thread Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll in Archived Discussions (Read Only)

Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

isabelle — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 19:17:39 GMT

Hello Seller Community members! 👋

On Thursday, December 16th, we hosted a Q&A with @swo and our Payroll team. With the end of 2021 fast approaching, the new year is always an ideal time of year to switch payroll providers. Switching at the end of the year simplifies the setup and tax filing process so you can kick off the new year on the right foot.

Recap on the latest features from earlier this year:

Multiple Tax Jurisdiction - Square Payroll now supports payroll processing and tax filings for employees that live and work in different state or tax jurisdictions
Tip Splitting by Transaction & Shift - With Square Payroll, sellers now have the ability to configure tip eligibility per job and tip pooling per shift.
Commission Tracking & Importing - Square Payroll users can now automatically import their team members’ commission from their Sales into their Payroll.
Split Paychecks - Team members can now opt into splitting a desired percentage of their direct deposit between two different bank accounts.

A few example questions:

I'm considering Square Payroll for my retail store, what differentiates this service from other products?
How long does it take for my employees to receive their direct deposit?
If Square allowed me to do "______" with my payroll settings, it would save me so much time.

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

pstafford1 — Fri, 03 Dec 2021 15:45:49 GMT

Hello,

I signed up several contractors for payroll who were sent a link by SQUARE to an app to open so that

they could input their personal information.

However, several have replied back that the app didn't work or they couldn't get in.

Please advise.

Thank you,

Penne Stafford

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

goshawk — Sun, 05 Dec 2021 16:40:48 GMT

I would love to use Square Payroll, however, the way you do tips doesn't fit our business. I own a restaurant. We don't pool tips, we distribute tips differently based on roles. For instance, each staff member contributes 4% of gross sales to staff tip-outs. Of the 4%, 50% goes to bartenders on shift and 50% to support staff, e.g. kitchen and host/bussing team members. Similar rules are in place for bar staff, where there contribution of tip-outs goes directly to support staff. Give me the flexibility to build custom rules into the tips structure and I'd love to move my payroll business over to Square from Quickbooks.

Best,

Eric

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

KatM — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 03:57:21 GMT

Eric, That sound logical, but sort of complex too. Curious. Can you set up those type of rules in Quickbooks? How I am handling it is: I have "Import tips" turned OFF, then I calculate the division of tips manually and enter them on each employee's paycheck.

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

Volition — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 14:37:25 GMT

Hi there!

I would love an option that offers Commission or Hourly, whichever is greater. I have my stylist punch in for hourly but if she does a higher amount in commission sales I pay her that instead of the hourly. When I do the import right now it imports both her hourly and commission so I have to delete one or the other.

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

goshawk — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 15:51:27 GMT

A spreadsheet KatM. Crazy manual but I have it down to a science and can get through a few weeks in a matter of an hour. But seems like this could go faster by adding rules that I can define based on the amount of tip-outs. Essentially removing my manual process by inserting our percentages.

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

Donnie-M — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 21:19:23 GMT

Tips are a big thing in the restaurant sector. I currently do not use square payroll, but we do not use any of the ways square has chosen to split tips. We split the staff tips by pay period and total hours worked. We offer counter service, so our customers do not designate a tip to an individual team member when they pay. We consider that every person that works on that shift, from doing dishes, ringing up the sale, making the order, bagging and handing it out, doing prep, answering the phone, are all integral to each and every sale that happens in our stores. We have some bigger invoiced orders that are paid and tipped after the sale, so assigning tips to the day the sale "concludes" doesn't fit either. The ability to offer a higher salary through customer tipping is integral to many small businesses. We regularly add $2+ dollars per hour to our staff's wages through tipping alone.

I have researched our laws in our state and the newest advice from the FLSA/DOL and we do not take any tip credits and fully disclose our tipping procedures to all staff that are eligible for tips and promptly pay all tips on each payday for the immediately preceding pay period.

Is there a specific legal reason square payroll has chosen not to continue this ability to split by pay period across hours worked? or is it a more technical issue?

Will it still be possible to manually split tips in the payroll system? and if so, could a report from the dashboard be implemented to streamline this process with each seller doing their own manual tip input?

We accomplish our tips by using a spreadsheet and macro using the existing reporting available from square, so I hope this is something that square chooses to implement and keep rather than sunsetting this ability. Also, from research into other leading restaurant tip software/payroll providers, they are continuing to offer this ability.

Thank you for the insight into this issue.

