You want payday to exist without turning into a second job, and you want the accounts around it right before anyone gets paid. That's a setup conversation. Pressing the button each period stays with you.
Some people arrive before the first employee, with nothing set up. Others arrive after a year of guessing which vendor was supposed to hold which filing. Both are sensible times to ask.
What gets sorted is the order. Registrations first, then the provider, then how payday lands in the books, and only then whether the owner belongs on it.
A provider you chose and control, the Texas accounts registered in the company's name, payday landing in the right places in the file, and the dates written where you can see them.
No wages are printed on anything here. The strip above is the shape of a setup list, and the dates on it stay yours.
Payroll set up by somebody who also has to prepare the return gets coded correctly the first time, because the person choosing the accounts already knows how they land in April. A Tax CFO is the controller and CFO seat for an owner-run business with the tax work inside it, so the books, the return and the plan come from one desk and the October number is decided before the year ends.
Breadth is the setup, the payroll accounts and the return speaking to each other, owner wage included. Height is the autumn conversation about what that wage ought to be, taken while the year can still change rather than after it is decided for you.
Picture a company that ran payday faithfully for two years through a provider nobody had connected to the books, so every quarter a wage total was typed in by hand and never quite matched. Payday was always on time. The books were always slightly wrong.
Putting payroll in place is ordinary work and there's no CPA license at this desk. Assurance reports, audits, reviews and compilations stay with a firm that holds one.
We also don't run payday from here, and that's deliberate rather than a gap. The provider is yours, the login is yours, and the button is yours. If a bank wants a signed statement, you'll hear that before any calendar gets discussed. The longer version is on the disclosures page.
Source. The reserved-report rules at Texas Occupations Code sections 901.451, 901.453 and 901.456, read 29 September 2026 while writing about payroll setup.
Before the first hire, or after a year of guessing, either one is enough to start.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.