Simplify Your Year End

The end of the year is a busy time for most industries, not to mention in our personal lives. Make your Year End easier with the following tips from Mosaic’s very own Year End Subject Matter Expert Aimée Morgan!

Year End Tips and Tricks:

Start By Setting Up Your Rockstar Team
Regardless of the size of your company, a smooth Year End requires the support of several members of your team, as  well as other departments. Make sure your team members know and understand their responsibilities as well as any deadlines that might be approaching. Communicate now with team members in other departments, like Finance and HR, to ensure they are aware that Year End is just around the corner to let them start planning for their piece of the project.

Don’t forget to make extra sure everyone is aware of their role and that you have communicated ownership of each task and accounted for the time required, including: printing W2s, sending W2s, benefits reconciliation, accounting and taxable fringes, communication with employees, and tax setup and reconciliation.

Set Up and Extend Your Calendars
Once you’ve established your team, make sure to set up, extend, and update the following three calendars: Team Calendar, UKG Pro Payroll, and Timekeeping. All three calendars should include Bank Holidays and Company Holidays, as well as the upcoming year’s pay schedule. By establishing the pay schedule and bank holidays within UKG Pro, the system will recognize if a bank holiday falls on a payday and adjust accordingly. By setting up these calendars in your internal team calendar, you will be able to plan in advance if a holiday falls within a processing week and adjust your schedule to allow enough time for you and your team to prepare.

Set up a Supplemental Payroll
Set up a supplemental payroll dated the last banking day of the year (this year, it is December 29th). Even if that day is already a payroll day, set up an additional payroll on that day and use it for any last-minute adjustments or bonuses. Set up this supplemental payroll for all pay groups and prepare yourself for the unexpected. Reach out to your Accounting and HR departments now to get an idea of any taxable fringes that may also need to go in to that supplemental payroll.

W-2 Printing
The easiest thing to simplify this part of Year End is to contact us today! Enterprise customers can completely remove the hassle of printing W-2 tax forms. Once your W-2 files are created, Mosaic can print your team’s W-2 forms and ship them directly to each employee or to the company. It’s that simple! If you do choose to do this internally, remember that you must send a W-2 form to anyone who was paid within the 2017 calendar year. You will also need to be sure to order enough forms (we recommend your employee count + 10%) to account for any special circumstances such as  team members who have moved out of state. If you have more than one component company or have team members in Ohio, Pennsylvania or Kentucky you may need to order more than +10% to account for extra pages. All W-2s must be post marked no later than January 31st, so make sure your postage meter has enough postage before then. Finally, don’t forget to order enough envelopes to ship all of the forms and remember, any extra envelopes can be used next year!

State and Local IDs
You can run a report within UKG Pro Business Intelligence to show if you are missing a state or local ID. If you do this check now you still have time to apply for any missing IDs (this process usually takes a few weeks, with some localities taking even longer). This information may be missing because new locations were added, or employees started working from home. Visit: payroll-taxes.com for information on any state or local taxes you may be missing.

Verify Employee Data
Make sure that the data in your UKG Pro system is clean. Verify employees’ Social Security Numbers by running a report from BI. No employee should have a SSN beginning with the number 9. Also remember to verify SSNs for dependents for your 1095 reporting.

All team members must have an assigned primary location or they will not receive a W-2. Review who is claiming “Exempt” and who is claiming “Block”. If current employees are claiming “exempt”, they will need to re-submit their request for the new year. If an employee is claiming “block,” they are not reporting taxes to the IRS, this may be because they are on a work visa but verifying is always a good practice.

You shoul also take this opportunity to verify and validate all employee’s adresses to make sure all W-2s are delivered to the correct location. Employees move throught the year and often forget to tell their employers.

Tax Recon
Tax Recon should be happening after every payroll or monthly. Year End is a good time to review and verify that everything has been done properly. Compare your Wage Summary Report to your W-2 summary; they should match.

Seize this opportunity
Finally, take this opportunity to change anything you have been unhappy with this is a new year! You have a chance to create or correct new versions of earning and deduction codes to work the way you want them to. Remember that once you set up a code, you cannot change the tax category associated with it, so take your time and plan your new codes appropriately.

We hope these tips and tricks are useful in supporting your work for a successful Year End. For more information, feel free to download our presentation, and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for more updates.