Donnie-M

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

mynameiscurt — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 04:03:28 GMT

I am also interested in this issue for similar reasons. The new system seems specifically geared toward traditional restaurants, which we (and many of your other customers) are not. Pooling tips by pay period has worked for us for 10 years, and the ability to do this automatically was a large reason we moved our payroll to you last year.

We run a walk up gelato shop, typically with one employee taking orders and the other packing. They divvy all side work and cleaning equally. Tipping based on who takes the order is not fair in our situation. Likewise, simply pooling tips by workday poses a problem as well. Like the guy above, we have bulk orders paid/tipped at random times, filled by different people than whoever happened to be standing at the counter when the order came in. However, our primary issue is that our business owner, who does not take tips, regularly works actual shifts and it is not appropriate that other employees scheduled that day "luck out" by adding her share to their count. Pooling tips by pay period, excluding her from the tip pool, allowed that extra to be divvied proportionally and automatically between everyone.

Good on you for adding more features, but please reconsider getting rid of this option. Whatever we end up doing to adjust to your new policy will certainly not be making our business any easier to run.

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

murraystreats — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 19:43:40 GMT

One of the issues we encounter is also re: tip splitting.
We take custom orders on our website or in store for baked goods, and that tip is allocated to all the team members that are clocked in when that transaction takes place. I think our baker should be getting those tips, but she works early in the morning, and orders come through all the time. Wish there was a way to tag certain items so that she would always get those tips, right now I go back in and recalculate manually.

Also, PLEASE add a way to automatically send paystubs via email to employees. We still use homebase (because of Square Schedule issues) and it makes it really clunky for my employees to log in to Square to get their stubs every time. That would honestly be a huge help! Right now I download all of the paystubs and email them out one by one.

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

Cdadey — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 21:01:34 GMT

We have 2 locations with different LLC's. Would love it if We could have both locations under 1 payroll account. Any plans on making this possible?

Thanks

Chris

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

classicfun — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 22:27:26 GMT

We have three locations in Square, but only one is able to do payroll through Square, because you don't allow for multiple locations/entities on the payroll side. Will this be fixed anytime soon?

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

kinoscoffee — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 17:31:12 GMT

I have one Salary Employee that is tip eligible. I have her clock in during the hours she would be collecting tips but don't require her to clock in when she is roasting coffee or doing tasks where tips are not eligible. However when automatic payroll runs. It does pull in the tips from when she was clocked in, but it also pulls in her clocked hour rather than her salary "40 hours". If I cancel the payroll. Close out, and re-open it, it then pulls in the correct tips and 40 hours. Is there a reason Auto Run doesnt just ALWAYS pull the "40 hours"?

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

MzGlinn — Mon, 13 Dec 2021 20:00:16 GMT

Square said that the contractors that i enrolled into payroll would be able to setup theri account from their end and complete their own tax forms. however the agents are telling me that there is not an option for them to do so.

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

Esultimate — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 18:22:44 GMT

Hi how do I manually enter an amount for a 1099 contractor for direct deposit

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

iCAM — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 01:18:03 GMT

Just got square payroll. Won't let me add employer Tax rate. When I click add it just clears the text box and inputs nothing

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

haircrafterjo — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 02:33:55 GMT

I would love more information about Square payroll!

What is the monthly cost for 1 employee?

Are taxes withdrawn each pay period and submitted to Federal + state departments?

I'd also like to know about other features.

Thank you, Josephine

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

happy-belly — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 08:08:45 GMT

Hello, wondering how do I correct an employee start date? I am not allowed to edit the date. Also I need to edit employee hours. how do I delete or edit hours?

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

kicksclub — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 22:21:51 GMT

Interested in your work around for tips. Tipping allocation is the top reason for my hesitation to use Square payroll. I am in a bar setting where customers are free to roam and maybe waited on by several different people, at the end of the shift the tip is divided by how many times customer was waited on by employees. Employee tips are recorded each shift and then totaled for next 2 weeks on payroll. That sounds like that is what you are doing for Square. Is that correct?! Appreciate your input! Beth

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

kimdoeshair — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 14:58:10 GMT

Why can’t I turn on a square payroll account after it was turned off. I had to open a second square account just to run payroll.

Re: Payroll Q&A: Ask our product team anything about Square Payroll

Koromahamad — Thu, 16 Dec 2021 19:16:19 GMT

I am having troubleshooting with square payroll especially when it comes for the payment of monthly membership fee and team members. I am expecting my business registration certificate at any time from now and at the same time I want to pay my membership fee. Is there any I can pay now with out using the square payroll system.