Keep Your Payroll Provider Informed—Or Pay the Price | Allevity

Imagine this: an employee storms into your office because their paycheck is wrong for the second time in a row. Or your business is hit with a tax penalty from the IRS. You outsourced payroll to avoid exactly these headaches and horrors. 

But let’s be blunt—your payroll provider isn’t psychic. If you don’t inform them about crucial updates in a timely way—bank changes, Federal business ID changes, and smaller things like wage changes or garnishments—mistakes happen. And when they do, it’s your name on the fine, not theirs.

Outsourcing payroll doesn’t mean outsourcing responsibility. If your payroll provider isn’t kept fully in the loop, it’s your employees, your business, and your bank account paying the price.

Payroll and HR Issues You Can’t Ignore

Your payroll provider has many clients, and many demands on employee time. If you don’t prioritize communication on vital matters, they may not be able to fix errors for you on time, or you may be charged for the correction. Below are key categories that demand attention:

Report These Vital Business-Related Issues Immediately

• Changing your business bank account: We’ve had clients whose entire payroll has bounced, because they changed their bank account and didn’t let us know. To avoid shocking fines and remain within legal boundaries, let us know as soon as you start considering a change to the account. 
• Modifying your tax ID: We’ll continue to pay your employees under your old tax ID, until we can get a new account set up under your new ID. This takes time. When it’s done, we file payroll tax corrections with the IRS, which is costly.
• Relocating your business: This ensures sensitive documents like your employee paychecks and W2s, and your tax documents are going to a safe place.
• Receiving a notice from the IRS: Don’t panic; we can help with interpretation, payment scheduling, and sometimes even reversal of penalties. The key, though, is for us to respond in a timely way to the IRS. 

• Remote or multi-state employees: Is your organization set up to do business in other states?  It takes time to register your organization in other states and obtain tax IDs.  Don’t worry, we can help but you have to let us know.  
• New PTO, benefit programs, or company policies: These may affect your payroll in ways you can’t anticipate, and we need time to implement them. An instant turnaround isn’t guaranteed.

These core business-related changes have a ripple effect that your payroll provider can and should guide you through. If your provider doesn’t know about them, they can’t do their job—which is taking care of you and your business, and making it as easy as possible for you.

Key Employee-Related Issues

• Changes to pay rates, hours, addresses, and tax settings: Avoid angry employees, and get these to us in time for them to be included in the correct payroll. 
• Terminations or new hires: These require time to implement. Please let your provider know with as much advance notice as possible, so they can work it into their busy days. 
• Garnishment orders: These have legal deadlines. Don’t delay.
• TIN vs SSN usage: Reporting TIN employees incorrectly can lead to IRS penalties.

Even the best payroll providers are only as good as the information they’re given and the timeliness thereof. Don’t put your payroll provider in the position of having to give you news you don’t like. Communicate early, communicate often.

If You Don’t Tell Us, We Can’t Protect You

At Allevity, we work hard to deliver accurate, compliant, and timely payroll—but we rely on you to keep us informed. If you don’t share critical updates, we can’t protect your business from mistakes, penalties, or upset employees.

You control the inputs. We handle the execution. But we can’t fix what we don’t know. 

• Create a communication checklist.
• Set a routine for sharing updates.

You don’t want to find out the hard way how difficult silence can be.Need help tightening up your payroll process? Let’s talk. Allevity is here to make payroll effortless—but only if we’re in the loop. Call us at 530-345-2486 or visit allevity.com/contact