Believe it or not, 2020 is only two months away. While we’re all getting ready for our favorite year-end holidays and everything the new year (and new decade) hold, there’s still plenty to do to make sure 2019 wraps up on a good note. No one knows that better than HR professionals. Keeping everything in order while you prepare for a new year isn’t an easy job. Look through this year-end tasks checklist to make sure you’ve got a handle on everything. 

Year-End Tasks – Payroll 

Nobody wants to look back on 2019 and find any monetary discrepancies. With the MyPayrollHr fraud case earlier this year, ensuring your payroll is above board is certainly a timely concern—not that it shouldn’t always be. Like so many other year-end tasks, many of year-end payroll responsibilities are just a matter of taking the time to get them done. 

Start with the tasks employees can help you address. Remind your staff to ensure information such as social security numbers, addresses, and withholdings are all correct on their pay stubs. Next, make sure you’ve accounted for all the other expenses related to your employees: bonuses, overtime, relocation reimbursements, etc as well as all the taxable benefits you have to post into W2 reporting.    

Year-End Tasks – Benefits

Most of the year-end benefits conversation will probably focus on conducting Open Enrollment. While that will probably take up most of your time, there are plenty of smaller benefits-related tasks that also need your attention. The great thing is, a lot of these smaller tasks will hopefully make conducting open enrollment a little bit easier. 

Confirm that each of your employees understand their benefits and any changes they can make for the upcoming year. This includes making sure their personal and dependents’ coverage is accurate. If your benefits are changing, give yourself enough time to broadcast this to your organization and set aside time to answer employee questions.  

Year-End Tasks – HR

Start 2020 on the right foot by taking care of all those little tasks you may have been putting off. Other year-end tasks are poised to take up more of your time, so get the small stuff sorted ASAP. For payroll, that means ensuring all of your personnel files are up-to-date. 

Verify employees’ personal information that may have changed since last year: home addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, and bank accounts. Another task to check off is making sure all vacation/sick/personal time is accounted for and correct. If your organization’s PTO doesn’t roll over to the next year, remind employees that it’s “use it or lose it.” 

Finally, make sure the information on your employees’ W-4s is current. Changes to filing status and exemptions should be addressed. This is especially important this year as there are significant changes coming to the W-4 in 2020. 

Attend CTR’s isolved Webinars

Year-End isn’t the easiest time of year for HR professionals, but CTR and isolved are here to help. Did you know we host several isolved webinars throughout the month? Take a look at our events calendar for more details and information about registering for the next webinar.