QuickBooks Payroll ServiceShort answers while the first paycheck is still unsent.

Do you run payday for us

No. Setup ends with accounts, a roster, and a provider you can sign into. The payday after that is yours to run, or your provider's under the contract you signed. A Friday that gets loud stays on your login. A later scope can match the provider summary to the bank. That match never becomes the pay click.

People ask this twice because the first no feels like a prelude to a yes. It is not. The second ask gets the same sentence, shorter.

Can you tell me a safe salary percent

No. Reasonable compensation for an owner who works in an S corporation depends on the services, on who produced the receipts, and on what you actually received. A percent pulled from thin air, with no look at the work you actually do, is something we will not put on a roster. Bring the year-to-date numbers and a plain description of your work. The wage comes out of that conversation, and then it goes on the roster before distributions.

The bank reconciles. Are we finished

Not by itself. A reconciliation proves cash. It does not prove that wages, employer taxes, and amounts held back were labelled. One account called payroll can reconcile forever and still be unfit for a return. The provider summary, the bank draft, and the account names have to describe one payday. If you have never put the summary next to the statement, that is the first half hour.

Who files the quarter

Whoever the provider contract names, and you should have seen a confirmation. "The software handles it" is not a name. If nobody can find last quarter's confirmation, assume it needs a look rather than assuming it went. We will look with you. We do not become the filer by looking.

What if the worker might be a contractor

Write down who sets the hours, whose tools are used, how long the work lasts, and how you pay. Those are the common-law questions in ordinary clothes. We will say whether the books have an obvious home for the payments. A written legal opinion on classification is a lawyer's work. A W-9 collected on the first day, if the person is a contractor, is yours, and it is much easier in the week the work starts than in January.

When the letter is already in hand

Start with the form number and the date printed on it. The tone can wait until those two are clear. A late deposit, a missing quarterly form, and a worker the state believes is an employee are three different repairs. Bring the letter. We will say which repair it smells like, and we will say if the argument itself has to be carried by an enrolled agent, a CPA, or an attorney. Clean records are something we can build beside that decision. We cannot sign the representation.

Starting after January has already passed

Yes. The phone usually rings the week a person is about to start, long after New Year's Day. We pick the next payday that can be done properly. Earlier payments stay a disclosed mess unless you want them rebuilt and the paper exists. Calling in July does not mean the earlier months were a secret. Inventing a January nobody can see is the thing we will not do.

What should the first note say

The date you hope to pay someone, whether the federal number exists, whether a provider login exists, and whether the person is you or someone else. Four facts. We can waste a call learning them, or you can write them and we can use the call on the gap. The form prefers the second.

Can the first payday be next Friday

Sometimes, when the federal number, the state account, and the provider login already exist and the person has a W-4. If any of those is missing on Monday, next Friday is a wish. We will name the earliest Friday the missing piece can actually support, and we will not decorate the wish. A crew that hears a real date can plan. A crew that hears a hopeful date and then waits is the crew that stops trusting the next date you give them.

Do you need the whole year of statements

For a first look, no. One recent provider summary and the bank page that shows the draft are enough to see whether the labels exist. The rest of the year matters when those two already disagree, or when you want the older months rebuilt. Say which of those you want. Sending twelve months of paper before anyone has looked at one payday mostly creates a pile.