers and accountants, auto mechanics/service stations that repair company cars, equipment lessors and repair persons, tradesmen like plumbers, electricians, tech consultants or office cleaners.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Ending the Year End blues
As we approach the holidays, our mind inevitably turns to the rapidly approaching year end. In the payroll world, of course, "year end" means much more than parties, streamers and singing Auld Lang Syne with complete strangers. It also means extra work, shortened weeks, and the double whammy of prepping for Quarter End and Year End tax filings. The intent here is not to depress you but to say that an ounce of preparation just might save you a pound of payroll pain. To that end, we offer you this little reminder of things you can do now to help ease that New Year payroll hangover:
Sunday, February 19, 2012
HR Systems in high gear
It was a busy year in the HR software world. Everyone seems to be acquiring everyone else, and in the end, they all are getting acquired by the very big fish. In the last twelve months alone, Oracle purchased Taleo, SAP purchased SuccessFactors and Infor purchased Lawson. All rising stars, sucked in to the gravitational pull of some very large players.
So what's going on and why all the interest?
Well, some of the themes discussed in previous posts here are creating opportunity and chaos in the "space with many faces". Human Resource Information Systems, aka Human Capital Management, aka Workforce Management, aka Talent Management-Recruitment Management-Learning Management-Compensation Management etc, has been exploding of late. Driving this explosion is a variety of factors:
1. The Knowledge Economy. Everyone knows that their people are their greatest asset. But what is becoming increasingly common is that they are their ONLY asset. Managing and maximizing return on your people has become an essential element of business success
2. The Cloud. As enterprise systems move increasingly to the cloud, the cost of getting access to quality HR systems is going down dramatically. Forrester Research estimates that in the Talent Management space, cloud is out selling on premise 9 to 1. This brings capability to the masses heretofore impossible to anyone other than the Fortune 500.
3. Economics. Finance and HR departments are being forced to do more with less (sometimes referred to as Productivity). The only way to do this is to better leverage systems (preferrably for a low cost subscription fee) to tee up and do a lot of the work.
4. The Need for Integration. The market seems to be preferring a single vendor solution over separate so-called functional best-in-class solutions (hence, all the acquisitions). The obvious drawback of managing data across disconnected systems is overwhelming whatever benefit a brilliant, but siloed solution might provide.
In short, integrated, cloud-based HR systems are in high demand and increasingly being adopted by employers with tens and hundreds of employees, not just tens of thousands.
Here are some of the key functions and process that organizations are looking to better leverage with technology:
1. Comprehensive employee reporting and analytics: everything from employee demographics, pay history, skill sets, work and experience history. Management needs information on their employees across all domains in the organization for compliance, decision-making and resource allocation
2. Recruitment to hire: Efficiently managing the entire process from recruitment to hiring has big impacts on compliance, HR department resources, and of course on who you hire. Capable systems in this space allow you reach outside your internal system to capture applicant data and seemlessly manage that data all the way into your payroll and other systems.
3. Talent Management: allows organizations to define the skill sets and hire the talent they need, develop their people the way they need to be developed and assign them to the right tasks and projects.
4. Performance and Compensation Management: allows organizations to better link performance and pay and manage the processes around both performance measurement and reviews and compensation reviews.
5. Benefits Management: includes employee self-enrollment in benefits plan as well as connections out to external benefits providers. Using technology to help employees better connect with benefits offered by their employers is an approach many employers use to increase employee satisfaction while driving down the cost of administering those benefit options.
These are just a few of the broad topics included in the HR space. Many more exist and within each one, additional levels of detail, process and objectives exist. As HR technology becomes more widely available and as organizations better comprehend the importance of managing their human capital, deeper and broader adoption by companies will continue to explode.
So what's going on and why all the interest?
Well, some of the themes discussed in previous posts here are creating opportunity and chaos in the "space with many faces". Human Resource Information Systems, aka Human Capital Management, aka Workforce Management, aka Talent Management-Recruitment Management-Learning Management-Compensation Management etc, has been exploding of late. Driving this explosion is a variety of factors:
1. The Knowledge Economy. Everyone knows that their people are their greatest asset. But what is becoming increasingly common is that they are their ONLY asset. Managing and maximizing return on your people has become an essential element of business success
2. The Cloud. As enterprise systems move increasingly to the cloud, the cost of getting access to quality HR systems is going down dramatically. Forrester Research estimates that in the Talent Management space, cloud is out selling on premise 9 to 1. This brings capability to the masses heretofore impossible to anyone other than the Fortune 500.
3. Economics. Finance and HR departments are being forced to do more with less (sometimes referred to as Productivity). The only way to do this is to better leverage systems (preferrably for a low cost subscription fee) to tee up and do a lot of the work.
4. The Need for Integration. The market seems to be preferring a single vendor solution over separate so-called functional best-in-class solutions (hence, all the acquisitions). The obvious drawback of managing data across disconnected systems is overwhelming whatever benefit a brilliant, but siloed solution might provide.
In short, integrated, cloud-based HR systems are in high demand and increasingly being adopted by employers with tens and hundreds of employees, not just tens of thousands.
Here are some of the key functions and process that organizations are looking to better leverage with technology:
1. Comprehensive employee reporting and analytics: everything from employee demographics, pay history, skill sets, work and experience history. Management needs information on their employees across all domains in the organization for compliance, decision-making and resource allocation
2. Recruitment to hire: Efficiently managing the entire process from recruitment to hiring has big impacts on compliance, HR department resources, and of course on who you hire. Capable systems in this space allow you reach outside your internal system to capture applicant data and seemlessly manage that data all the way into your payroll and other systems.
3. Talent Management: allows organizations to define the skill sets and hire the talent they need, develop their people the way they need to be developed and assign them to the right tasks and projects.
4. Performance and Compensation Management: allows organizations to better link performance and pay and manage the processes around both performance measurement and reviews and compensation reviews.
5. Benefits Management: includes employee self-enrollment in benefits plan as well as connections out to external benefits providers. Using technology to help employees better connect with benefits offered by their employers is an approach many employers use to increase employee satisfaction while driving down the cost of administering those benefit options.
These are just a few of the broad topics included in the HR space. Many more exist and within each one, additional levels of detail, process and objectives exist. As HR technology becomes more widely available and as organizations better comprehend the importance of managing their human capital, deeper and broader adoption by companies will continue to explode.
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