r/Payroll

Worked in payroll for 10 years and purely anecdotal, but from my experience people who earn a lot of money either through salary, commission, or bonuses are the biggest crybabies about their paychecks.

-Had a manager that would rush me to pay his monthly commission and he would get mad if I didn't have it exactly when he wanted (it was never up to me, I was just pending the paperwork lol). He was already getting paid a base salary of $9k monthly yet he would whine like he was making minimum wage and really needed the commission money asap.

-Other lady making $120k said she was still awaiting a payment for a $1k assignment that wasn't still processed (we didn't have the signatures yet so it was pending). She said she needed the money, she had bills to pay, things are expensive, I almost felt bad for her because she sounded like she was barely affording life.

-Employees that were both salaried at $1k per week AND commission which would total about $10k per month, would always say they were broke and didn't have money and even asked me to lend them $20.

No, I don't live in the coast or big city. I live in a very low income/impoverished region near the border where the average salary is 35-45k a month. I make $16 an hour which is considered decent. I can afford my bills and go on vacation. It shocks me how some people who make so much money act so desperate here.

We are looking at switching to Paylocity this year. For context, we currently use a PEO for payroll and timekeeping purposes and then Bamboo for hour HR system. Bamboo can't handle certified payroll like we need and also do not have a geofence timekeeping piece so they are not an option to help us. We looked at ADP and Paylocity and for now, Paylocity seems to be the most attractive for what we are needing. We also need it to integrate with Netsuite as well.

They told us they have a HR Edge product to tack onto the montly per employee charge. Just wondering if anyone else has used this option and if it's worth the added fee. With our PEO, we have an HR consultant we can bounce questions and situations off of and we'll be losing that when we go away from them. Wondering if this option is similar or worth the added cost.

Thanks in advance.

If anyone is considering Rippling for HR/payroll/IT management, do yourself a favor and dig deep before signing anything.

The sales process makes it sound like a polished, seamless all-in-one platform. The reality has been constant glitches, broken workflows, and endless support tickets. Features that were positioned as “easy” or “fully integrated” often require manual workarounds or simply don’t function reliably in real-world use.

What’s been even more frustrating is the implementation experience. There seemed to be very little structure, ownership, or quality control during setup. Critical workflows and configurations were either overlooked, rushed, or implemented incorrectly, which led to months of cleanup and changes after going live. Instead of launching with confidence, it felt like the real implementation only started after deployment. Testing and verification were non existent.

The amount of internal time required to stabilize the platform has been far beyond expectations. At some point it starts to feel like you’re adapting your business to the software instead of the software helping your business.

Maybe it works for smaller organizations with very basic requirements, but for any company with operational complexity, proceed with extreme caution.

I apologize for this possibly not making sense, I had to rewrite it after not saving it because of my fire alarm deciding to scream. I am still trying to contact my payroll department but it keeps going to voicemail, so I wanted to ask here because I'm really anxious right now.

I just started a new job working overnights a month or so ago and I messed up the W4 when i first got hired. I realized the mistake after i was suppsoed to get my first direct deposit check and got nothing instead (I let them take the entire paycheck for taxes instead of a certain amount). I fixed the W4 and sent it digitally using the payroll/tax app our company has, but it's still awaiting approval. The next day I went into work, there was a physical paycheck for me.

My banking app let me deposit the physical paycheck, and it took a week. I figured if it wasn't allowed within the week, it would be declined or stopped, so when the money hit my account, I wasn't too worried. I didn't do a whole lot with it just in case it really was a mistake. The money came on Friday.

The original paycheck was a little less than I was anticipating, but I figured it was just a caluclating error on my part because I'm dumb. Genuinely.

Today, I got a direct deposit sent right to my account. This one was closer to what I was originally anticipating, but I'm not sure if it's really mine. I'm just scared of it right now. Why would I get a physical paycheck and then a digital deposit? I don't think it's another person's paycheck because we get paid on Thursdays, not Tuesdays, but maybe someone else get early deposits? Is it just a weird error from payroll? I'm just nervous and I don't want to get in trouble. I'm not touching the money.

