What An Accountant Should Keep In Mind While Offering Payroll Services?
As an Accountant by profession, one can increase their revenue and client base by offering businesses payroll services. Accountants can offer these payroll services to small and large companies since every company must comply with federal laws related to payroll reporting.
As an accountant, one of the primary services you can offer to the clients is to calculate their employees’ paychecks. Along with calculating the payroll and offering payroll solutions, you will also need to keep track of employees’ office hours, requests for unpaid and paid leaves, and other similar information that are part of paycheck calculation.
Another primary task for a payroll accountant is Auditing. As part of Auditing, you will have to review, assess, and evaluate tax and payroll documents’ accuracy. You will have to make sure your client’s company is compliant with state, federal, and local regulations.
Here is what an Accountant will have to take care of while offering Payroll Services:
Tax and Benefits withholding
As an accountant, it is expected that you have all the knowledge and information related to tax regulations and laws. Every employee expects from a payroll accountant that the necessary and appropriate taxes are withheld from their paycheck. The accountant’s responsibility is to withhold the necessary and correct amount based on employees’ tax bracket, life insurance plan, medical plan contribution, etc.
Your role as payroll accountant will be to make quarterly payments to the Internal Revenue Services and other local and state taxing authorities at a business level. Your client is required to pay the employee’s Social Security and Medicare taxes to the government; you will have to ensure the appropriate amount reaches the concerned authorities.
For tax purposes, at the end of each year, you will be responsible for compiling and issuing compensation reports to every employee and the government. The different types of compensation reports you will have to handle are W-2, W-3, 1099, and 941 forms. Before you get into the payroll accountant role, you must know everything about these reports. Each of these reports corresponds to the type of employee or compensation activity in the organization during the year.
Work-related to Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)
FLSA requires companies to maintain individual employee records in their database. It is the role of payroll accountant to ensure that their payroll department is in line with the regulations. According to the United States Department of Labor, companies can either keep the records in paper documents or electronic files; the idea is that documents should be accessible whenever required. Here are some of the data you need to keep Name and Social Security number, Home Address, Date of birth, Gender, Occupation, etc.
Work in line with the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA)
Under Federal law, companies and their employees have to pay for the Social Security and Medicare programs. In a standard scenario, both parties have to pay half the tax.
Smart Business Consultants is an experienced and Smart provider of Accounting Services for Small Businesses and Startups. Along with providing Bookkeeping and CFO/Controller, the company also offers Payroll Services for businesses all over the United States. Smart Business Consultants work as online payroll providers who help businesses simplify their Payroll by offering simple setup and day-to-day payroll management.
