Setup, and the login stays with you
An owner can hand payday to a payroll company and then lose the login that runs it. We open the payroll company, watch one payday cross into the books, and stop. Later paydays stay yours.
Read the setup stop.
What setup includes.
Setup means the payroll company exists, the business information in it matches the entity, the bank account for the draft is the right account, and the wage and tax accounts in the books are ready to receive a payday. It also means you can log in without asking us.
We watch the first payday go across. Wages, withholdings, and the employer share should land in the accounts the monthly close already understands. If those accounts do not exist, the first payday creates a pile. We build the path so the pile does not start.
Then we stop. We do not run the next payday, the next quarter's filings, or the year end forms as an ongoing service unless a separate scope says so. The ordinary shape is setup, one observed payday, and a login that was yours the whole time.
A provider can run the ongoing paydays. That provider can be the payroll company itself. Our job is to make the path into the books exist so the provider's file and the books are not strangers.
Employees and contractors are different paths.
A person paid through a payroll run and a person paid by a bill are not interchangeable. Calling a worker a contractor to make a Friday easier can create a different problem at year end. Calling everyone an employee without a reason creates a payroll you did not mean to run.
We do not reclassify people on a hunch. If the facts are messy, we say the facts are messy and what records would settle them. A public page will not decide a specific worker's status.
Contractors still need a record good enough for a year end information form. Names, amounts, and a way to know who was paid outside payroll. That record is part of setup when the business uses both paths. It is a checklist you keep, not a second payroll we run.
Year end wage reports should tie to the accounts. If they do not, the return will show wages the payroll filings do not, or the reverse. The tie is checked at setup with the first payday, and you can check it again each quarter because you hold the login.
What you keep.
The login, the recovery method, and the authority to add or remove a user. If the only login lives in someone else's personal email, the payroll company is not yours. We set it up so the business owns the access.
A one page map of which account receives wages, which receives withholdings, and which receives the employer share. You should be able to point at a payday and see those three without calling us.
The right to stop. If the first payday shows the path is wrong, we fix the path before we leave. We do not wave from the door while a wrong mapping repeats.
Write down who is allowed to add an employee and who is allowed to change a bank account inside the payroll company. Those are two different powers. Setup is unfinished if both powers sit in a shared password written on a sticky note. Shared access can be real without being anonymous.
After we stop, a quarterly tie is yours to glance at. Wages on the books, wages on the payroll report, withholdings set aside. If those three still agree, the path held. If they drift, the drift started at a payday you can still name, because you hold the login and the map.
Send the payday.
Say whether anyone has already been paid, and whether a payroll company already exists.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.