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Payroll forms can put a lot of pressure on business owners. When you’re in charge of a small business, it’s up to you to make sure that these forms are not only completed accurately, but on time as well. If you’re not careful, the penalties can range from $50 per faulty form all the way up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for notable violations.

One of the biggest struggles of managing payroll forms is simply knowing which forms apply to your business and what they do. We’ve compiled a list of payroll forms that you’ll likely need to know for your small business and how they work.

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Probably. Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows? Do you know?

As a Sales Rep for a Professional Employer Organization (PEO), I talk with small to medium-sized business owners on a day-to-day basis. I never cease to be amazed at how well they know their company, their employees, their business, their industry, and their competition. When you spend 80 hours a week working on your business, you become an expert.

Yet, these same business owners will often tell me, “I don’t know what I don’t know. And even if I knew what I didn’t know, I don’t always know how to find out what I need to fix, remedy, or comply with the situation.” Of course, they don’t. They’re devoting all their time to making a better product and/or a better company.

If you’re new to the game or haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about this, you might be wondering what regulations I’m speaking of in the title of this post. After all, those are geared towards large companies, not small, independent businesses, right?

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Payroll isn’t nearly as simple as just paying your employees. Payroll management encompasses several different steps and responsibilities. Each part of the payroll process requires you to take certain actions or make decisions that impact how your employees are paid and ensure that your business is compliant with any government regulations that apply.

As a small business owner, it’s your responsibility to either take care of each of these steps—or find someone that you trust to manage payroll for you. Here’s a guide to help you learn what it takes to properly manage payroll for a small business.

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As time goes by, more employees are working from home. CNN reported in 2017 that “the number of telecommuting workers has increased 115 percent in a decade,” and that nearly 4 million employees spend at least half of their time working remotely. 

Telecommuting is attractive to employees for many reasons, such as flexible work hours and more time to spend with family, but employers need to consider how the trend will impact their HR initiatives. Here are some ways that remote employees can change how you manage HR.

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Let’s be honest; what business owner looks forward to managing payroll? While payday may be exciting for your employees, it’s likely that you’re not thrilled about having to put together payroll reports, track deductions, and oversee every other critical aspect of payroll administration, especially if you do everything by paper. 

For some small business owners, payroll administration is just a necessary part of business life and the business isn’t big enough to justify its own HR department. While payroll administration is necessary, it doesn’t have to be a big burden. Online payroll software can give you the tools to take some of the pain out of payday preparation. Here are a few questions you should consider when evaluating your payroll management process.

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A new year brings new opportunities. Unfortunately, it also ushers in big changes that can leave businesses scrambling. Recent changes to legislature or ongoing trends can leave your company open to legal problems if you don’t take appropriate action. A good employee handbook can be a key tool to make sure that your business is  prepared for 2018. 

An outdated handbook is a serious problem for any business. It’s important to make sure that your handbook evolves as new laws go into effect. Here are five parts of your handbook that you should update in 2018.

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When you’re a small business owner, your schedule is never empty. Each year contains several important deadlines that you need to follow to keep your business compliant with important laws and regulations involving your company’s finances and employees. Just a single missed date can lead to problems with the IRS or other government agencies.

Keeping track of all these dates as well as everything else you need to do as a business owner can be difficult. We’ve put together a list of critical dates you need to know to keep your business legally compliant.

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Safety management is something we all constantly contend and grapple with in our approach to do business the right way. how do we know if our aim is true? How can we measure our success? How do we know when we strike the mark? The answers to these questions are not always evident, and the difference between striking the mark and missing the target altogether can look very similar on the surface. 

To plot a course through the fog, we need to ask ourselves these two simple questions. Are we managing for safety to gain compliance? Or are we leading toward safety to develop a culture? 

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Non-compliance can cost businesses a lot of money. If you’ve read our posts before, you’ll know that the benefits of staying compliant are things that we’ve harped on before, but it’s worth repeating, especially when small business owners pay billions of dollars each year in payroll tax penalties. It’s especially true when it comes to something as problematic as multi-state payroll compliance.

The problem with multi-state payroll compliance is that the rules you followed for your home state may not be the same as the other states where you do business. Each state has different payroll standards, meaning that you may not be nearly as compliant as you thought you were.

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As a business owner, you get to make the rules in  your own company. However, there are still plenty of regulations and laws that can impact your business.

It can be difficult for owners to keep track of every single rule and avoid non-compliance costs when they’re  busy, well, running a business. That’s why it can pay to invest in human resource outsourcing through a Professional Employer Organization. A PEO can help your business stay in line with complicated regulations to help you keep your HR functions in order. Here are areas  where a PEO can help save you some money.

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