Payroll
Payroll year-end checklist for large US employers
Year-end payroll is where small errors made across the year all come due at once — and at a few thousand employees, there’s no eyeballing it. A disciplined checklist, run before the deadline pressure hits, turns year-end from a scramble into a routine. Here’s the shape of one.
Reconcile wages to the general ledger
Total wages, taxes and deductions in payroll should tie to what’s posted in the general ledger. Reconcile these before anything else — a gap here means a figure is wrong somewhere, and year-end forms will inherit it.
Verify employee data
- Names and Social Security numbers match official records — a mismatch causes filing rejections.
- Addresses are current, so year-end forms reach people.
- Employment status and terminations are up to date.
Check the tax details
- FICA limits. Confirm Social Security tax stopped at the annual wage base for every employee, and that Additional Medicare withholding applied above its threshold.
- Prior-wage carry-ins. For anyone who joined mid-year or moved between entities, verify prior wages were carried in so limits were applied correctly.
- State and local. Confirm each employee’s state and local tax was withheld correctly — the piece most likely to slip in a multi-state operation.
Produce, distribute and file
- Generate year-end forms and review totals against your reconciled figures.
- Distribute to employees within the required window.
- File with the relevant agencies on time.
- Archive the run and its supporting reports so every figure stays traceable.
The year-end test: can you trace every number on a year-end form back to a reconciled payroll figure and the employee record behind it? If yes, year-end is a formality. If not, that’s the gap to close before the deadline. See also running payroll at 1,000+ employees.
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