Small Business CPA Dallas AlternativePayroll set up, not run.

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Setup is the work. Payday is not.

Payroll setup means the company is registered where it has to be, a provider is chosen, the deposit rhythm is known, and the owner who works has a wage written down before the first paycheck. The provider you run sends the paycheck and the filings that go with it. This practice does not sit in that system as the employer of record, and we do not run payday.

A small company often has no payroll at all until the owner is told to pay a wage. That moment is a setup, not a processing contract. We help you see what has to exist before the first run. Payday itself stays inside the provider you already run, and our part ends once that provider is standing. If a full-service provider is the right tool, we say so and we stop at the handoff of the setup.

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The wage is written before the first run.

An owner who works in the company needs a wage that matches the work, written down while the year can still be paid that way. We do not invent a percentage. We write the duties and a figure beside them, and we look at whether the account can pay it without missing the vendors. A year of large transfers and no paycheck is a year we will not call ordinary.

Reasonable pay is a comparison to the work, not a slogan. What you used to pay someone else for the same duties is a fact. A round number chosen only because it keeps a tax line small is not a fact. If that is the only number on the table, we ask for the duties before we write anything next to them.

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Contractors and new hires are a setup question.

Paying people as contractors when they work like employees is a classification question, and it belongs in the setup, not in a cleanup after a notice. We ask what the person does, who sets the hours, and whose tools are used. We do not reclassify a workforce on a hunch, and we do not promise a notice will go away. We name the question while the next payday can still be set up correctly.

New-hire reporting and the state unemployment account are part of standing the payroll up. The rates and the wage base change, so we read the current agency page when the setup is scoped rather than quoting a figure from memory on this page. The provider you choose should be the one that produces those filings. We confirm the accounts exist.

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Send the latest pay report, or say none exists.

On the first call we want the last payroll report, or a plain statement that no paycheck has been run. A missing report is a better start than a rounded story. We will tell you whether a wage can still be set for the year you are in.

The note names the year and whether a provider already exists. That is enough. Standing the payroll up waits for a signed page that names the year. Until then we are reading the payroll question with you, not running a payday.