Live Q&A: Ask us anything about Square Payroll

[alexak]

On December 18th, we hosted a live Q&A about Square Payroll. If you’re looking for a fresh start in 2021, this is the best time of year to switch payroll providers. It simplifies the setup and tax filing process so you can kick off the new year on the right foot. 

In this Q&A we covered the basics of pricing, how the product works, and how to switch to Square Payroll for the new year. We also introduced you to the newest features we launched in 2020 that help you manage your cash flow, pay your team faster, schedule your team, and help your team access benefits at no cost to you.

So what are these new features? 

• Instant Payments and On-Demand Pay to give you flexibility and control around your payroll schedule. 
• Your employees and contractors can now directly sign up for benefits for themselves - at no cost to you! Square employees can get access to benefits like 24/7 in-app healthcare through Galileo and health insurance, retirement savings, and tax withholdings through Catch.
• Square Scheduling (coming soon!) makes everything you need to manage your team from scheduling, tracking and payroll easily accessible in 1 place. 
• We partnered with Bambee to help you access a dedicated HR Manager to customize your internal HR policies and a suite of powerful HR software tools to help you store important documents.

Square Payroll General Manager, @caroline, answered questions and helped sellers get the most out of Square Payroll for their businesses.

A few example questions: 

• What are direct to employee benefits and how much do they cost? 
• What does “full-service” payroll mean, and what is included in my subscription? 
• How long does it take for my employees to receive their direct deposit? 
• How do I use Instant Payments?

[caroline]

Only the employees can add funds using Catch. However, you can offer health insurance and 401k plans to your employees through Square Payroll. We’ve partnered with SimplyInsured and Guideline to allow employers to offer benefits to their employees. For more information, you can see our benefits webpage or click on the Benefits tab of your online Payroll dashboard.

[Unityvillage]

We are set to run dummy payroll for 1099 purpose, How do we run a whole payment at once

[caroline]

Hi @Unityvillage, I’m excited to hear you’re ready to pay your team with Square! Your 1099 Contractor payments and W2 payments will be two separate pay runs. You can view these two tutorial videos that provide a step by step walk through of How to Run Payroll for W2 Employees and How to Run Payroll for 1099 Contractors. 

[thetropicalcafe]

I own two companies. Both technically new. One has a steady income, the second is intermittent.  How do I calculate with holding allowances?

How do I get a UI account number? The website I was taken to was confusing.

[caroline]

Hi @thetropicalcafe, Withholding allowances vary for each individual and their specific needs. I recommend reaching out to a tax professional who is qualified to offer advice on how to best fill out your withholding allowances. 

As for obtaining your UI Account Number, you will need to register online with the state. After opening the provided link, you’ll select Employers and complete the fields on the following screen. I understand these websites can be confusing and I noticed they provide a tutorial page that offers step-by-step guidance on the registration process. You should receive your UI Account Number 2 - 3 weeks after completing your application online. I hope that helps!

[robear]

Hello! We are opening a second location right now and I'm wondering if there are any issues with utilizing Square payroll or the future scheduler across 2 different locations. We will also likely have different hourly rates at each location- is that easily handled as well? Thanks!

[caroline]

Hi @robear, congrats on opening a second location! Square Payroll currently is not a great fit for businesses with multiple locations, however, it does depend on the specific business use case. I will have one of our Payroll Sales Specialists reach out to better understand your business and provide a more detailed answer! 

[valtimnathbeer]

We are currently already using Square Payroll.  I am more curious about how the scheduling works.  How do I add team members/shifts?  I often have staff clock in or out outside of their scheduled shifts (if we are too busy or not busy enough)- how would that affect the program?

[caroline]

Hi @valtimnathbeer, great question and I’m happy to hear you’re interested in our new scheduling functionality. You can find a step by step guide on how to get started with scheduling and best practices when setting it up in this article. You’ll want to make sure all of your team members are added to Square Payroll first and have downloaded the Square Team app. Next, you begin creating a schedule by navigating to the Timecards tab within your online Square dashboard and selecting Shifts. 

If your team clocks in/out outside of the scheduled shifts, we’ll flag this for you within Timecards. You have the opportunity to review each timecard, and make changes if needed. However, if you want to pay your team for the extra time no action is required and everything will import over to Payroll.

[robear]

I have a very specific tip-pooling questions: we run one register, as we usually have one bartender working at a time. Sometimes (Fridays, busy nights) shifts overlap. So, an automated tip splitting feature doesn't help us, as we have a custom formula that we use in those situations (it's not a 50/50 split for shared time). Does Square Payroll allow us to enter CUSTOM tips for each employee each paycheck? We don't mind tracking it ourselves, but we NEED to be able to enter those custom amounts.

[caroline]

Great question, @robear! At this time Square Payroll does not support custom tip formulas for each employee paycheck. We are working to add new automated tip importing / splitting functionality in the near future. However, in the meantime, you can manually enter the total tip amount earned by each employee when running payroll. We understand this isn’t ideal and hope to help you automate this in the future. Here is a tutorial video that shows the run payroll flow and exactly where you can manually enter tip data.

[alexak · Accepted solution]

Thank you to everyone who participated in our Q&A today and I hope your questions were answered! You’ve raised great suggestions about how we can improve the product that we’ll be sharing with the team. 

To wrap up, here’s a summary of a few themes I saw in today’s questions:

Your time is important!

Managing and running payroll should be quick and easy so you can focus more of your time on growing your business. Square Payroll currently saves you time when it comes to tracking and importing your team's hours and tips. Anything we can do to continue building on these existing features and add new features like commission importing will continue to save you time, which is a huge win. 

Every business structure is different

From varying business structures to multiple tax jurisdictions, 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 support more complex business and tax structures. Thank you for sharing your ideas on how we can improve.

We’re here to help

We know payroll can be overwhelming. So whether you’re setting up payroll for the first time or switching from another payroll provider, our US-based team is here to help you. You can contact our CS team with our customer code M-F from 6am to 6pm PST.  

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. You can review more information about Square Payroll here or get started with Square Payroll your Square online dashboard.