Did I mess up big time? I feel like such an idiot.

I guess im just posting because with how advanced technology is and how tight hr keeps hrs why does my pay week end on a Saturday but isn't closed until Tuesday to Wednesday. Seems kinda ridiculous to me.

Do you send a courtesy notification when Payroll touches tax setup for an employee? For example, we audit address changes and if someone moves to a local Payroll will add it. Currently we do not notify them but wondering if we should?

Give me the good, the bad, and the ugly on these payroll systems. Looking to make a change, but every payroll system demo shows you all the awesome, but you don't ever get a true picture about how well it actually functions once you are in it.

I am working for a company I just started and plan on quitting next week. Shady people, you can’t access your company email for some reason and no one else can either. And my phone number for this DailyPay account I have set up here is very old. So, no way to confirm to DailyPay to set up my direct deposit. So I cancelled it. The person over the phone said that my company would send the money to the direct deposit I have set up for them, but from what I remember, DailyPay keeps your money and sends it to your direct deposit. However, I never was able to set up my direct deposit with DailyPay. The expected pay date was may 22nd. With me canceling my DailyPay, is my money just going to be stuck on there, or is my company going to send it to my bank. The guy over the phone couldn’t really speak English, he told me DailyPay only keeps the check and is the only one who sends it if I ever did a transfer, but I told him on the phone the app says otherwise and that just having an account with them means they now send it, which they can’t due to no direct deposit info. Please please please help. No one in their customer service speaks very good English

4 years ago we moved off in-house global payroll to a major BPO. it solved the immediate operational pain but i didn't read the data contract carefully enough.

now we want to migrate, partly because the BPO's pricing has crept up 30% over 3 years, and we're discovering the data is functionally locked. they'll export 'our data' but only in their proprietary report format. the historical pay records, the configuration logic for country-specific calculations, the integration mappings to our HRIS. none of it transfers cleanly. we'd be rebuilding the configuration knowledge from scratch.

talked to 2 other CHROs in my network. one is in the same trap. the other moved off a different BPO and said it took 14 months and $340k because of exactly this.

curious if anyone has actually pulled off a clean migration off a BPO. or whether this is just the cost of outsourcing in this space.

Trying to move scanned payroll records to Excel but I don’t want to do it manually. Does a tool exist that handles table layouts without failing? I need something reliable for our reporting workflow. Any leads?

I have friends who bank at Wells Fargo or other banks and their Friday paycheck post to their account on the Wednesday before. But then banks like Charles Schwab and Bank of America don’t post the paycheck (same employer) to the account until Thursday evening or even Friday morning. Does anybody know why? Are these other banks simply being greedy about the float?

We run a small US based business and most of our team is overseas in Asia. They’re contractors, not W-2 employees. For years we’ve used Wise, but lately it’s become more of a headache than a solution. Transfers feel less reliable, support is hard to reach, and resolving issues takes forever.

We also have Gusto, but the payout timing is rough for international team members, some of them wait close to a week to receive funds, which isn’t ideal.

Would especially love to hear from companies paying teams in the Philippines, India, Vietnam, etc. Are people using Deel, Remote, Payoneer, Mercury, direct wires, or something else now? 

I am currently a payroll specialist at an accounting firm. This job is very challenging for me because I make mistakes from time to time, but I truly want to excel at this role. Our firm currently uses QuickBooks Desktop to process payroll. Every month, I handle payroll for approximately 150 small businesses, with about 2 to 5 employees per company. I am also responsible for filing quarterly tax returns and issuing W-2s at year-end. I would like to ask: what are some effective ways to avoid or minimize errors in payroll processing? Thank you all.

Im planning on getting my certification. CPP. I been on payroll for 5 years approx, and will soon start looking for a new job, (lack of pay increase at my current they have only given me. ). QUESTION. Do you also need to purchase the course in payroll . Org ? Or can I just study the handbook itself and then schedule my exam? The course they offer is very expensive 3k ! And the exam 600 usd. So I would rather just spend 600 since I’m doing it on my own. Any advice is greatly appreciated :)

Hi all!

