This is a free course offered as part of the Saylor Foundation's Professional Development program. 'This program is designed especially for adult learners who are ready to learn and apply skills demanded by today’s employers. Whether you are new to the employment world or wish to develop and improve your workplace skills, you will be able to select short-term courses targeted to your success.'
'Welcome to the exciting world of Payroll Administration! What you’ll learn in this course is essential to your understanding of the human-resources concept of payroll as it is interpreted from a business perspective. In applying the theoretical principles of the course in real-world ways, you should gain a better understanding of yourself and your work environment. The goal of this course is to help you develop the fundamental skills critical to payroll operations, and to help you understand state and federal compliance. This will provide you with a foundation for becoming more versed on the depth of payroll as an intricate component of human-resource management, and business overall.
Fundamentally, the concept of payroll is rooted in both human-resource management and accounting principles. From a human-resource management perspective, the concept of payroll embodies compliance, which includes the identification of the relationship between the employee and the employer. There are a number of legislative acts that must be adhered to, as they assist in formulating how payroll is executed. Payroll is also an accounting concept, as all businesses are required to properly track and record their financial transactions. In most businesses, payroll is the single greatest expense they will incur. Therefore, it becomes beneficial to understand the foundational elements associated with payroll applications.
The process of payroll can be divided into four major areas:
Government compliance (includes, but is not limited to): reporting based on the amount of payroll dollars; depositing of taxes collected from the employee, sometimes matched by the employer, or sometimes deposited by only the employer on the employee’s behalf; and providing summaries of annual payroll activity of each person who received any compensation from the organization.Employee processing (includes, but is not limited to): new hire administrative actives and paperwork, tracking and reporting payroll changes, collecting and properly filing payroll data.Payroll processing (includes, but is not limited to): data entry, reconciliation, and distribution of reports.Employer compliance (includes, but is not limited to): the issuing of W-2’s.'
