New Year Goals (Episode 94)

[00:00:00] Payroll in HR has responsibility

[00:00:02] anywhere employee information is.

[00:00:05] Okay.

[00:00:06] Keep that in mind.

[00:00:06] That's a nugget, I hope you say that clip.

[00:00:08] I...

[00:00:09] Welcome to our podcast, It's About Payroll.

[00:00:13] We're your hosts, Brian Escobar

[00:00:15] and Walter William Duncan III.

[00:00:17] Whether you're new to the payroll game

[00:00:19] or a seasoned veteran, we have something for you.

[00:00:24] Welcome back folks, episode 94 And that's really what it means to me. You know, it's about the connection and the people, not really necessarily about the day for me. Right. Nice. Um, the holidays always timecard that helps you quickly identify and fix mistakes, TimeTrack Go is excited to announce it's now compatible with QuickBooks Desktop, providing effortless data transfer and reduced errors. TimeTrack Go will not only save you time and money each week, but the easy to understand user interface

[00:03:01] and the ability to turn an ordinary tablet

[00:03:04] into an employee time clock will get you and your team

[00:03:07] up and going in just minutes. time for family and being present when I'm with them. What about you? No. So for me, things that I'm going to focus on, I'm already focused on some of these already, but losing weight. I had a back injury for so long. I've been nursing it. I've been hesitant to do work on it and stuff. I haven't played basketball since I messed up my back.

[00:04:20] And that used to help me stay in a lot of shape

[00:04:23] when I was younger.

[00:04:24] So I'm going to. I may do that for my full second. We'll have to get you some business insurance before you do that. No, because it's gonna be tandem first, so I won't just be me. Don't matter, coming out of the plane. That and then the last thing. Get business insurance for war. And then the last thing is,

[00:05:40] I wanna definitely meditate and pray more, man.

[00:05:42] I feel like I can get reconnected

[00:05:46] to the spiritual part of myself big chat, like a lot, oh my God, it's so stressful. And some folks kind of just, hey, got a checklist and make sure I get through the year end and it's not as stressful. So I'd love to see the differences and understand the differences. I remember when I was in at the college level doing payroll, there's a particular program that's very common at college level, but it's super manual.

[00:07:02] That is stressful at year end,

[00:07:04] because now you're in payroll, finance, HR,

[00:08:22] but there could be times where you don't have enough

[00:08:24] soldiers for everything, right?

[00:08:27] And that might be the case, me check all your updates in the jurisdictions your company is in federal of course because if you're in the US everybody's in the federal jurisdiction. Really? Oh, you might have exceptions, but you still have to report. Go look at the IRS website. Go look and see what legislation what updates there are. Is there a new W two form? Is there

[00:09:42] a new W four form? These type of things. Go look at the circular E was I'm getting the

[00:09:47] blood flowing. What do you got? Yeah. Cause when that happens, they're going to be like, who, who's supposed to update this and then payroll HR. Like somebody, somebody dropped the ball because not again, some big systems are doing it automatically now. And kudos to that. Thank goodness. Because it's mindless. It should be, it's not just updated. It's a, it's, there's no argument about it. There's no thought about it. It just has to. And I remember one year, I don't remember the specifics, but we were literally waiting for that cliff and all the way through December to change some rates in the system for the new year. And it honestly, it came down to the last week of December. And of course you got to work and do that. And then it's what in the heck? Again, number one, call out, check for all these updates

[00:12:22] in the jurisdictions you're in, federal, state, local,

[00:12:25] latest updates and forms, et cetera.

[00:12:26] Just make sure you're good, and then it resets Jan one. And then now all of a sudden there's less money

[00:13:42] in their check when they get paid.

[00:13:43] And they're like, oh, you messed up my check.

[00:13:46] No, I didn't.

[00:13:47] Everything reset. little sheet with different facts, interesting facts, like, for instance, that in 2024, the Social Security limit is going to go up to $160,600, right? Wage base. Yeah, the wage base. And that's going to, that's an increase of $8,400 from 2023. Right. So people are going to have to be prepared to pay a little bit more tax.

