Global Payroll Audit Checklist

If there are any amounts in your payroll records that you cannot trace back to the GL, you need to do some research. You also want to make sure that employees are receiving their pay on the designated day.

For instance, the California Consumer Privacy Act — although primarily drafted for consumers in the state — also protects employees. Employers are required to provide privacy notices and disclose the purpose of collecting employee information. Check to see if changes to your state’s laws require you to offer a mandatory retirement plan.

Run a general ledger report and look for inconsistencies

Factors that are taken into account include employee number, benefit eligibility, employment status, and year-to-date earnings. Payroll payroll audit checklist audits compare file contents against issued pay, track changes and change authorizations, and review security measures such as access.

This can be a tricky process, but it’s important that you don’t incorrectly calculate taxes owed. If you need assistance with these calculations, you might want to seek help from a professional bookkeeper, CPA, or payroll service. Next in your payroll audit, review any withholdings your employees have listed in their W-4 forms. Check to ensure you are withholding the correct amount from each employee’s regular paycheck. This will help to determine whether or not you are paying the correct amount for federal and state taxes. This step of the payroll audit process requires communication between HR and payroll, as you want to ensure that the data payroll matches the information the employee received.

Report a Claim

Determine if the employer has policies and procedures in place that prohibit and prevent off-the-clock work. Determine whether there is a procedure for reporting off-the-clock work. Confirm that the employer corrected compliance gaps identified in prior audits. If your company has employees in multiple states or locations who work in different types of jobs , make sure each person’s paperwork is separate from everyone else’s.

An integral part of the payroll audit process is comparing your payroll policies with federal, state, and local mandates. Overtime and state minimum wage laws can change from time to time, so studying compliance laws should always make it on your https://quickbooks-payroll.org/. Once you verify that your payroll only includes humans who actually work for your company, make sure that they are getting paid the correct amount for the correct number of hours. Unscrupulous employees who have access to the payroll system sometimes increase compensation rates or boost the number of hours someone works so they can embezzle money. The audit should look at every timesheet and paystub for every work for the entire period since you last conducted a payroll audit.

Policies and Procedures

For step by step guidance and tips that may help you along the way, check out our How to Conduct a Payroll Audit video, part of our Payroll Video Library. If there are outstanding payroll liabilities that you missed, send in the payment promptly. Compensation may impact the order of which offers appear on page, but our editorial opinions and ratings are not influenced by compensation.