Payroll Bookkeeping
Canada and USMost businesses running payroll in the United States already have a platform that works. It calculates the pay, withholds, remits and files the returns, and it carries that responsibility. What it does not do is make your books agree with it. The export lands as a lump, the payroll clearing account drifts, employer cost sits in one account instead of following the work it paid for, and by year end the payroll on the statements is a figure nobody can tie back to what left the bank. Closing that gap is bookkeeping, it is a different job from filing, and it is the one we do. To be plain about the other half: we are not your payroll provider and we do not file payroll returns anywhere in the United States.
What's included
- Wages, employee deductions and net pay recorded from your platform's own reports, every pay run, in the month it belongs to
- Employer cost recorded and allocated to the accounts, departments or jobs it belongs to rather than pooled in one place
- The payroll clearing account reconciled to the bank each month, so what was recorded and what was withdrawn agree
- Payroll liabilities carried properly, so anything withheld and not yet paid over is visible rather than buried
- Accrued wages and vacation recognised where your reporting basis calls for it
- The payroll figures on your monthly statements tied back to your platform's reports and to the bank
- Your platform stays yours: it calculates, it remits and it files, and none of that moves to us. We do not file payroll returns in the United States, in any state
Who it's for
- US businesses running payroll on their own platform who want the books to agree with it
- Canadian businesses who run their own payroll and want the monthly reconciliation without handing over the cycle
- Anyone whose payroll clearing account has not come back to nil in months
- Businesses whose employer cost is one line rather than allocated to where the work happened
- Owners who discovered at year end that the payroll on the statements and the payroll on the filings are two different numbers
How it runs
The actual sequence, start to finish.
- 01
Start from your platform's own reports
We work from the reports your payroll platform already produces rather than asking anybody to rekey anything. Settling which report the figures come off matters more than it sounds, because a summary and a register do not always agree, and deciding it once removes that argument from every month afterwards.
- 02
Map it to the chart of accounts
Wages, each deduction, the employer's share and the clearing account get their own homes. Where you want cost by department, location or job, the mapping is built once and used on every run rather than reasoned out each time.
- 03
Record every run
Each pay run goes in against the period it belongs to, rather than arriving as one lump at quarter end. That is what makes a monthly statement mean anything, because payroll is usually the largest cost in the business and a quarter of it in one month is not a real picture.
- 04
Reconcile the clearing account
The payroll clearing account is taken back to nil against what actually left the bank, monthly. It is the single check that catches a missed run, a duplicated entry, or a remittance that came out on a different date than the pay, and it is the account most likely to have been quietly wrong for a year.
- 05
Agree the year to what was filed
At year end the payroll in your books is agreed to the totals your platform reported and filed, so the two describe the same year. Your platform files them. We check the books agree with them, and where they do not, the difference gets found rather than carried forward.
What it costs
An add-on to monthly bookkeeping, quoted on how many people you run and how often you run them. It does not include running payroll or filing anything, and it does not change your bookkeeping fee.
Questions about payroll bookkeeping
Do you file payroll returns for US employers?
No, and not in any state. We do not act as your payroll provider, we do not register employers with any state, we do not remit payroll taxes, and we do not prepare or file 941s, 940s, W-2s, or any state or local payroll return. Your payroll platform or your payroll provider does all of that and stays responsible for it. What we do is record and reconcile the result in your books. Running and filing payroll is something we do for Canadian businesses only.
You name Gusto and ADP. Does that mean you would run our payroll?
No. Those platforms are named because they are what clients already run, and knowing which reports each one produces is what makes the reconciliation quick and the mapping right. We are not a partner, a reseller or a certified anything for Gusto, RUN Powered by ADP, ADP Workforce Now, Paychex Flex, Rippling and QuickBooks Online Payroll or any other payroll platform, and we have no ability to file anything from one. Your platform calculates, remits and files. We read what it produced and make the books agree with it.
How is this different from your payroll service?
The payroll service is the cycle itself: pay calculated and issued, source deductions remitted on the schedule CRA assigned you, and T4s and Records of Employment prepared and filed. That one is for Canadian businesses only, because those filings go to a Canadian authority. This is the bookkeeping half on its own, recording and reconciling payroll that somebody else runs and files, and it is open to Canadian and US businesses both.
Our payroll platform already posts into QuickBooks automatically. Is that not enough?
It is a start, and it is not a reconciliation. An automatic post puts a figure into an account. It does not check that the figure matches what left the bank, that the clearing account came back to nil, that employer cost landed where it belongs, or that a run that failed and was reissued did not go in twice. Entries that post themselves are also the ones nobody opens, which is how a payroll clearing account gets eleven months out before anyone notices.
Can you do this if somebody else keeps our books?
Usually not, and the reason is worth saying rather than just declining. Reconciling payroll means reconciling the bank, and that only means something if the rest of the file is current. Working off numbers we have not checked would produce a reconciliation that looks finished and proves nothing, which is not worth what it would cost you.
More questions answered on the FAQ page.
Often paired with
Payroll
Pay run, source deductions and year-end slips, on the deadlines CRA set rather than the ones that suit the month.
Bookkeeping
Monthly reconciliation, coded transactions, and financial statements, every month.
Financial Reporting
Custom KPI dashboards and reporting beyond the standard monthly statements.
Ready to talk about payroll bookkeeping?
A free 20-minute consultation, no obligation.