Welcome
View our Payroll flyer! Click Here
Please note that prices listed on the flyer are subject to change.
Once you are set up to run payroll with us, we will provide you with the paystubs, the register, and the tax collection receipt each time. You will know in advance exactly what will be withdrawn from your account.
If your employees are not registered on the portal to view their paystubs, you should print and distribute the paystubs to them. Alternatively, you can skip printing and provide email addresses for each employee so they can view and print their paystubs whenever they need.
When submitting payroll information to the payroll email, please organize employees alphabetically by last name. This helps our team process your information more quickly and accurately.
Holidays Affect Direct Deposit!
When a bank holiday falls within a payroll week, you will need to add an extra day to your process.
If a holiday falls on a day other than your pay date, you will need to run payroll one day earlier than normal in order for employees to be paid on the scheduled pay date. Standard 4-Day will need to run payroll at least 5 days before the pay date. If you turn in your info to us on a Monday you need to turn it in the Friday prior to that Monday.
If a holiday falls on a pay date, your employees will not get paid until the following banking day. To avoid this, you can pay your employees one day earlier. This means you will need to run payroll one day earlier. Either credit unworked hours to the pay or bump them to the following pay.
Can’t turn in the info early?
You will hand to handwrite checks for that pay only for your team.
Get started on payroll
TIPS FOR SUCCESS
✔️ Please provide Fireside Tax with an email address that isn’t overwhelmed with other emails. Attach it to your smartphone so you receive instant notifications about any payroll updates.
✔️ Make sure to read the emails we send you and review all attachments. If you aren’t tech-savvy, assign a trusted team member to handle this for you.
✔️ Online banking is essential for direct deposit and accounting. You don’t need to access it constantly, but it’s important to log in and monitor your accounts.
✔️ Be open to change. We understand you may have processed payroll a certain way for many years, and while we strive to accommodate you, adapting to new methods leads to better success. Our most successful clients are flexible, ask questions, check in often, and read our emails. We’re always here to explain any charges you might not understand.
✔️ During pay week, ensure all relevant funds are moved into the payroll account by Monday (or 5 business days before payday if there’s a holiday). Payday must be a non-holiday and business day, otherwise, direct deposit will be moved to an earlier date, affecting your transfer schedule. (If you write checks, only the tax withdrawal date matters, which is usually the day before payday.)
✔️ Inform your employees that the W4 Form changed in 2021, and many people may not have Federal tax withheld naturally. If they are full-time, they should put a small amount in Line 4C of the W4 form. We offer W4 appointments to review their tax liability and determine the necessary withholding per pay period.
✔️ If your address changes, please let us know! Payroll, BWC, and other organizations need your current address.
✔️ Submitting payroll info on Monday is great, but submitting it on Sunday will get you served first thing Monday morning. We love that!
More Templates
2024 New Hire Packet
Hiring A Minor
- Read this before doing anything…Click here
- Post this in the workplace
- Your minor new hire needs to fill this out
Ohio BWC
Worker’s Compensation
Did you know that if you have a workers comp claim it needs to be reported to your MCO/BWC within 24 hours or 1 business day of the initial treatment?
On your New Hire Packet there is a BWC code for you to assign to an employee. These codes are typically assigned to you which you would need to contact your Ohio BWC representative about. You can look up the codes as well. Each employee needs to be assigned a code based on their position. For example, a dishwasher position is different than a waitress so they have different codes. They may or may not have different rates.
We must clarify these records with you once a year (Usually Early Summer) for all employees that have ever worked for you.
Why? This allows Ohio BWC to assign the most accurate rate and usually it can LOWER your rate. Read More
DID YOU KNOW?
You can pay your BWC annually and save 2% on the entire cost for the year?
You can also break the payment down into installments into monthly or semi-annual payments. HOWEVER there is only one small period of time each year to make your changes!
Between May 1st to May 15th you need to make changes to your BWC payment frequency to make paying BWC easy for you.
If you need to cancel your BWC policy you must do so before July 1st (or otherwise stated date) of the current year or you WILL be held responsible for the total cost of your premium! BWC is not a place to cut corners, having coverage is better than explaining why you don’t have it!
💡Communicate with your BWC representative on getting the lowest possible rates for the specific jobs you and your team perform. Then communicate with Fireside tax on what those updates are.
Ohio Business Gateway
Handle Sales Tax & More!
Ohio Unemployment
What is FUTA & SUTA?
Unemployment insurance taxes are made up of both FUTA (the federal unemployment insurance tax) and SUTA (the state unemployment insurance tax). Your unemployment insurance tax rates are set at both the federal and state levels.
City Tax
Do you owe city tax?
Does your employee owe city tax?
What about local school taxes?
Find out on “The Finder”
Time Clock
Timekeeping is available for weekly & biweekly employees
On the New Hire Packet – email is required!
Employees Securely clock-in with their browser based employee portal
Time Punch Entry and Manual Entry is available!
Easily Approve and make notes on time cards!
Employers: PLEASE APPROVE TIME CARDS on SUNDAY and fully log out!
Child Support
We can easily handle your employee’s Child Support. We do charge poundage ($2.00 or more depends on complexity) and withhold the cost from your employee for which you are billed for once a month.
We send the payments online and deduct the payment on the day before payday, pay day, or the soonest day thereafter.
EMPLOYERS TAKE NOTICE
In the event of a layoff, termination, leave of absence without pay, the employer should notify the CSEA in writing within 10 days of the occurrence. The notice should include the employee’s last known address and any available information regarding a new employer or income source.
