Payroll Compliance

Payroll Compliance

Because managing payroll compliance requires a high level of expertise, relying on a qualified payroll practitioner well versed in compliance helps small and mid-sized business owners avoid costly mistakes.

The IRS and other agencies levy substantial fines for non-compliance. However, companies that partner with Axcet HR Solutions, a payroll services provider in Kansas City need not be concerned. Axcet’s clients can rely on a highly qualified team of payroll compliance experts to keep them on the right side of the law.

Payroll Best Practices

Working with Axcet, you have access to our payroll team’s understanding of complex, often-changing employment regulations. Axcet’s team draws on relevant professional certifications and years of experience to help small and mid-sized companies both remain and optimize employee satisfaction.

When your business becomes an Axcet client, we conduct an analysis to determine how you are managing all payroll-related tasks. Often, we discover processes that may not be administratively feasible, such as a short turnaround between the last day of your pay period and your check date or many non-exempt employees being paid on a semi-monthly basis, making overtime difficult to track and calculate. Miscalculations could open your company to audits and Department of Labor claims.

An Axcet payroll administrator partners with your company to eliminate those risks by making recommendations for streamlined payroll processes, implementing any needed pay cycle changes and minimizing opportunities for error – and Axcet creates a strategy you can use to communicate changes to your employees.

When you partner with Axcet for payroll services in Kansas City, you gain a payroll administrator who is dedicated to your company – and backed up by the rest of Axcet’s experienced team. This highly qualified professional anticipates your business’s needs and assists in creating efficiencies in your payroll program, implementing processes such as paperless reports and vouchers, simplified payroll entry and approval, and enhanced employee communication using Axcet’s employee portal.

IRS Compliance

Axcet’s payroll compliance practitioners stay vigilantly aware of current events and changes within the tax code, so you will always remain informed about ever-changing Internal Revenue Service tax laws.

Axcet’s payroll team stays vigilantly aware of current events and These changes include, but are not limited to:

• The taxability of wages and expenses;
• Limits on reimbursable items like mileage, travel pay and per diem; and
• How to tax payments, like bonuses, commissions and other lump-sum payments.

Companies often provide employees with fringe benefits – non-cash items – without realizing they might be taxable. Your payroll administrator will work with you to ensure gift cards, gym memberships and other fringe benefits are correctly reported and appropriately recorded for W-2 purposes – and that the reporting is consistent with the timing that provides the greatest benefits to your company and your employees.

Minimum wage and other employment-related laws vary by state and city and change frequently at all levels of government. For Kansas City companies, one of the biggest benefits of Axcet’s payroll services is the knowledge that our periodic audits of your employee tax forms ensure your consistent compliance with laws as they change. We also maintain your properly dated tax-exempt W-4 and I-9 forms.

FLSA Compliance

The Department of Labor oversees the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which has governed wage-and-hour issues like overtime pay, minimum wage provisions, travel time payments, recordkeeping and youth employment since it passed in 1938.

FLSA violations can be costly for employers; but knowing the intricacies of the comprehensive law is also a challenge. Overtime, for example, is not automatically calculated at one and a half times your employee’s hourly wage. Many factors can complicate what is, on its surface, a simple calculation, and incorrect calculations that come to the attention of the DOL could result in an audit and responsibility for back pay. As an expert in payroll compliance, your Axcet payroll administrator will look for other components, such as nondiscretionary bonuses, that may affect your employees’ regular rate of pay for overtime calculations.

Municipal and state agencies and the FLSA frequently issue compliance notifications. These changes, particularly related to minimum wages, are hard for smaller companies to track, especially if they have locations in multiple cities or states. Axcet monitors these variables and immediately advises clients of any changes that apply to their businesses.

Many companies seek third-party guidance from Axcet, a payroll service provider in Kansas City, to ensure they are fully compliant with the FLSA, which reduces the chance of a stressful DOL audit. Axcet performs payroll audits to screen for common payroll errors, fraud and other issues, closely examining both a timekeeping report for the pay period and the accompanying payroll journal. Once the audit is completed, Axcet takes any necessary actions to correct errors or educate staff or timecard editors.

If a DOL audit were to occur, your company would be required to produce employment records quickly – often within 24 hours. Smaller businesses often don’t know how many years records should be kept and may be subject to fines and penalties if they can’t supply the requested records. For its clients, however, Axcet’s payroll administrators advise on best practices for recordkeeping according to the FLSA, retains some vital client employment records and can disseminate those forms in the event of any audit.

As a certified professional employer organization (CPEO), Axcet has a vested interest in ensuring your business maintains payroll tax compliance. CPEOs – which meet rigorous requirements to be certified by the IRS – are solely liable for federal employment taxes on wages they pay their clients’ employees.

FLSA regulations are complex, making compliance equally so. Partnering with Axcet, an experienced payroll service provider, takes the burden of FLSA compliance off your shoulders while helping you avoid costly fines and freeing up valuable time to concentrate on your core business.