[00:15:01] Yeah.

[00:15:02] Because they're paying on a higher wage amount, right?

[00:15:05] So they're going to pay more taxes. to this information. So it's a balancing act, right? I get what you're saying from a pure numbers and the kind of customer service, but in HR, the conversation that comes up in the conversations for communications every single time. The next one is speaking of communications, be proactive, right? Number two, be proactive and plan for the year ahead about anything you learned from the prior year, for example.

[00:16:21] And I think that hopefully this year will be my first year.

[00:16:24] I'm gonna be intentional about the communication, the education of it all. Do they understand their paychecks? I urge payroll folks going into the new next 10 years. Let's be more intentional about helping employees within

[00:17:41] our companies understanding their paychecks. You might want to do that a little bit more frequently. If you want, in some cases, depends on your setup. I suggest frequency if your stuff is like in shambles, if the stuff is just messed. So I would suggest frequency to stabilize, and then you can find the right group. But yeah, that's a great good, be intentional. That was number three for employee education,

[00:19:00] applicable up to things that impact them,

[00:19:02] training, help them use systems better,

[00:19:04] help them navigate the company better

[00:19:05] that you can help them where you can help them We still on the battlefield and we get into it. And we weren't scared to get into it. We weren't, I was doing some work with a colleague the other day on Excel and it was tedious. It's tedious work. And at the end of the session, he was teaching me how to do something in Excel that he built for us. And he's passing the knowledge over. And I'm like, at the end, I was like, oh, this is awesome. And he's like, I don't know many people

[00:20:21] that would call this awesome Brian,

[00:20:23] but I definitely respect that you called it awesome.

[00:20:26] And I was like, yeah, man.

[00:20:27] I was like, this is always going to ask us. The finance is always going to ask us to help them research certain things. You can be ahead of the game.

[00:21:41] Imagine being ahead of the game and say, all right, garbage out, right? You wanna make sure, and this is a big one, I'm glad you put this one on here, is cybersecurity for personal,

[00:23:02] identical, what's the PII?

[00:23:04] Yeah.

[00:23:04] I keep wanting to go with the personal protected information

[00:23:06] when you say they change.

[00:23:07] I keep wanting to go there. your company's data. That's why they say even when you're at home that you should close the browser even when you're at home. Don't leave the browser up. Yep. Because if you have company files on your desk or in your drive somebody could hack into your stuff and gain access to that. Another thing that you

[00:24:21] want to focus on is professional development. Not salary, non-exempt, hourly. You know what I'm saying? Like you want to make sure that hey, it's again, it's a part of that data hygiene. Yeah. And part of that, which you should be doing on a recurring basis, even

[00:25:41] if it's not payroll responsibility, if you the document also put the pay schedule, they were like, Hey, that's enough pay stuff. Give it to payroll. Yeah, thank goodness. I had a

[00:27:01] separate teammate that did it. But I had to manage find your company getting in trouble in some cases and some litigation coming because you haven't reviewed and prepared those tax records. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yep, and then we have a season eight preview for you.

[00:28:20] We are very excited about season eight.

[00:28:23] In the last year, we years. You know what I mean? And some of the things that we're going to work on through the season is show young folks the modernization of payroll, right? It's technology, it's strategy, gives them awareness. We're on social media, like all these different little ideas and we need more.

[00:29:44] We need more ideas. Like Walt just said, you can become a podcaster and an influencer, but you do need to learn some payroll. If you want to be a influencer of payroll or find a new avenue, hey, do some payroll for a few years and then boom, now you instantly have an opinion. That's what season eight is going to be about. We'll have other things too.

[00:31:00] We always bring new companies on

[00:31:02] and talk to interesting payroll professionals in HR.

[00:31:05] Absolutely, that's still going to happen,

[00:31:07] but the overarching theme of season eight is going to be,