Homebase Payroll

Homebase Payroll integrates with the rest of the Homebase app to seamlessly streamline all aspects of running payroll. 

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• Get started with Homebase Payroll
• Set up your pay schedule
• Add team members to payroll
  • Configure W-2 employees
  • Configure 1099 contractors
  • Make existing team members in Homebase payroll eligible
    
• Run a regular payroll
  • Wage calculations and multiple wage rates
  • Add a bonus, commission, or reimbursement
  • Pay a contractor
• Run a late payroll
• Run an off-cycle payroll
• Add or remove a benefits deduction
  • Explanation of benefit types
• Add or remove a garnishment or other post-tax deduction
• Payroll processing on bank holidays
• Edit, cancel, or reverse a payroll
• Run reports
• View your tax forms
• View pay statements (pay stubs)
• Print paychecks
  • Check stock
  • Entering check numbers
• Export to accounting software
  • Supported software
• Payroll admins and permissions

Get started with Homebase Payroll

Homebase offers a free payroll set up service. Our experts will review your account, transfer all your data, and make sure your payroll is set up correctly for your first payroll run.

1. Click Payroll in the navigation
2. Let us know if you've run payroll before or not. If you've paid your team before, we'll help you transfer the data from your previous provider to make switching a breeze.
3. Answer a few questions about your company and how many people you plan to pay. Note: you'll need your company's legal name, address, and Federal Employer Identification Number (EIN) to complete signing up. Don't have your Federal EIN yet? Don't worry! You can apply for one directly through the IRS.  
4. Set your pay schedule, connect your business checking account, sign a few authorization forms, setup your team members, and you're on your way.
5. We'll send you a reminder before your first deadline so you don't forget to submit.

Set up your pay schedule

Your company’s pay schedule can be set directly from the Homebase Payroll dashboard. From there:

1. Click Settings.
2. Choose the pay frequency for your company:
   • Every week (weekly) = 52 payrolls per year
   • Every two weeks (bi-weekly) = 26 payrolls per year
   • Twice a month (semi-monthly) = 24 payrolls per year
   • Once a month (monthly) = 12 payrolls per year
3. Choose the associated pay period for your schedule.
4. Select your desired payday. Make sure to choose a payday that gives you enough lead time to submit your payroll.
5. Click Save.

Note: If you are paying hourly employees, Homebase encourages selecting a weekly or bi-weekly pay period to ensure accurate overtime calculations.

Add team members to payroll

You can add team members to payroll via the Team Roster. You must add all of the required info below for each person. Once you have all the info entered for an individual, click on their name and head to their Job Details tab, then toggle ON next to "Team member is included in payroll." 

*Social Security Numbers must be unique for each team member added to Homebase. 

Homebase's Onboarding and Document Storage features allow you to also configure payroll documents such as the W-4, state tax withholding form, W-9, and direct deposit collection to send to employees and contractors to fill in all the necessary information to get paid. 

Run a regular payroll

Regular payrolls are payrolls that follow the standard pay schedule you’ve set up in Homebase. Homebase Payroll will automatically import hours, wage rates, time off, and tips for all eligible team members for regular payrolls.

To process a regular payroll, go to the Payroll dashboard, and click Start Payroll before the submission deadline.

Run a late payroll

• Keep the original payday but pay using paper checks - you will process the payroll through Homebase, but will pay your team directly.
• Move your payday to the next available banking day to allow for direct deposit - in this option, the payment to your employees will be later than the original payment date.

Run Payroll Step 1: Hours and Time Off

• This section will show your team members and their wages, hours worked, time off, tips, and any other earnings.
  • If you'd like to see a breakdown of an employee's time cards, click on their regular hours. 
  • Under Other Earnings, click +Add to enter any bonuses, commissions, or reimbursements.
• Click Next to proceed to the next step of the payroll run.
• Click Save and Exit to save this payroll run as a Draft and exit the run.

Run Payroll Step 2: Net Pay

• View a breakdown of benefits, taxes, post-tax deductions, and net pay for each team member.
• If you need to make any changes, click Hours and Time Off to go back.
• If the values are correct, click Next to proceed.

Run Payroll Step 3: Review and Submit

• This page shows a summary of your payroll run.
  • Total Payroll Cost is the sum of all wages + taxes owed + company benefit contributions.
  • Automatically Withdraw is the amount that will be debited from company's bank account via ACH when payroll is processed.
• Click Submit Payroll to submit the payroll run. Once you submit, the payroll will be Pending until the processing deadline passes, at which point it will be Processing and cannot be modified. 

