The second most expensive section of the Cost of Services Rendered are benefits. This includes health insurance provided by the company, retirement benefits, other forms of medical and life insurance. Sick leave to vacation time is included here too.
Payroll is envisioned as the simple employer employee agreement related to compensation for services. I often think of this as the simple handshake whereby the employer agrees to pay the employee a set rate per hour of work. This was true a hundred or more years ago, but over time; history and governmental regulations complicated this simple relationship.
There are several different retirement plans available to the small business owner. But no plan offers so many advantages to small business as the Simple retirement plan. The positive attributes include: 1) Easiest to understand, 2) Least amount of paperwork, 3) No compliance reporting and 4) Plenty of flexibility. If you are in business and have less than 25 employees, this is your best option to include a great benefit for your employees. This article describes this form of a retirement plan and Section 408 of the Internal Revenue Code, identifies the advantages, and concludes with a comprehensive example. In addition, I explain how to fill out the proper document to begin the plan.
This is a plan within an allowed set of plans under Section 408 of the Internal Revenue Code. All of us have heard of Section 401(k) plan. The Internal Revenue Code dedicates Sections 401 through 408 to codifying retirement plans. Within Section 408 are the easier to understand retirement plans. They include Simplified Employee Plans (SEPs), Salary Reduction Simplified Employee Plans (SARSEPs) and the Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees (SIMPLE). Section 408(p) addresses the SIMPLE.
Accrued payroll is a current liability comprised of four sections. The first is the amount of payroll earned by staff and not yet processed or paid. The second is the dollar value of personal time off accumulated for each employee aggregated into one number. The third consists of payroll taxes owed to the respective governmental authorities and the final section comprises the accumulated benefits payable such as health insurance, retirement contributions, and amounts owed to third parties as deductions from the gross payroll.
The employee manual is a guidebook and a tool to explain the policies and procedures for the small business operation. It addresses the basic expectations for performance and conduct of the employee. The manual is only a guide and the employee needs to understand its importance in the overall corporate policies and procedures hierarchy.
There are two different forms of compensation provided to employees; direct and indirect. Direct forms of compensation have a multitude of types or methods, from salaries to bonuses. Indirect compensation is primarily the various types of benefits and long term incentives. This article is an introduction to the terminology of compensation.
One of the forms of compensation is direct remuneration for services rendered by the employee. The term used for this is wages. It consists of four different groups of payment from the employer to the employee. They are salary, hourly, commission and bonus types of wages.
I laugh at the definition of labor costs because in my opinion the so called experts only have it half right. Labor costs are more than just gross wages and benefits. It should include the costs of insurance, employer taxation, human resources management and incentives. All of the costs associated with delivering the human element of service should be included. Let’s explore these costs from the most expensive to the least.
Matching the right person to the right job is the primary objective of any human resource manager. If you had a company of highly trained, well informed, and happy staff, you would control the best place to work in the whole wide world. To me, the best place to work is Santa’s Workshop.
In the world of accounting, we stand on two principles; timely and accurate information for the client. Without either, the client can’t make good decisions. As accountants our job is to record economic transactions and report this information in a financial format. For the client it is imperative that the information is provided in a reasonable period of time after the activity.
