Five Tips to Knock Your Payroll Year-End Processes Out of the Park

Fans at a baseball game

It’s October, which means it’s time for post-season baseball and the beginning of every payroll administrator’s busiest time of year—payroll year-end. Preparing and processing becomes the priority for one of our most organized and process-oriented roles. But don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with UKG Ready® and UKG Dimensions® HCM resources to help guide you through. Head into the batter’s box for some tips to help make your year-end processing a grand slam.

Stay on top of processes and employee data. 

Scrubbing your employee data ahead of your year-end process is crucial, but it should also be as familiar to you as an old, broken-in catcher’s mitt. Verify that employees have their legal names and a valid address in the system. Additionally, ensuring employees don’t have invalid Social Security numbers or characters in names that could potentially cause issues with tax filings entered is vital to your year-end processes. Although we’re already in the midst of preparing for year-end, you can accomplish this throughout the year as part of your data audits. Various reports and features within the UKG Ready solution, including the Employees with Invalid SSN report, W-2 Auditing reports, and utilizing the “Recommend” setting on the Address fields in the employee profile, help simplify these processes. 

Save paper!

Allowing your employees to select to receive their W-2s can feel like throwing the perfect pitch. This feature is turned on under Global Setup > Company Setup on the Payroll Tab and in the Printed W2/1099 Options widget. Once activated, employees gain the option to consent to receive the forms electronically. And then, you can take your paperless plan a step forward by only printing those W-2s for employees who did not consent to receiving them electronically. You can see which employees provided electronic consent within the W-2 report under Team > Payroll > Forms > W2. Make sure to pull in the Employee: W2/1099 Electronic Consent Given column to track the consent process.

Balance, balance, balance.

Don’t wait until the seventh inning stretch to balance your payroll data. Balancing early and often will help remove the guessing game from your year-end processes. Checking your employees’ W-2s for totals and accuracy, Tax Wage Details, and Subject Wages will help you find any discretions or deficits that need to be corrected or reviewed before closing out the year. As a UKG Ready or UKG Dimensions HCM Payroll customer, you have several saved audit reports that UKG provides yearly that can help you balance. Learn more about these audit reports and ways to research and correct any employees appearing on the reports with this Knowledgebase Article. 

Start Early by Verifying Your Settings.

Consider setting up several items early in the year-end process so you don’t end up with a broken bat in the end. This includes your W-2 and 1099 print settings and delivery policies. You will also want to consider ordering forms early on if you’re taking on the printing yourself. For customers who have elected UKG Payroll Services to print the forms, you won’t need to order these yourself. Regardless of your print selection, ensure that your Earnings Codes pull into the proper W-2 box early on to save you a potential headache during your year-end processing. Lastly, consider verifying your Company Tax Settings and Rates. 

Take Advantage of Year-End Resources.

We like to ensure you’re prepared and have ample resources to help you through your year-end processes without any curveballs.

UKG Dimensions HCM

For customers using UKG Dimensions HCM to process their payroll and year-end tasks, be sure to leverage the following resources:

UKG Ready

For customers using UKG Ready to process their payroll and year-end tasks, you won’t want to miss reviewing these resources:

UKG Payroll Services

For UKG Dimensions HCM and UKG Ready customers who utilize our UKG Payroll Services offering, you have resources dedicated just for you:

With all these resources to help you prepare, come time for your final year-end processing, you’ll feel like you just hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th inning to win the game.