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?

[Jake24]

When will we be able to link appointment and payroll? We own a hair salon and the staff are paid by commission.  It would be great if the two worked off of each other

[caroline]

Hi @Jake24. Appointments sellers can already track commissions with Square - you can find more information here. We’re actively working on automatically importing those commissions into Square Payroll. Keep an eye out for updates in the coming months! 

[3344]

Do you have the ability to put a portion of the payroll into a 401K

[caroline]

Hello @3344,

Yes! You’re able to easily set up taxable benefit deductions and contributions for you and your employees with Square Payroll. If you have an existing 401(k) plan, you can add deductions to each employee’s payroll profile under the benefits section. Here are specific instructions on how to set up a 401(k) deduction.  

If you are looking to set up 401(k) and retirement benefits for the first time, you can do so in your Square Payroll dashboard through our partner integrated Guideline. Employers can enroll in Guideline and seamlessly offer retirement benefits all within their Square Payroll account! Here is more information on their offering, pricing and how to sign up.

[Packhousecoffee]

We currently use square payroll. Our biggest issue has been allocating tips evenly between anyone clocked in at a given time. We currently have to go through and manually change an employee’s tips because square doesn’t automatically divide them evenly between everyone who is clocked in at that time. It is very time consuming. Will the updates fix this problem? 

[caroline]

Hi @Packhousecoffee, currently we have two ways to automatically split credit card tips among employees: 1) tips can be pooled and split evenly by hours worked in a workday or pay period or 2) tips can be paid directly to the employee that collected that tip. You can learn more about our current tip splitting methods here.

We do hear from customers that they would like more ways to pool and split tips such as by shift instead of by workday. We will make sure to update our customers when we add more methods to our tip splitting feature!

[acelwyn]

I have two locations, one in North Carolina and one in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia).  Are you folks able to handle payroll for one account for multiple states?

Also, taxes need to be withheld and remitted for the City of Philadelphia in addition to the State of Pennsylvania.  Is Square handling local taxes for this particular jurisdiction as well?

Thank you.

[caroline]

Hi @acelwyn, We do not yet support multiple tax jurisdictions (e.g., North Carolina and Pennsylvania) under one Square Payroll account, but we are working to add support for this in 2021!

Yes, we do file and pay local taxes, in addition to state taxes. We would file and pay taxes to the City of Philadelphia on your behalf.

[LockCityEscapeG]

I love the implementations you've made lately, especially with scheduling. The only thing I can think that would make the system amazing would be the ability to add minimum worked hours when someone clocks in.

For example during weekdays we're by appointment only, so my staff comes in and runs a game then leaves after about an hour of work. I would love to be able to set a minimum amount of hours worked so anything under that # gets rounded up to 2hrs. Would that be something you think would be worth implementing, or is it too niche if a request?

[caroline]

Hi @LockCityEscapeG, we love hearing unique feature requests like this from our customers! We currently do not have the ability to set a minimum worked hours, however, we will certainly take this feedback into consideration.

[gdesanto]

Have you introduced the ability to handle garnishments for employees?

[John2018]

I have been able to handle garnishments with the existing system, under Payroll Team, click on Team member name, scroll down to Garnishments and Post Tax deduction

[caroline]

Hi @gdesanto, you can set up a garnishment on each employee’s payroll profile. Square will record the deduction on each pay run, however, we do not automatically remit the garnishments to the appropriate third-party. You will need to remit the garnishments outside of Square Payroll.

[healingphilly]

Like it seems like many here, I have multiple locations, some that have a local tax (wage tax in Philly) and others that only have state and federal taxes.  Can you yet do this on the same account?

[caroline]

Hi, @healingphilly, we currently do not support multiple tax jurisdictions under one Square Payroll account, but we are working to support this in 2021. We’ll be sure to notify you as soon as it’s available!

[John2018]

Some payroll providers offer the ability to have their software calculate the FICA tips tax credit (IRS Form 8846). Is Square working on being able to offer that feature in the future?

[caroline]

Hi @John2018, we don’t have plans to work on this in the near term but it is definitely something we’ve heard in the past, and something we’ll continue to monitor.

[joshdp]

We tried square payroll for a couple of weeks a few years ago, and it was missing a feature that you guys didn't offer at the time.  Now you guys are offering it and i would like to sign up, but as it is we can't sign up since we have had it in the past.  Is this getting changed soon? I would love to use square payroll.

[isabelle]

Hey @joshdp! ✨

Thanks for posting in the Seller Community and showing some interest in signing up for Square Payroll again. At this time, we cannot reopen a closed account. However you can set up a new account here using a different email address. 

[joshdp]

If i open under a new email address all my data will not be there, and i have over 3 years of sales reporting data

[caroline]

Hi @joshdp, thank you for your question! At this time, there’s no way to reactivate the Square Payroll service on a Square account once it has been cancelled. This is a request we have heard in the past and hope to have a solution for in the coming year! We’ll be sure to notify you as soon as it's available. 

If you’d like to continue using Square Payroll, you’ll need to create a new Square account associated with a different email address by going to www.squareup.com/payroll and click on Get Started.