Now that summer is over and you’re settling back into your regular routine, it’s a great time to do a quick checkup with your books and payroll.

Here’s a short checklist of tasks to help ensure that your payroll runs smoothly through the rest of the year:

• Employee profiles: Start reviewing your employee profiles in your Payroll program, including employees’ addresses, phone numbers, and Social Security numbers. You want to make sure you have all the updated information for year-end.
• Tip: Ask your employees to verify the information on their next paychecks and to submit an update form with any necessary changes.
• Employee documents: Put together a list of the important documents you need from your employees, such as federal Form W-4, federal Form I-9, and state tax forms. To avoid fines from state audits, make sure you have updated tax forms from your employees, especially Form I-9. You can also find the forms you need on the IRS website.
• Payroll Items: Look through items in your Payroll Item List and make sure all of them have the right tax tracking type.
• Bonuses, reimbursements, and deductions: Start thinking about bonuses, reimbursements, and deductions you would like to show this calendar year, such as 401(k) and Health Savings Account (HSA) contributions. Remember that you only have until the end of December to make sure these amounts will appear on employees’ 2014 W-2 forms.

Source: Quickbooks