#payroll
Payroll management, processing, and compliance for businesses of all sizes
When clocks fall back at 2:00 a.m. on November 1, 2026, a scheduled eight-hour overnight shift becomes nine paid hours under the FLSA — and that ninth hour counts toward the 40-hour overtime threshold. Spring forward is not the mirror image: the hour never worked may be paid voluntarily but is excluded from the regular rate and cannot offset real overtime.
A per-person tea charge is a service charge, not a tip — it is taxable revenue, and any share paid to staff is wages subject to withholding. This guide covers dim sum bookkeeping specifics: cart versus order-sheet labor tracking, prime cost at or below 60–65 percent, food cost of 28–33 percent, weekend labor per cover, and the cash controls a stamp-card room needs.
Employers usually have 10 to 21 days to respond to an unemployment claim notice, and an unanswered claim raises SUTA experience rates for years — a two-point increase on $800,000 of taxable payroll costs about $16,000 a year. This guide covers how benefit charges hit payroll taxes, when protesting is worth it, why misconduct excludes poor performance, the documentation that wins telephone hearings, and the appeal ladder above them.
Wages paid in USDC are taxable at their U.S. dollar value on the date of receipt — subject to income tax withholding, FICA and FUTA, and reportable on Form W-2 — but the IRS will not accept deposits in crypto. A practical guide to split-pay withholding, state wage-payment law, and the bookkeeping a crypto payday requires.
Virginia's SB199/HB5 phases paid sick leave in by employer size — 50+ employees on July 1, 2027, 25+ on January 1, 2028, and every employer with at least one employee on January 1, 2029. Employees accrue one hour per 30 hours worked up to 40 hours a year, unused leave carries over, and violations expose employers to double damages plus attorney's fees. Here is how to configure payroll, audit an existing PTO policy, and book the compensated-absence liability.
Federal law lets an employer require direct deposit but never lets it pick the employee's bank. Most states additionally require voluntary written consent, and Florida and Montana prohibit mandates outright. A three-bucket state breakdown, the five paycard conditions, the authorization-form fields to capture, and the rollout sequence that keeps an electronic-pay switch out of wage-claim territory.
Section 15(a)(1) of the Fair Labor Standards Act bars shipping goods produced in violation of minimum wage, overtime, or child labor rules — and the hold reaches buyers, distributors, and lenders, not just the employer. Here is how a hot goods hold unfolds, why the good-faith purchaser defense requires a written assurance obtained before the purchase, and the payroll recordkeeping that keeps inventory shippable.
Intuit's QuickBooks payroll agent collects and validates hours, flags anomalies and runs payroll, while its sales tax features track rates and nexus across jurisdictions — but the tax liability stays with the business owner. A practical breakdown of what the agents do, what they cannot do, and five controls (approve every run, reconcile monthly, own your registrations, keep the audit trail readable, feed clean data) that capture the time savings without inheriting the errors.
A personnel file should hold job records only — medical documents, Forms I-9, and investigation notes belong in separate files. Practical rules for a five-file system, state access deadlines, and the stacked retention periods: EEOC one year, FLSA payroll three years, and I-9s three years after hire or one year after termination, whichever is later.
A proposed federal rule would let employers offer fertility coverage as a standalone excepted benefit — like dental or vision — capped at a combined $120,000 lifetime maximum per participant and covered beneficiaries, for plan years beginning on or after January 1, 2027. Here is how the fully insured and self-funded options differ on the books, and the ledger accounts, payroll deduction codes and accumulator reports to set up before the first enrollment.
An accrual-basis employer can deduct year-end bonuses in the year earned only if employees actually receive the money within 2½ months after year-end — March 15 for calendar-year businesses. The deduction also requires a liability fixed by December 31 under the all-events test, and it fails for bonuses owed to related parties under Section 267 regardless of payment timing.
California's advisory pure premium rate for workers' compensation rose 6.6% to $1.65 per $100 of payroll on September 1, 2026 — the second consecutive annual increase after a decade of declines. Here is how the benchmark actually reaches your bill, how to estimate the impact from your own payroll, and five levers — classification checks, clean audits, X-mod management, shopping the renewal, and monthly accruals — that keep the increase small.
