The Homebase Payroll Guide: The Ins and Outs of Paying Your Team

Running payroll can be a bit of a headache. Add to it that you’re a new business owner doing this for the first time, and it’s essential to learn how to do it in a way that is both effective and keeps you compliant with state and federal regulations. So, how can you set your business up for success from your first pay period? With the right tools, of course. Homebase is the full-service payroll tool that helps business owners like you make payroll effortless. Let’s explore how the Homebase payroll guidecan help you save time—and sanity!—when running payroll.

Payroll can make or break your new business

To run your business effectively, you need a team. And to run an effective team, you need to be on top of payroll. As an employee, it can be extremely frustrating to be paid late or not be paid the right amount. So, as an employer, you need to ensure your team is paid accurately and on time. Employee satisfaction and retention will increase when you have payroll processes that help ensure your team is paid. You won’t have to worry about compliance with labor laws because you know you’ve done your due diligence and kept detailed records. You’ll reduce errors, improve accuracy, and, as word gets around, you’ll start attracting top talent, helping you build a successful team.

Automation makes payroll painless

Payroll can be a time-intensive task that needs to be done carefully and accurately every pay period. Most small business owners spend almost five hours calculating, filing, and managing payroll and taxes per pay period. Five hours might not seem like a lot initially, but when you look at your whole year, you’re spending 21 days a year running and managing payroll. And we know you have better things to do for 21 days other than crunching numbers and double-checking line items. Who wouldn’t want close to a month to plan and execute the perfect marketing campaign or, hear us out, to take a much-needed, epic holiday? Homebase and our Homebase payroll guide puts those 21 days back on your calendar by automating the payroll process. When you use the integrated Homebase payroll experience, you can make sure your team is paid each pay period in a matter of clicks. The automated payroll process starts when your employees check-in through our time clock app. Their clock ins and outs are automatically turned into timesheets, which are automatically turned into hours and wages in payroll. From there, Homebase then calculates wages and payroll taxes and automatically sends the correct payments to everyone—that means your employees, the state, and the IRS are all getting paid accurately and on time. Homebase takes it one step further by automatically processing your tax filings and issuing 1099s and W-2s to your employees and independent contractors. You can even set your payroll to run automatically for zero-click runs, so you can literally set it and forget it.

Stop spending endless hours on data entry

Most business owners spend a lot of those five hours per pay period on, you guessed it, data entry. When working from pen-and-paper timesheets or spreadsheets, you spend a lot of time inputting data from one form into another. Not only is this super time-consuming, but it also has the potential to introduce errors to your payroll. Homebase wants to save you time and reduce errors by keeping your data in one place and automatically syncing it across the entire payroll process. It’s not just payroll processing where Homebase saves you from data entry—here are some of the places you’ll be able to ditch the data entry:

• When your team uses the Homebase time clock, we instantly calculate hours, breaks, overtime, and PTO. And those hours are converted to timesheets and synced with payroll to help you avoid mistakes.
• When you use Homebase, we handle tax calculations and file your taxes.
• Thanks to Homebase’s self-onboarding process, all your new hire payroll forms will be e-signed and automatically uploaded to the system, so you don’t have to enter their tax or bank information.

Give employees peace of mind

Payroll is at the center of the employee-employer relationship. When you pay your team members accurately and on time, you build a strong relationship that improves everything from retention and productivity to engagement and efficiency. While accurate and timely pay is essential, using Homebase as a payroll guide helps you take it one step further by keeping your team informed. With the all-in-one employee app, your employees will have all the information they need right at their fingertips. Using the app, employees will get payday notifications so they know the moment their money hits their account. They get on-demand access to their hours, schedules, earnings, pay stubs, and W-2s, so they can always find what they need when needed. They can submit and track their PTO requests and work with each other to trade and cover shifts when needed.

Take the stress out of complicated compliance tasks

Compliance is no joke—as an employer, you have to follow state, federal, and local regulations to a tee. Payroll compliance is an important part of running your business successfully, but it can feel like a huge undertaking. You have to manage taxes, file the correct forms, and keep meticulous records. Homebase takes the stress out of completing your payroll paperwork and tax payments. When you run payroll with Homebase as a guide, we help set up breaks and overtime based on your state to calculate hours and wages correctly. Let’s take a look at how Homebase can help keep your payroll compliant:

• It calculates, pays, and files your payroll taxes.
• It automatically submits your new hire reporting.
• It takes care of filing and distributing W-2s and 1099s to your employees.
• It stores your time card records to help you comply with FLSA record-keeping rules.

With Homebase in your corner, you can feel confident that you have everything you need to stay compliant with state, federal, and local labor laws and regulations.

Become an employer of choice with employee perks

When you’re a small business, offering employees many benefits that larger corporations can provide can be difficult. Things like payroll advances, comprehensive benefits, and wellness spending accounts may be out of the realm of possibility for your new business. But with Homebase, offering your employees perks becomes a lot easier. Living life paycheck-to-paycheck is a reality for 63% of Americans. Because of this, a single unexpected expense can cause real issues for almost two-thirds of American families. Homebase offers on-demand pay to keep your employees from turning to high-interest loans and credit cards to get by. On-demand pay gives your team early access to their wages so they can handle emergency expenses when they happen. That way, your team can cash out before payday to avoid overdraft fees, payday loans, exorbitant interest rates, or late fees. Homebase covers all the costs and liability, so as a business owner, it’s free and won’t impact your payroll.

Make payroll effortless with Homebase

There’s a lot that goes into effectively managing payroll. From timesheets and W-2 forms to taxes and record-keeping, it’s no wonder running payroll can be stressful for some new business owners. With Homebase's payroll guide and our easy-to-use software, you can let that stress go. You’ll know that all the aspects of your payroll are in good hands, giving you more time to focus on other aspects of your business. Homebase is the payroll tool to help new businesses. Start your business off on the right foot with Homebase. Get started.