What you should know about Payroll

By Jeremy Wright

We here at Easy Time Clock are proud to announce the release of our long-awaited Payroll System! After 2 years of hard work, our beautiful bouncing baby payroll system has gotten its legs and is hitting the ground running! With that being said, I thought we should discuss ways to make sure your life with payroll runs as smoothly as possible. Over the next few posts, we’ll examine ways to prevent your experience with payroll from going awry.

First, classify workers properly!

It’s important to make sure your employees are classified properly. In most cases, you don’t have to pay independent contractors minimum wage or overtime, and you don’t hold taxes from contractors. This means that failure to classify employees properly could mean they are not receiving the appropriate compensation, which puts you, as an employer, at risk for severe penalties. If you are unsure of how an employee should be classified, the United States Department of Labor has designed a 6-point test to help you decide if your employee should be considered contract or not.

Second, understand your local overtime laws.

The United States Department of Labor states nonexempt employees must receive overtime pay for hours worked over 40 per workweek. While that sounds fairly simple, there are situations where further rules may apply. For example, nonexempt California employees must be paid overtime pay for any hours worked past 8 in a single work day, on top of the 40 regular rate hours per workweek. Overtime laws can vary greatly based on location and industry. You want to be sure you fully understand your local overtime laws because, while they may seem pretty cut and dry in some locations, some may be a little more complicated.

Third, double check employee details (and update them accordingly)

We’re all human, and we all make mistakes. I’ve had to correct my own spelling and grammar at least 10 times in writing this entry, and Word has completely overlooked one of those mistakes. Mistakes happen not only because of human error but outdated information. Old bank numbers are going to cause as many problems as mistyped bank numbers, for instance. It’s always good to double-check any information submitted to payroll before sending it, but I’d even recommend taking time to update records every so often just to be sure you’re caught up at all times.

We do the hard work so you don’t have to. Check us out at https://easytimeclock.com/ETCPayroll for more information on what we can do for you!