How would you rather spend your time: Growing your business or untangling the messy threads of your payroll processes yet again?

If you’re like many small business owners, payroll is a necessary evil—a hoop you must jump through to keep your employees showing up and your books balanced. 

If inefficient payroll processes are starting to cut into time you need to manage other areas of your business, it’s time to streamline payroll processes. But how can you achieve this?

This post will discuss five tips you can use to streamline payroll processes for your HVAC company. After reading, you should have the information you need to reduce your payroll-related headaches.

How to Streamline Payroll Processes: HVAC Payroll Challenges

A slip in a soccer match could be the reason your team loses. That’s all it takes: one slip, and all your team’s work is undone.

Payroll processing isn’t as exciting as a soccer match, but one error could snowball and cause issues with your employees, your business, and the IRS.

Payroll is complicated, especially for small business owners trying to navigate it on their own. There’s no getting around it. You need to consider:

• Classifying workers correctly: You might hire full-time employees, part-time employees, freelancers, contractors, and more. These employees are classified differently, paid differently, and entitled to various benefits.
• Updated payroll rules and regulations: You or your payroll team need to look out for national, state, or local updates.
• Tax deductions: You’re effectively a tax collector for the federal, state, and local governments. You need to understand payroll and employment taxes.

There’s more to consider, including time and attendance tracking, managing payroll records, and workers’ comp.

Still, you get the picture: payroll processes are complicated and can spiral out of control if you don’t stay on top of things.

The complexity of your payroll process also dependson the business structure you chose or will choose for your HVAC company.

LLC and S corporations might be better options for smaller companies hoping to grow. These structures offer more protection from personal liability issues.

Working with a payroll provider is the best way to streamline payroll processes, and our Connected Payroll Model is designed with small businesses in mind.

From automatic payroll and tax solutions to responsive service representatives who know your first name, we provide small businesses just like yours with everything they need to manage payroll easily without pulling their hair out.

1. Synchronize Pay Schedules

One of the first decisions you make as a business owner is how often your employees get paid. Establishing a payroll schedule creates predictable income and keeps cash flowing.

You might pay weekly, biweekly, or monthly, but something you don’t want to do is have multiple payroll schedules.

Are some of your employees on monthly pay schedules and others weekly or biweekly? 

If so, either combine pay schedules to have all employees on the same schedule or synchronize pay dates, so you are paying monthly employees on the same weekday that your weekly employees receive pay.

This cuts down on your number of payroll runs, which saves you time and money, and you won’t have the administrative burden of managing multiple payroll schedules.

2. Go Paperless

Your HVAC company likely has employees on site and in various locations.

It can be hard to track time and attendance, and paper payroll records might get misplaced and lost. Payroll software solves these problems:

• You can generate, store, and organize your payroll records.
• Employees can access tax documentation, W-2s, and pay stub history.
• You can free HR staff or management from needing to provide information on request.

Printing fewer documents protects the environment. Finally, If your payroll software integrates with accounting software, you can automate bookkeeping, leaving you less prone to human error.

Your best bet is to invest in the right tool or software that helps you manage payroll with ease.

From proper employee classification to managing payroll taxes, the more you can automate through payroll software, the quicker you can go home at the end of the day.

3. Utilize Reminders

Missing submission deadlines isn’t your only worry. To run a tight ship, you’ll want to set reminders for every payroll process to ensure you don’t miss anything. 

Your HVAC company has a lot of moving parts. With reminders, you can nudge employees to submit and review their hours and remind managers to approve any changes or requests.

Tracking time and attendance ensures employees are paid when they’re supposed to be.

Related: How to Manage Payroll for Your Small Business: 5 Best Practices for 2022

From a tax standpoint, set reminders to look for updates to state and federal requirements.

Payroll tax withholding limits, minimum wage increases, and the dates you need to file specific forms are subject to change, so it’s crucial to be organized.

4. Leverage Critical Connections

As a small business owner, you’ve got a lot on your plate. You’re probably stretched thin from managing employees to ensuring there’s enough work to go around and running other aspects of your business.

Imagine running payroll and constantly looking out for updates and changes to payroll processes, too.

With outsourced payroll:

• You don’t have to worry about tax compliance or fear consequences from the IRS.
• You can automate payments and direct deposits.
• You can integrate workers’ comp payments.
• You can get precious time back to run your business!

The ConnectPay Connected Model, gives you access to resources that help you manage HR needs. And there's a team of experts ready to answer your questions and concerns about all things payroll.

We also connect you with CPAs, bookkeepers, and brokers to ensure you get the help you need.

5. Prepare for Growth

As your business grows, payroll becomes more complex. It becomes even more important to automate payroll processes and make them faster, more accurate, and more predictable.

Instead of spreadsheets that become overwhelming and wasted paper, you’ll have payroll data at your fingertips.

As you grow, your workforce might include employees as well as independent contractors. You’ll need to know how to classify employees and pay them correctly. Misclassification leads to penalties.

You only have to deal with local laws and regulations if your HVAC business is local. But what happens if you decide to expand into other states?

You’ll need to know which state-specific taxes you must pay, state overtime and double-time laws, paid sick leave laws, and more.

You’re betting on yourself and your business by setting up systems that can grow with your business.

When you outsource to a payroll provider, you don’t need to worry about tax compliance in each state. The best payroll providers do it for you and connect you with local experts who know the rules and regulations of each state.

Streamline Your Payroll The Easy Way

We know you didn’t get into the HVAC business to tear your hair out over payroll every pay cycle. These five tips will help you streamline your payroll processes, but these steps can still be time-consuming.

The easiest way to streamline your payroll processes is to outsource your payroll solution to a team of experts who care.

ConnectPay specializes in small business payroll.

It’s our mission to help small businesses get the connections and help they need to make their payroll processing as seamless and stress-free as possible.

Schedule a call with a Connected Service Representative today to see how ConnectPay can take your payroll from stressful to stress-free.