Homebase will import the following info from your timesheets:

Wage calculations and multiple wage rates

The wage rates paid out in payroll runs are imported from each team member's profile on the Team roster. If an employee has a single hourly or annual salaried rate, that rate will automatically appear for each payroll run based on the date it was effective.

Employees who work two or more hourly wage rates can have multiple roles and wages also setup in their profiles. Each time card worked can be tracked against a particular role/wage. When payroll is run, each wage rate will be imported into the run and displayed on its own row. Homebase will automatically display a compliant weighted wage rate, also known as a blended wage rate, for each workweek the employee worked. Any overtime and time off hours will then be entered and multiplied against the weighted wage rates and update Gross Wages accordingly.

Pay a contractor

Paying contractors in Homebase works just like paying employees. As long as a contractor is setup properly on their profile and eligible to be included in payroll, they will automatically get imported when payroll is run. Any wage rates and hours the contractor has worked in timesheets will also get automatically imported into the payroll run. Additional earnings can manually be added in the payroll run by clicking the +Add link on Other Earnings to pay for any amounts not tracked through time cards.

Run an off-cycle payroll

Off-cycle payrolls are any payrolls run outside of your standard payroll schedule. The only difference between an off-cycle run and a regular run is that an off-cycle run is unscheduled, so you'll have to manually enter who is getting paid and when. 

Common use cases for an off-cycle payroll include:

• Termination
  • An employee is terminated and must be paid out immediately, before your regular payroll run.
• Employee Skipped
  • A new employee was onboarded after regular payroll was processed, but you still need to pay them out before the next regular payroll.  
• Correction
  • An error was made in the last regular payroll run, and you need to fix it.
• Bonus
  • You want to give an employee a bonus. 

To run an off-cycle payroll in Homebase, go to the Payroll dashboard and click the link to Run off-cycle payroll. 

• Off-cycle payroll runs include one additional step at the beginning to determine, who, when, and how to pay the team.
• Payroll Run Name
  • This will be displayed on the payroll dashboard for reference only, not shown on pay statements.
• Payday and Pay Period
  • You can pick any payday that doesn’t fall on a weekend or Federal banking holiday. You are required to select a pay period, and the pay period will be displayed on the pay statements. 
• Hours
  • You can choose whether or not you'd like time cards imported as part of the payroll run. If you'd like to pay someone a custom amount not tied to timesheets, you can choose to manually enter hours instead.
• Advanced Settings
  • Withholding rate determines whether the regular rates should be used to calculate taxes vs. the supplemental rate (generally 22%), which is more common for bonus pay.

Additionally, managers can choose whether they’d like any previously configured benefits or post-tax deductions to apply to the team members’ paychecks or not.

Add or remove a benefits deduction

You can add or remove a recurring benefits deduction from the Team Roster tab.

1. Click on an employee's name.
2. Navigate to the Job Details tab.
3. Scroll down to the Benefits section.
4. Click Add a Benefit to add a new benefit. 
5. Click on the pencil icon to edit an existing benefit. 

Note: Benefit deductions are not paid out by Homebase. All deductions will remain in the company bank account, and you will be responsible for remitting them to the appropriate parties. 

Supported benefit types:

Add or remove a garnishment or other post-tax deduction

You can add or remove a garnishment from the Team Roster tab.

1. Click on an employee's name.
2. Navigate to the Job Details tab.
3. Scroll down to the Benefits section.
4. Click Add a Benefit to add a new garnishment or post-tax deduction. 
5. Click on the pencil icon to edit an existing garnishment. 

Child Support Garnishment 

All of the following fields are required when creating a child support garnishment.

• External ID
  • The unique identifier of the garnishment order, listed as the case number on the order
• Agency
  • The state abbreviation of the agency that issued the order
• Issue Date
  • The date the collections agency issued the order
• Amount
  • Per pay period amount to deduct
• Max Percent
  • The maximum percent of income that can be deducted

Miscellaneous Post-Tax Deductions

The following fields can be configured for any miscellaneous post-tax deduction.

• Maximum Amount
  • The total amount that should ever be withheld
• Fixed Amount
  • The fixed amount that should be withheld per pay period
• Percentage
  • Percentage of gross wages that should be withheld per pay period

Payroll processing on bank holidays

Payrolls and direct deposit cannot be processed on Federal bank holidays. If a holiday will impact your usual submission deadline, your deadline may be adjusted to compensate for the holiday. 

To see the impact that holidays can have on your processing schedule, see this article.

Edit, cancel, or reverse a payroll

Payrolls go through four different states:

Once submitted, payrolls go into a Pending state from the time they’re submitted until the banking cutoff time (7pm ET on business days). However, once submitted, payrolls can be “re-opened” into a Draft and then submitted again to Pending up until the cutoff time. 

