Personal Time Off

Do you still have vacation days, floating holidays, sick days, mental health days, birthday day off, etc etc?  Many of my clients and my own company have switched to PTO days, Personal Time Off.  This way we have just on category to track and compute.  In smaller business and in some larger ones there is no difference how the various time off categories are paid at time of use or at termination.  But there may we many different accrual methods depending on the type of time off.  I still have a few clients who may track as many as seven different time off categories.  By lumping all time off into a category and accruing every payday life is much simpler. 

Add up all the various time off you give employees and re-label it PTO.  They have one set of rules for getting time off, what ever you decide they are.  You have one rule for what gets paid or not at termination.  Not an argument what is vacation and due to be paid and what is sick pay and not eligible to be paid and so on.

It is easy to set up the single accrual and it can be easily increased based on seniority.  No more arguments about employees not getting their “floating holiday” or whatever, this is one way to make payroll administration easier, fairer, simpler and more accurate.

Worker Compensation Policy

Has your Workers Compensation Policy renewed lately, or is it going too soon.  Tired of paying a huge downpayment?  Then don’t.  Find a pay as you go Workers Compensation Insurance provider.  Each payroll your workers compensation premium is calculated along with your actual payroll.  The insurance company drafts only for the amount of premium earned that pay period.  Not a penny more.  No more big downpayments or audit corrections. You know exactly where you are each pay period.

Do you know the dirty little secret of Workers Compensation Insurance?  Do you know that workers compensation insurance agents are paid commission based on the size of your company premium?  The bigger the premium you pay the bigger your agent’s commission.  Your agent may never cause your premium to go up unnecessarily but has he done everything he can to reduce it and reduce his commission?”  To learn more about the dirty little secret of Workers Compensation Insurance

Avoid Payroll Check Fraud

Payroll check fraud came calling four days before Christmas.  A branch of our main bank called and wanted to verify a check.  The young lady who took the call in our office quickly realized that the check was out of sequence and for a person not on the client’s payroll.  The check was cut on our trust account.  I spoke to the bank employee who had called us.  They were stalling the person by having then fill out an account application, more about that later.  I took the location of the bank and called the local police department.  Of course I didn’t have the right exact city and had to make an additional call.  The police finally were dispatched to the grocery store where the branch bank was.  The woman trying to cash the check was gone.  But the police were fairly sure that they would apprehend her soon.  Next day she tried to pass a check on someone else at a different bank. The police were called and she was arrested and turned over on a filed warrant to the police I had called.  They had issued a warrant the same day she cashed a check on us and had given the bank as part of the paperwork a copy of her real drivers license. No one ever claimed crooks were smart.

Unemployment Rate Changes

Unemployment Rate changes are coming out all over the country.  Have you gotten yours yet?  If your rate is up because you didn’t protest a case and that darn ex-employee stayed on the dole for all 26 weeks.  You know they were working and getting paid under the table.  Next time you will remember to fight and appeal, appeal, appeal!

Oh have you sent a copy to your payroll provider.  Up or down, they need to know so they can properly calculate and pay your unemployment taxes.  Next time maybe you should talk to their unemployment expert about how to appeal that employee who really quit and then went and claimed unemployment.  Or better yet talk to them now and figure out how to handle terminations voluntary and inventory so as to minimize the impact on your unemployment rate.

Approaching W2 Season

W2 season quickly approaches, By the end of next week for sure, and probably by the end of this week you will be asked about W2 availability.As if you didn’t have enough other things to worry about at year end. What you could just say is “on the 15^th of January they will be on the Web for you. Go get it there.” If you use an Internet payroll provider that can happen.

A good Internet payroll provider will have access for each employee to get not only their W2’s but also all their pay stubs off the Web. When an employee says “I need three pay stubs for the bank”, you can remind them they can print them off the web.Remind them that their last three years of pay stubs are out there for them.You have better things to do than reproduce pay stubs they should have kept.

Oh and don’t forget the payroll debit cards so you don’t have to distribute paper checks and replace those that get run through the washing machine!