Most payroll trouble is setup trouble that took a year to surface. Nearly all of it is cheap to avoid and slow to unwind.
Before a single payment goes out you need a federal employer number, an unemployment tax account with the state, a provider connected to a real bank account, and a signed W-4 and I-9 in a folder for every person on the list.
None of that is difficult. It only has to be finished before payday rather than around it, because a provider that starts filing on your behalf will file exactly what you told it on the day you set it up.
Register first, choose the provider second, build the accounts third. People usually do it backwards. A payroll gets run to meet a deadline, the registration follows, and then the first filing turns out to have gone under the wrong account number or the wrong start date.
Putting that right means letters, amended reports and a few weeks of correspondence with an agency that has no reason to move quickly. Doing it in order costs an afternoon.
Owner pay is the first. If the business is taxed as an S corporation and you work in it, you belong on the payroll from the first run rather than being added in December when somebody notices.
The books are the second. Payroll that lands in one account called Payroll Expense tells you nothing at all. Wages, the employer taxes and the money you are holding on somebody else's behalf are three different things and they should never share a line.
A setup list with your own rows on it, in the order the work goes in, with the account each item belongs to and the name of whoever has to do it.
Your figures stay off this site. The rows above are the shape of the list and nothing more.
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.
Setting it up is a single afternoon that decides twelve months of filings. Running payday is a button somebody presses every fortnight, and a provider does that better than a person ever will.
So the setup happens here, the button stays with you, and the filings get watched. Breadth is the payroll, the books and the return sitting at one desk, so an owner wage gets set with the return already in view. Height is October, when that wage is still the right number instead of a guess you have to live with.
I came to get payroll switched on. What I actually wanted was to know the first run would not cause a problem in March.
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.