Also don’t forget to let the payroll department know that the employee is no longer working for you!
Manage Vacation Time
Click Here to see the vacation time formula that we can easily set up and let your employees start earning vacation time. An example rule would be For every 40 regular hours worked, an employee earns 1 hour of vacation time. You can cap the max hours earned and you can limit how much time carrys over into the next year.
1099s
DO NOT let anyone work for you without at the very least have them fill out a W9 Form. This generally protects you and your company.
Here is what happens if you don’t have a new non-w2 wage employee fill out a W9: Read this
After a list is made (use the template) 1099s are generated and sent via our portal just like W2s
The responsiblity is ultimately the employer’s to get these documents postmarked by January 31st every year. We will print and mail for you for a fee.
On QBO Run a Transaction List by Vendor report for the tax year, upload here
W2s
In December of every year, Fireside Tax will send out via Portal an unofficial W2 and W3 Summary. Please review with your employees:
- Name Spelling
- Current Address
- Social Security Number (Use verification tool linked above)
- Pay discrepancies.
BEFORE JANUARY 10th, Notify Fireside Tax of any issues by phone or email. After that there will likely be fines/fees for making changes that we pass along to you.
Fireside tax will send out the finalized W2s. again via Portal.
Printing and Mailing the PDFs will have fees.
The moment the PDF file is in the Portal, you the employer are notified by email so that you can log in and download.
You the employer, need to postmark the W2s by January 31st every year.
Encourage employees to sign up for the portal by clearly labeling their email on their New Hire Packet and have them select Electronic Delivery when they register in our portal. This saves you time and costs. It is good practice to send or hand out a paper copy even if an electronic copy is given, however, you are not required as long as the electronic W2 has been received.
Side Note to Employers: We use two different portals. One is run by Drake Software, Secure File Pro which you might use for yourself and employees will use – My Patriot
You the employer may have another level of access with Patriot Software which is what you need to control time cards & such. This is not the same as the My Patriot Portal.
Why isn’t there enough Federal Tax coming out?
in 2021 the W4 form was updated. The old way of “Claim zero and the max tax will be taken out” is no longer a valid setting.
Many people end up owing because the calculations changed. PLEASE Read your W4 Form carefully and read the entire page at https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/how-to-fill-out-form-w4-guide
We highly recommend that on line 4C of the W4 that you manually input a Federal tax withholding amount that you can afford to part with per pay as you’re paid throughout the year. This amount to write on line 4C depends on what you make per year and what you can part with per pay. Start small and update your withholding again if you owe tax.
Let’s say an employee filled out their W4 form and no Federal tax is being withheld as shown on their paystubs. The employee can part with $25 a pay and they are paid bi-weekly. With 26 pays a year, $25×26 = $650 is paid to Federal Tax. Anything held in excess is refunded at tax time. It is a great idea to update your W4 in late December so you can take advantage of the full new year to withhold your taxes correctly. If the employee updated their W4 in July, there is only about 12 pays left for them in the year so 12 x $25 = $300 withheld.
Let’s say its tax time and for whatever reason you owe $2,000 to Federal Tax. Ouch! First thing, let’s look at your W2(s) what was withheld per job? If you’re single, let’s say $500 was withheld at the job but you still ended up owing $2,000. This means we need to make sure you are withholding at least $2,500 per year at you job. For this employee let’s assume no job changes are being planned. Logically, a biweekly employee would need to divide $2,500 by the number of checks remaining in the year. Let’s say this employee filed at the very beginning of tax season right on January 31st. This means there are about 24 checks left in the year if they update the W4 form today with their employer. $2,500 / 24 checks = $104.16 needs to be withheld for Federal Tax each pay from now on.
The W4 should say single, 0 dependents. All lines 0 until Line 4C. Line 4C is going to be the difference of what was naturally being withheld $500 / 26 checks = $19.23 and what we know needs to be withheld per pay $104.16. That difference is $84.93. Round up for sanity, $85.00. Line 4C is $85. Submit the new W4 settings, check the paystub, if Federal withholding doesn’t say $104 or close to it, adjust again. Thankfully you can adjust your W4 as much as you want because LIFE happens. You may gain a dependent, job changes, you may get married, divorced, got a raise, and you need to consider the last variable. Your employer may be using payroll software that doesn’t understand the change in W4 forms that happened in 2021! So this update may be significantly different on your next paystub but by using logic you know how much needs to be given to Federal by the end of the year and remember anything held in excess is given back to you so if you paystubs show $140 being withheld per pay and you’re ok with that and nothing about your tax situation changes you could see a refund (before any other credits) of $860 (based on 24 pays)
Let’s say you’re married, we look at both of your earnings and usually stick the higher earner with more withholding to even things out or just split what you owe 50/50 and divide by the number of checks. We also use a tax planner to see how the W4 changes should affect you next tax season. If this sounds like something you’d like to do, instead of understanding the madness above, we charge $35 for the appointment and it takes about an hour. You just need to bring a recent paystub for all the jobs worked and last years tax form if we don’t have a copy.
The IRS has a tax withholding estimator however it can get complicated – https://apps.irs.gov/app/tax-withholding-estimator
We will calculate in office for all employees – Payroll client or not – The cost is $35.00* and please bring the previous years’ tax info, and recent paystubs for each job.
*Price subject to change