With 2024 year-end behind you, now is the perfect time to reflect on how it went and to identify opportunities for improvement. Whether you adopt new tools and technologies, bring on talent to alleviate workload or roll out more streamlined processes, there are many effective optimizations to pursue. But, before you invest time or money on these fixes, you need to understand where and what you need to improve.
As we move into the second half of the year, now is the perfect time to hit pause and assess how well-prepared you are for year-end. A mid-year checkup gives you an opportunity to reflect on how your last year-end wrapped up, evaluate what’s working this year and make proactive adjustments before the Q4 crunch sets in. To help you get started, we’ve compiled a list of key checkup topics that will ensure you’re positioned for your best year-end yet.
Timely payrolls
Are your payrolls getting delivered on time to employees? If not, it's important to understand why. Perhaps you overlooked a bank holiday that set you back, or you’re simply stretched too thin. You may need to tighten up your processes, so you don’t miss important dates. Making sure you’ve accurately updated your 2025 holiday tables in your payroll system can help you better plan your pay dates around holidays. Lastly, if you’re tight on time, consider pulling in outside help from a managed payroll service provider who can handle running and administering payroll on your behalf. It’s a huge time-saver.
Bonus payrolls
Review your most recent bonus payroll runs and assess whether everything went according to plan. Did employees get paid when you intended? If not, evaluate if you need to schedule bonus payrolls sooner. If you rely on another person or department to approve payrolls before they are paid, figure out if there’s a way to accelerate this process or get a seat at the table. If the payroll department needs to be notified of bonuses sooner, confirm timing requirements.
Also, ask yourself if any employees saw bonus amounts on their regular paychecks when they shouldn’t have. If so, make a note to schedule bonus payroll runs separately from regular payroll runs.
Payroll adjustments
Were all year-end adjustments processed on or before your last payroll of the year? If not, determine how you can prevent missed or late adjustments from coming through, as W-2Cs can be costly and time-consuming to process.
Furthermore, if there are any new or unique adjustments that you know will come up before the end of the year, make note of them. Adjustments, such as group-term life insurance (GTL), an employer portion of health insurance, gifts, awards and nonaccountable business expense reimbursements, are easy to forget about. Also, request that any new adjustment, earning or deduction codes are added to your payroll system as soon as possible.
Regular taxable payments
Are there regular taxable payments like tuition reimbursements or health club dues that are processed through accounts payable? While you will still want to confirm at year-end what was actually processed, be proactive and ask your accounting or HR department if you should plan for any “regulars” this year.
Project requests
Accrual updates, general ledger changes, benefit and open enrollment updates, pay frequency adjustments and more, may require you to make more elaborate changes in your payroll system that require the help of your payroll solution vendor. If projects like these need to be completed by the close of the year, make sure you know your vendor’s project cutoff dates. For example, special projects for B2E Solutions must be submitted by Oct. 17, 2025, to guarantee completion for use in the system by Jan. 1, 2026.
Government notices
Make sure you have a process in place to address notices from the IRS and state agencies in a timely and efficient manner. Also, always remember that your payroll vendor needs a copy of any notices you receive, including notices about filing frequency changes and state unemployment rates. Ensure you have a process for forwarding these along.
Payroll provider fees
Have you received any late fees from your payroll provider? If you didn’t submit your payrolls or year-end adjustment payrolls on time, you may have encountered a fee for expedited processing. Set reminders to avoid this moving forward.
W-4 forms
Remind employees to update their W-4s, especially if they owed taxes for 2024. As a best practice, employees should review their W-4 annually or, at a minimum, any time they have an event that could impact their tax liabilities, such as marriage, divorce, the birth or adoption of a child, buying a home or receiving a large raise or pay cut. For more tips on helping employees navigate W-4 forms, check out our dedicated blog on the topic.
Incorrect checks
If you’ve had to reissue lost or incorrect checks, ensure you have a process in place for voiding the original check.
Third-party sick-pay reporting
Come year-end, you don’t want to be stuck waiting on information from a third-party sick-pay administrator. Reach out to your provider now to get self-service access to your account. This way, you can pull final benefit reports on your own without delay. If you can’t get online access, find out when they’ll be sending you the necessary information and set a calendar reminder to confirm closer to that date.