To edit a Pending payroll, go to the Payroll dashboard, and in the Payroll History section, click the pencil icon to re-open that payroll as a Draft. Remember that you must submit that payroll again before the deadline in order for the payments to be deposited on time.

After a payroll run enters the Processing state, it cannot be modified. At this point, you can run an off-cycle payroll if you need to make any corrections. 

Run reports

There are two reports that can be generated after one or more payroll have been run within Homebase: the journal report and the summary report.

Payroll journal report

Displays detailed information about each paycheck on a per payroll run basis.

• • Available as a CSV file download from the Payroll History section of your Payroll dashboard.
  • Provides a breakdown of taxes paid by employees and the employer.

Payroll summary report

Displays detailed information for each team member aggregated over the selected date range.

• • Available by clicking the Download CSV button from the Payroll History section of your Payroll dashboard.
  • The selected date range will determine the summary totals that are downloaded in the CSV file.
  • Each person paid during the selected date range will be on its own row.

Pay statements are also generated for each individual paycheck after each payroll run is submitted.

In addition to the reports above, Homebase's Reports page provides faster access to payroll reports on a quarterly and even annual basis.

View your tax forms

Homebase files payroll taxes on your behalf automatically as part of our payroll service. Once taxes have been filed, you can access those forms from the Tax Returns section of the Payroll tab. 

• Each return is listed and grouped by quarter and year.
• Clicking a form will open a PDF of the filing in a new browser tab where you can download and save it onto your computer.

View pay statements (pay stubs)

A pay statement (also commonly called a pay stub) is a document that outlines the pay details for anyone receiving a paycheck. It shows a breakdown of wages, taxes, and benefits for a given pay period, and it is frequently used as proof of income.

Print paychecks

Once payroll is submitted, any paychecks chosen to have a Paper Check payment method will offer the option to print those checks using customized paper check stock. Printing and distributing paper paychecks is the responsibility of the employer, Homebase does not currently print or send paper paychecks to any team members.

• Check stock
  • Homebase currently supports the "check on top" paper format available from various retailers including Compuchecks.
  • The check format supported can be selected under the "by Layout" tab.
  • Select "Layout t10021". This is the same layout format used by other payroll providers such as QuickBooks.
  • Customized checks come with your business's routing and account numbers, name, address and pre-printed check numbers.
• Printing paychecks
  • To print paychecks, after payroll has been submitted, go into the payroll dashboard and click on the payroll run from Payroll History.
  • On the right-hand of the screen under "Print and Sign Your Paper Checks", each paycheck that was paid manually will be listed.
  • Load the check stock into your printer for the number of checks you need to print.
  • Click the Print Checks button. This will open a PDF in a new tab containing all the paychecks to be printed. Each paycheck will be on a separate page.
    • Alternatively, you can print checks individually by clicking the Print link next to a paycheck, a new tab will open in your browser with a PDF displaying the check at the top and pay statement on the bottom.
  • Use your browser's print function to print the checks.
  • Don't forget to sign the checks before you deliver them to your team!
• Entering check numbers
  • After payroll has been submitted, go into the payroll dashboard and click on the payroll run from Payroll History.
  • On the right-hand of the screen under "Print and Sign Your Paper Checks", each paycheck that was paid manually will be listed.
  • Next to each paycheck is a field for Check Number. Enter the check number for each paycheck that was printed. This number is saved in Homebase and will be included in any optional exports to your accounting software.

Export to accounting software

Once payroll is submitted, the details of the payroll transaction can be sent to your accounting software for bookkeeping purposes.

Note: Homebase Payroll currently supports integration with QuickBooks Online software only.

• Setting up accounting integration
  • Sign in as the account owner into your Homebase account.
  • Navigate to Payroll Settings.
  • Scroll to the Accounting Integration section.
  • Click the Connect button next to QuickBooks Online.
  • Click on the Accounting setup menu item and sign in to your Intuit account.
  • Once successfully signed in, your Chart of Accounts will automatically be imported.
  • Select each account that you would like to map the corresponding payroll transaction category into when running payroll. Each row will create payroll journal entries in the general ledger.
  • Keep the "auto-push" toggle in the on position if you would like payroll runs to automatically export into QuickBooks after payroll is submitted. You can turn this toggle off if you would like to manually export the payroll transactions into QuickBooks yourself after running payroll.
  • The following payroll categories must be mapped to your company's Chart of Accounts to enable the proper flow of payroll data from Homebase to the QuickBooks Online general ledger: