Live Q&A: Ask us anything about Square Payroll

[katieand]

On Tuesday, December 4th at 11am PST, we will host a Live Q&A about Square Payroll. If you’ve been thinking about switching payroll providers, or you’re just curious to learn more about Square’s full-service payroll product, you should check this out. The best time of year for changes in how you run payroll is now! This is because you can start fresh with a new provider at the beginning of 2019, simplifying your setup and tax filing process.

In this Q&A we’ll explain how our product works and introduce our newest features, including benefits like health insurance and retirement savings for your and your team, automatic tip splitting, integrated timecard importing, employer and employee mobile apps, and our nationwide availability. We’ll have Square Payroll General Manager, Caroline Hollis, here to answer all your questions and help you get the most out of Square Payroll for your business.

@caroline has been part of the Square Payroll team since its inception in 2014. In her time on the Payroll team she has been an integral part in building the product from the ground up. She understands that Payroll is critical for both small business owners and their employees. For employers, payroll is often the business’ largest recurring expense. For employees, a paycheck makes up most or all of their income.

A few example questions:

• What does ‘full-service’ payroll mean, and what is included with my subscription?
• Do you really do all my payroll tax calculations and filings?
• What are my benefits options with Square Payroll?
• How does payroll work with the rest of my Square account?
• What can my employees do with the Square Team App?
• Can I run payroll from the Square Payroll mobile app?
• Why did Square build a payroll product?

[bodytemplept]

I think Caroline is answering the questions in order. So post your question and she will eventually answer it...

[GSSLA]

Does Square Payroll automatically pay and/or just calculate the amounts taken out in W-2'ed employees checks for:

FICA-SSA

FICA-MED

CA-SDI

???

[caroline]

I answered your question on your earlier comment! 

[Moe3]

Hi, Ive had Square Payroll for months now and have never been able to run a payroll cycle on it. Everytime I try to run payroll it shows me the current payroll cycle instead of the last. What am I doing wrong?  

[caroline]

Hi @Moe3 -- can you give us more details? Specifically, what day are you logging in and what days are you seeing for the payroll period?

You can also reach out to our support team by email at payroll@help-messaging.squareup.com or by phone M-F 6am - 6pm PST (just remember your customer code!)

If your current pay run has not been processed, you will see a yellow banner on your Payroll dashboard stating your deadline has passed. If this is the case, you will need to advance the current run before processing an off-cycle payment. You can advance the current run by entering $0 for your employees and then you should be able to run an off-cycle payment.

[bodytemplept]

Our business is an S-Corp and it allows our company to pay our employee's healthcare through the "2% shareholder-employee healthcare" option. Can Square Payroll handle this on the paycheck stubs and W2s?

[caroline]

@bodytemplept, if your business is structured as an S-Corporation, we will contact you at year-end to ensure that premiums paid on behalf of a shareholder with greater than 2% ownership are reported on the shareholder-employee’s Form W-2. If you have amounts to report for 2018, please contact our Support team at payroll@help-messaging.squareup.com.

However, at this time, we do not support displaying this information on employee paystubs. We will certainly notify you as soon as this feature is available!

[LeTrioCafe]

@caroline sorry if you have already answered this question.  Does your payroll service do all quarterly and annual filings?  Do you take on the liability if there is a mistake?  Thank you for answering my questions.

[caroline]

@LeTrioCafe - Yes and yes! Thanks for that last question 😉

[caroline · Accepted solution]

Thanks to everyone for the great questions today! We built Square Payroll because we wanted to make payroll so simple it could become invisible. You’ve raised great suggestions about how we can improve the product that we’ll be sharing with the team and addressing in 2019. Your requests are what drive what we build, so please keep sending us your thoughts!

Here’s my summary of a few themes I saw in today’s questions:

• You are busy! There are many factors that go into managing payroll, and anything we can do to help you save time is a huge win.  By making it easier for you to track employees’ time, import and pay out credit card tips, deal with cash tips, or calculate and import commissions, we let you focus on other parts of your business. Our automatic payroll feature works great for people who want to set and forget payroll. Our Payroll app enables you to manage payroll on the go. And we handle all your tax calculations, payments and filings so you don’t need to worry about the details.
• Every business is different, so flexibility matters. From ownership structures to pay cadences to how tight you are on your cash flow each month, we strive to build a payroll product that works for your needs. We’ve made a lot of progress, but there’s more we can do to make it easier to customize how you track and distribute tips and continue automating these steps for you. Thank you for sharing your ideas on how we can improve.
• Benefits are important to you and your employees. We were thrilled to launch our suite of benefits products last month which includes health insurance, retirement savings plans, pre-tax benefits and pay-as-you-go workers’ comp. Many of you are already taking advantage of this, and hopefully our answers below about who is eligible, how to sign-up, whether you can offer benefits to part-time employees (you can!), and more are helpful as you evaluate different options. See here for more details on our benefits offering.
• We’re here to help you. We know payroll is tricky. So whether you’re getting setup with a payroll provider for the first time, switching from another provider, or already using Square Payroll and you have some questions, our US-based team is here to help you. New customers can reach out to our sales team, and existing customers can contact our CS team with your customer code!

Again, thanks for your participation today. Remember that if you want to make the switch to Square Payroll, this is a great time of year to do it. And if you already use Square Payroll, tell your friends - they get their first month free and you get a $100 Amazon.com gift card when they sign up using your referral link [valid at time of publishing, but subject to change without notice]. Just visit the ‘Earn Rewards’ tab in your Payroll Dashboard to see your code.

[SydneyCohen]

If you're curious about workers' comp, check out this blog post: 

A Workers' Comp Policy is a Good Idea-- Even If It's Not Required