19 Common Payroll Terms To Know

payroll terminology

Organized groups of employees with a common identity, interest, or background. A measurement of employee satisfaction based on their likelihood to recommend their employer. An employee’s entire time spent within an organization from initial hiring to final exit. A contractual agreement between two employers to share responsibilities for an employee.

Income Tax

Unlike payroll taxes, employers never contribute to paying their employees’ federal or state income taxes. Includes overtime pay, bonuses, commissions, retroactive pay, accumulated sick leave pay, and severance pay. Supplemental wages may be subject to special federal and state tax withholding rules. Refers to the state taxes an employer is required to withhold from employees’ wages, such as state income tax and SDI tax. The employment tax reports an employer must file with the state taxation double entry bookkeeping agency. Applies to employers who must withhold state taxes from employees’ wages and/or pay their own share of state employment taxes.

payroll terminology

Most salaried employees are exempt from overtime, but your business may be required to pay overtime to some lower-paid exempt employees. The terms “salaried employee” and “hourly employee” relate specifically to how these employees are paid. Salaried employees are paid an annual salary, while hourly employees are paid an hourly rate times the hours they’ve worked. Payroll deductions are all the taxes, benefits, and other payments taken out of an employee’s paycheck.

Professional Employer Organization (PEO)

That’s in contrast to FUTA, which charges a uniform rate for every employee at every business. Businesses can run payroll manually or outsource the task to payroll software or an accounting firm. “In general, “hours worked” includes all time an employee must be on duty, or on the employer’s premises or at any other prescribed place of work.

Timesheet

A “tip credit” lets employers pay tipped employees less than the minimum wage if they make enough tips to account for the difference. The length of time for which employees are paid, based on their pay frequency. For example, a weekly pay period may start on Sunday and end on Saturday. Refers to when an employee receives a bigger paycheck than they should. is depreciation a legal responsibility why or why not Overpayments can be corrected in various ways, including reducing the overpaid employee’s future wages.

For more than 30 years, Paycor has maintained a core expertise in payroll, tax filing and compliance. If you don’t want to go it alone, you can entrust your payroll to the experts at Paycor. The individual retirement account (IRA) offers employees greater control over their retirement savings. With this retirement plan, employees can deposit funds and enjoy access to tax advantages. First passed in 1993, the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) allows employees to take leave from work in order to care for themselves or family members.

The annual salary is divided by the number of pay periods in the year to determine gross pay for a pay period. Fringe benefits, also called imputed income, are the perks that businesses offer aside from regular wages. Refers to when an employee gets a predetermined amount of compensation each payday on a how to hold effective nonprofit board meetings weekly basis, or less frequently (e.g., biweekly or semimonthly). Under the Fair Labor Standard Act’s salary basis rule, exempt employees generally must receive no less than $684 weekly. The minimum hourly rate an employer is allowed to pay nonexempt employees under federal, state, or local law. The length of time an employer uses to determine their IRS deposit schedule for withheld federal income tax and FICA taxes plus their own share of FICA taxes.

Garnishment is a legal proceeding authorizing an involuntary transfer of an employee’s wages to a creditor to satisfy a debt. Child support is a garnishment that is often placed when couples divorce and one does not pay as agreed in a divorce decree. A 12-month period used to determine how often an employer must deposit employment taxes.

  1. A type of ACH payment that allows employers to transfer employees’ wages directly into their bank accounts, thereby avoiding paper checks.
  2. The concept that income is taxable, even if the taxpayer hasn’t yet physically received it.
  3. Examples are retirement plan contributions and some health care costs.

Table of contents

Most pay stubs also give employees an update on how many vacation and sick days they’ve accrued and used during the year. Here are the top-line payroll terms you’ll hear as a small business owner. Payroll might not be a foreign country, but new small business owners should nonetheless familiarize themselves with these standard payroll terms and abbreviations. An employee’s take-home pay, after mandatory and voluntary deductions. A paycheck issued to an employee outside of the normal payroll run.

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