FAQ

1. A compilation is the practice of having a CPA provide a cursory check on the basic features of your financial statements. This service includes a cover letter in which a prospective bank or lender may gain comfort in knowing that they have been checked by a CPA, even though the engagement does not provide assurance on the financial statements. 
2. A review consists primarily of inquiries about accounting procedures and analytical procedures applied to financial statements to provide support for the assertion that the financial statements appear truthful. When obtaining larger amounts of capital, a review engagement may be necessary to give the capital provider more comfort.
3. An audit consists of thorough verification of your financial statements through personnel inquiries, physical inspection, verification, and testing procedures. Oftentimes, auditors will contact third parties to verify the accuracy of source documentation that they review. An audit is a significant endeavor usually left for significant capital raising or a significant transaction of your business.

Our business solutions director works with you from the start to identify your business’s current needs. Once you are on board, you will meet with our onboarding team. This group of expert accountants will evaluate your accounting process and provide you with training and direction on implementing an efficient system. Your business will continue to work with a team of accountants at the firm, each with a specialized role to help your business. This allows us to provide you with timely, proactive advice to keep your business operating at its peak.

Cloud-based accounting programs allow for multiplier users to work on a file at the same time while providing great security, and providing the best opportunities to automate your accounting workflow. We recommend QuickBooks online for most businesses. We recommend using additional applications to supplement this technology such as BILL and Dext for your bill pay and receipt storage function.

Kaizen will step in to ensure that your business has accurate, timely, and proactive tax prep and accounting systems to empower your company to run successfully.

If your business operations were either fully or partially suspended due to a COVID-19-related governmental order, or if you experienced a significant reduction in gross receipts, you may qualify for the employee retention credit. This credit is available to essential and non-essential businesses in any industry and can be claimed through the end of 2021. Read more here.

Yes, outsourcing payroll saves business owners time that would otherwise be spent calculating gross pay and benefits deductions, taxes, garnishments, and other items as well as remitting checks to employees, third parties, and state/federal/local tax authorities. Most payroll providers also offer time and attendance products that save time on calculating hours worked, too. Other conveniences offered by payroll processors such as direct deposit and electronic pay stubs/W-2s also save business owners time.

YPD helps put systems and processes in place to minimize errors. All critical items, from initial setup to processing payroll, are checked by multiple employees to ensure accuracy.

Be sure the contractor truly qualifies as a 1099 worker, and consult with professionals. While you and your worker may find the idea attractive to not withhold and remit taxes, the government may not agree with classifying the individual as a 1099 worker. The states and federal government dedicate a lot of guidance to determining whether someone is a W-2 employee or a 1099 worker. We always recommend consulting with your Kaizen accountant, and often a labor attorney, to make the decision on how to classify a worker.

Yes, a payroll review by an independent organization, such as YPD, may help prevent employee schemes. Hiring a third-party payroll service bureau to process your payroll, file the appropriate paperwork and manage funds can also reduce your risk of experiencing fraud.

You bet! Though we pursue businesses based in northeast Illinois and southeast Wisconsin, we can handle employees that work anywhere in the US. In fact, we remit taxes and file returns across the country. We’re well-familiar with individual states’ registration requirements and processes.

Removing the stress and liability of making tax deposits and filing correct tax returns is the #1 reason to outsource. Smart business owners also realize that every minute spent handling non-core tasks is time NOT spent talking to customers, looking for new business, training employees, and digging for cost savings. In other words, payroll outsourcing allows you more time to focus on what you do best: managing your core business.

Depending on the level of sophistication and control you’re looking for, you can call, fax, or email us employee personal information, deductions, and the amounts to pay your staff, or input that info into our secure internet site. We’ll take it from there, computing accurate net pay, printing and delivering checks and reports, arranging for tax monies to be debited from your account and paid to the appropriate tax authority, and filing appropriate tax returns. At year-end, we take care of all the W-2/1099 prep filings, too.

You provide us with bank account information for both your business and your employees. We work with the bank to process the direct deposit transactions. We require two business days between you sending us your payroll info and payday to move funds through the Automated Clearing House (ACH) system.

You can either write the check yourself or have us prepare the check for you. If you hand-write the check, feel free to call us to perform gross-to-net or net-to-gross calculations for you.

You bet! Simply provide us documentation on your plans and we will incorporate the calculation and tracking of accrued and taken PTO time each pay period.

Yes! If you would like employees to clock in and out of work at their workstation, we can provide the software to record hours right from their desks. Additionally, we offer a variety of digital clocks, mobile punching as well as biometric timekeeping systems. We can handle your employee scheduling, too.

1. Benefits Administration – Allow your employees to elect or decline benefits online with ease.
   
   
2. Onboarding – Get your new hires up to speed. Collect their I-9, W-4, and pertinent documents with ease. 
   
   
3. Human Resources – Electronically file and store all your pertinent HR documents, performance reviews, and keep up with incident reports.

Our standard suite of reports includes a PDF journal entry report, which we can customize based on your needs. Plus, our system can easily produce an export file each payday for loading into QuickBooks.

Anytime is a good time to switch to Your Payroll Department and relieve yourself of payroll hassles. You don’t have to wait until the end of a quarter (or year) to begin service. We will work with you to gather YTD history & employee information, calculate your quarter-to-date liabilities, compare those to what you’ve actually paid, and partner with you to reconcile any differences.

We try to keep this simple for you. We will carry over your payroll data from the current year (if any). Once we get you set up in our system, your implementation specialist will reach out to you to get your first payroll processed. We train new clients on how to use our software and walk you through how to run payroll, add new employees (and make changes to existing ones) and run reports as many times as you need until you’re comfortable with the process. If you are busy, we understand. In many cases, you can simply send us your hours and wages for payroll via fax or email, and we can process payroll on your behalf.

We’re happy to give you a free estimate. Call or email us today!