Complete Guide on How to Do Payroll for Restaurants

Another important factor in your restaurant payroll costs is payroll tax. Processing restaurant payroll is not just a matter of how employees are paid, but also when they are paid, which involves setting up a payment schedule. Unless employees earn less than $20 in tips in a month, the Internal Revenue Code requires them to report all tips to their employer, as all tips are income and therefore subject to Federal income taxes.

Contact Complete Payroll to help minimize your tax burden while staying compliant. If you have any tip pooling agreements in place, voluntary or not, be sure to have them in writing and keep a copy signed by each participating employee. When tracking tips, be sure to include the shared tips appropriately for all employees tipped directly or indirectly through the tip pool. Running your payroll with ADP RUN can take several steps, but overall, the software is straightforward to use.

Why We Chose Square Payroll For Restaurant Payroll

A digital filing system is preferable to paper records, as the latter can easily be lost or destroyed. For example, an employee may want $300 of each paycheck put into their employer-sponsored retirement fund, $250 put towards their health insurance premium, and $25 put into their flexible spending account. Decide how often you’ll pay your team, and let them know when to expect their paychecks.

The most popular payroll software is Gusto, and while we don’t pick this as our favorite for restaurants, we can understand why it’s so well-liked. After all, it’s our top pick for the best payroll software for small business. payroll for restaurants Some of the many reasons we chose it as our favorite general top pick include its fair pricing, scalable plans, comprehensive features, automatic payroll tax administration, and affordable insurance options.

How long should you maintain payroll records?

Its award-winning customer support comprises a team of highly knowledgeable staff dedicated to resolving your queries. Tip income is taxable income under the IRS, and the Department of Labor has set forth a variety of implications under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Centralize onboarding, time clocking, compliance, and payroll, saving time and improving data accuracy with a single source of truth.

In some states like California and Oregon, the employer cannot claim a tip credit. Combined with the normal base wage ($680), Employee A earned a total gross pay of $935. A payroll is a document that lists a business’s employees and how much they’re owed in wages for a particular pay period. “Doing payroll,” “running payroll, or “processing payroll,” therefore, involves calculating wages, paying employees, filing taxes withheld from paychecks on behalf of employees, and several other steps. Talk with your CPA about the possibility of recouping some of the excess FICA taxes you are paying for your tipped employees.

How to run payroll for your restaurant

The main factors in your decision are whether its core features will meet your requirements and how you currently manage payroll, tip income, and cash tips. However, if you’re looking for restaurant payroll services with inventory and fixed asset management, FreshBooks is not for you. A payroll schedule looks at the payroll tax rates, the number of hours an employee works per week, and payroll taxes. The payroll taxes are then multiplied by the number of hours that employee has worked in a week. It’s important to remember that payroll taxes are mandatory for these employees and payroll systems can help calculate how much they need to be paid in addition to tips.

• The IRS provides a pay stub calculator that will make it easy to figure out what your employees should be getting paid and deducting on any given paycheck.
• Some companies do a weighted average and that’s an approach that is great for a payroll company.
• Some timekeeping systems will allow employees to record their tips when clocking out for each shift.
• Keep in mind that the above steps can vary depending on your business.

Make sure to calculate and pay all of the applicable FICA and payroll taxes, like Medicare and Social Security. You are required to collect these taxes from the employee based on their total earnings, including tips. You are also required to pay the same amount in FICA taxes per employee. When calculating payroll witholding, you will need to take a few things into consideration, including the employee’s gross wages. This will be the salary they are paid before any deductions are made.

Paychex Flex

Paychex is one of the best restaurant payroll software platforms for restaurants of all sizes. It is robust enough to manage their specific needs, including tip reporting and multiple pay rates. The time and attendance add-on tracks the time of your hourly employees for accurate payments. Paychex also supports payroll and tax processing, plus compliance in several locations, which is ideal if you need to pay employees in different regions. When you run payroll, you retain a portion of employee earnings from their gross pay to cover the employee portion of federal, state, and local payroll taxes. Then you make a direct deposit (or cut a check) for the employee’s net pay—the amount they take home.

Some restaurant employees will have overtime pay due for hours worked beyond their regular shift. Modern payroll software will automatically calculate this amount for you by tracking employee hours worked and your overtime rate. It has several plan options, all delivering full-service processing for paying your taxes and tipped employees. Gusto is a popular complete-service payroll software program that many small business owners use to pay their employee wages.

Gross pay is the total sum an employee earns over the course of the pay period. Keep in mind that the above steps can vary depending on your business. For example, if you don’t have tipped employees, you don’t have to worry about calculating overtime and gross pay using a different method. Payroll for restaurants is a little different than running payroll for a “regular” business. It includes special rules and requirements for tips, payroll calculations, and more.

• Since these should be digital files, it’s easy to back up the information and keep it safe.
• In short, it’s the act of calculating and distributing wages to restaurant employees.
• Restaurants that have lost staff and need to hire new employees will likely have a lot of difficulties.
• Check with your state and locality to find out which tax ID numbers you need to apply for ahead of time.
• If you don’t pay them, they’ll stop showing up to work, and you won’t have anybody to serve up the hospitality your customers expect.
• Unless your business is in California, Oregon, Nevada, Washington, Minnesota, Alaska, or Montana, you will need to be careful about calculating wages correctly.
• In the end, you want employees to be happy and to make sure you are staying compliant.

The final step to figuring out his final pay for the week is calculating any tips he earned, which will determine if you need to add an additional amount to his paycheck. You’ll need to create a proper tip reporting system to calculate payroll correctly. Restaurant owners should make sure there is a detailed reporting system available to track how many hours each employee worked in their various positions. To fully grasp the nuances of restaurant payroll, owners need to first be aware of the legislation that influences it. In this article, we’ll outline the basics for setting up payroll at your restaurant and give you a checklist for running that payroll. Tips that total $20 or more during a month are subject to federal income, Social Security, and Medicare taxes.

Why We Chose Gusto For Restaurants

Finally, FMLA mandates organizations with 50+ employees to provide said employees with protected leave in case of illness or the illness of a spouse, parent, or child. The IRS requires you to report the tips employees receive as taxable income if they exceed $20 or more per month. Keep in mind that if your policy allows sharing of tips among all employees, you are required to pay all of your employees full minimum wage, not the reduced wage. If you choose not to institute a tip policy, your employees will simply retain their own tips.