Benefit-plan rates
Talk to your HR department to confirm you have the most recent benefit-plan rates, and verify they’re updated in your records and payroll system. To give yourself adequate time to update benefit-plan rates for employees, get your open enrollment period scheduled now.
Regulation updates
Are you up to speed on minimums, maximums and other regulations around social security, 401(k) plans, health savings accounts (HSAs) and flex spending accounts? You may want to proactively inform your employees about changes. For example, your employees aged 60-63 would benefit from knowing that the Secure 2.0 Act now allows them to take advantage of higher catch-up contribution limits. For other updates visit IRS.gov.
Affordable Care Act (ACA)
Have employee counts changed at your organization? If you now employ an average of 50 or more full-time employees, you may be considered an Applicable Large Employer (ALE). Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), all ALEs are required to provide employees with health insurance that meets minimum standards — and file necessary reporting with the government.
To proactively manage ACA compliance, streamline reporting requirements and save time, ALEs should ask their human capital management (HCM) technology provider how they support ACA. If you are an ALE and current B2E client, contact us to learn about our ACA services.
Secure recordkeeping
If any employee information was compromised, revisit your recordkeeping practices. Store employee information in a designated, secure location (ahem, your HCM solution) and have a trusted employee or partner generating W-2s and 1099s — which brings us to our next topic.
W-2s and 1099s
Did you have undelivered or returned W-2 and 1099 forms from your 2024 year-end? If so, adjust your process or work with your HR department to ensure all current and terminated employee information (e.g., address and name changes) is updated in your records/payroll system, so you don’t have issues moving forward.
If former employees or contractors come looking for W-2s or 1099s that were sent to the wrong address and returned, do you know how to locate them? To ensure all documents, including W-2s, are delivered promptly to the correct address — and stored correctly in your system — remind terminated employees in their exit interview to update their addresses if they move. Provide them with an email address so it’s easy for them to submit this information.
Do you routinely need to file a Corrected Wage and Tax Statement (Form W-2c) for employees? Why do you have incorrect W-2 information and how can you ensure this doesn’t happen each year? Is there a dedicated person in charge of updating employee information? Consider all of this.
Finally, if the delivery process for your W-2s or 1099s was inconvenient in any way, figure out what caused the breakdown in efficiency. Perhaps it’s time to explore an alternative delivery method like electronic delivery. Just check your state laws for any regulations that impact delivery — and ask your payroll provider about an electronic delivery option.
Training opportunities
Find out if additional training from your partners and technology vendors is necessary. See what kind of training opportunities are available through your payroll provider and what the associated costs are. Certain HCM solutions, like UKG Ready, even have a learning management tool within the system that allows any user to browse training resources and courses on a variety of user-related topics. Leverage your partners as a resource. Subscribing to their newsletters, following them on social media, attending their webinars and paying attention to their email updates is a great way to stay in the loop.
Process and workflow
Take note of any particularly stressful points or pitfalls related to payroll. These may be areas you need to adjust your workflows and processes. For example, if there are communication gaps, look at ways to use your HCM system to streamline communications. If efficiency is a challenge, offer your team efficiency strategies.
Turning year-end learnings into solutions
Putting in the time now to think about how your last year-end went should unlock issues that need solving or nuances that you need to keep in mind moving forward. Last-minute projects, corrections and ongoing inefficiencies can be costly to your organization. Knowing where your breakdowns occur will put you in a better position to improve, adjust processes and bring on the right tools and solutions to help.
Ready to turn your mid-year learnings into solutions? There are many ways to tackle this. For example, now is a good time to establish a year-end project team. Include a representative from HR, accounting, IT and anyone else you think will provide value. Each year this team can evaluate the outcomes of your year-end reflections and agree on the best solutions. If technology and outside partnership are part of that solution, let us know. Our full-suite HCM platform, and our team of experts, have been making year-end faster and easier for organizations since 1993.
To learn more about how we can help, contact us today.
Note: This post was originally created on July 21, 2020, and is regularly updated to reflect the most recent tips and advice for year-end.