Today was my final day at work, I did give a two week notice so I was expecting to have my final pay in hand upon leaving today. My supervisor said it will be processed with the next payroll because they have to include deductions etc and l will be getting direct deposit upon completion. I'm in California, can they do that? They gave me the information for hr if I have any questions but they are in another state and by the time I got out of work they were closed. Anyway, any guidance is appreciated. This is a large corporation so I expected they would know and I wouldn't have to hound them down about this.

Looking for current recommendations for payroll for one employee - we’re a pretty small 501(c)4 (~30K budget). I recently got us started on ADP by RUN and somehow missed that the cost is PER payroll, not per month (like everything else)

So I’m a little sick to my stomach and looking for advice on
-> best option to switch to
-> when to switch (we have months 4/5/6 supposedly free - now I’m unsure, so after Q3?)

Thanks!

Hi,

I’m very curious what the sentiment is in the payroll industry when utilizing AI in the payroll fiction. What tasks or workflows have you been able to leverage AI to make better? I’m very much in the camp of using AI in a safe manner (meaning not sharing PII to LLMs like Claude or ChatGPT). So I’m curious what successes or setbacks people have used with leverage AI to make their payroll lives easier.

I qualify for a hardship in both garnishments.(Both garnishments are for credit card debt.)I’ve filled out the forms for the hardship and a waiting on the court reply. The first garnishment was put through 2 weeks ago resulting in a loss of 25% of pay. Today’s check reflects that they added an additional garnishment of 25% making it a total of 50%. I am currently messaging hr but haven’t received a reply yet. I fear that I will have to go through court to get this corrected which will be financially devastating in the mean time…

After 20+ years doing bookkeeping, including payroll, I got hired for a GREAT job on the 8 person payroll team for a company that has divisions in all of New England and the East Coast from Maine to VA.
At first my boss was great, but I gradually began to feel like she didn’t like me. I’m not the asskisser - “buy your favorite type of chocolate to keep on my desk” type of employee, and I think she was into that kind of thing. However I figured I was just being paranoid. She was very slow to grant me permissions in ADP or assign me company codes. So, while I shadowed the payroll specialists, I was assigned other, supportive tasks like digitizing old records, sending garnishment orders to ADP, and sorting the mail that came through Payroll.
One day my boss assigned me the task of creating files for her mail. This took me about 6 hours over two days, as it was a month’s work of mail that had to be categorized by company and state. Because I had to read the mail to see where it should be directed, I noticed that several states were sending my boss letters stating that she had not filed unemployment quarterly reports for several quarters, dating back to 2024, which is about when she started working there. I didn’t say anything about the content of any of the mail figuring there must be some explanation, and gave her the completed files before the deadline she’d set for me. However, after this I noticed her disdain for me was palpable.
On my last day, she called me into her office. She told me that she had a concern that I was reading the files I was supposed to be digitizing, because it was taking way too long. (I had to go through hundreds of files and thousands of documents to pull out the staples before scanning them). She said that she thought I was talking to the others about the former employees whose paperwork was in the files, (which I did not do, they were too busy for chit chat like that, and all I did was skim each document to check for staples, i wouldn’t call it “reading” the files.) Also that it took me to long to file her “weeks worth” of mail. (Not true, there was mail from before I got there 5 weeks prior.) Anyway, she said that my employment could not continue. She would say I quit so that I could get a job in another department in the company and pay me for an extra week but she yeeted me. She watched me pack up my stuff and made me go. I did apply for another position in the company, but have heard nothing back - it’s been about 6 weeks now.
Since then , I am absolutely torn about whether or not I should report the info about the UI bills to someone higher up in the company. Being fired ruined me. I’m already in chapter 13 bankruptcy, and idk what being unemployed now will do to that. Her saying I quit will make it harder for me to get unemployment, and I don’t see how that would help me get a job in another department. WWYD? The head of the department is actually an old friend of mine from middle school. Should I report my ex boss or could there be some explanation I’m missing as to why the payroll dept. is being billed for hundred of thousands of $ from several states in past reports? Any thoughts are appreciated.