Outsourced ControllerPayroll checks after your provider runs payday
You're looking for what there is left to check once a payroll company handles payday. Tax CFO Steven Palmieri leads this work, and Steven and his team treat payroll as something set up well once and watched every quarter. The provider does the running. We do the looking afterward.
Check last quarter's filings
How payroll is set up here
A full-service provider processes payroll, and you run it. Our part comes before payday. We help you choose the right provider for your company, make sure owner pay is set correctly, handle the registrations and connect the provider's feed to your books. Each payday, you approve it yourself.
After that, the provider processes the payments and files the returns, and the books receive the results.
What is still left to check
The provider can do everything right and a gap can still open. So we check four things after the fact. The quarterly and annual returns went in. The tax deposits match what was withheld. The payroll liabilities in your books fell back to zero after each payment. And the totals on the provider's reports agree with what's in your books.
That's about an hour of looking each quarter. It's a small cost for knowing it matched.
Why a notice can still come
Employers sometimes learn about a problem through a letter. A deposit might have gone to the wrong period. A new hire might have been entered late. A filing might have been delayed because a bank account changed.
The IRS says that using a provider doesn't move the employer's responsibility to the provider. If the provider falls short, the employer can still be on the hook. That's why we check, and why it makes sense for you to have your own access to confirm payments rather than relying on the provider alone.
If a notice does arrive
The first step is calm and short. Call the payroll provider and ask what they filed and when. Gather the filing proof. Then bring the notice and the proof to us, and we'll read it with you, say whether it's a question or a bill and organize the answer. If it needs a response made on your behalf to the IRS, that goes to an enrolled agent, an attorney or another authorized professional, and we'll help you find one.
New hires and changes
Payroll is only right if the provider hears about changes on time. A new hire, a raise, a termination or an address change all need to reach the provider before the next payday. We keep a short change list each month, so nothing sits in an email.
Owner pay
An owner who works in the business can be on payroll, and the setup matters. We set the pay with the year's tax plan in mind and then watch that it runs as set. The wage and the planning behind it are covered in the Tax CFO work, and this page stays with the checking.
You can see how the quarterly returns line up with the rest of the year on the filing calendar. The boundaries of what we do and don't do are on the line page.
On the calendar. The one recurring check this page adds is a look at the provider's filing proof within a few weeks of each quarter's due date, with the confirmation saved where a lender or buyer could find it.
We keep that confirmation beside the quarter it covers, so the deposit is a file and not a memory.