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19 Common Payroll Terms To Know

payroll terminology

An HR metric used to assess employee growth and movement within an organization. Required information that identifies everyone who owns or how to convert an annual interest rate to a monthly rate controls an organization. An amount of money that’s intentionally or accidentally paid after it’s owed.

Time to Fill

A labor metric representing the total hours of all part-time staff in relation to a full-time employee’s hours. Portions of an employee’s income that aren’t taxable for a variety of reasons. A counseling service offered by employers to help employees with personal or work-related problems. The concept that income is taxable, even if the taxpayer hasn’t yet physically received it. A grid-based framework used to compare employees’ work performance and potential. Search our glossary to get simple definitions of common payroll-related words, phrases, and acronyms.

Salaried vs. Hourly Employees

payroll terminology

Most businesses qualify for a 5.4% FUTA credit reduction after paying their state unemployment taxes, bringing the FUTA tax rate down to 0.6%. The legal seizure of an employee’s wages to satisfy delinquent taxes that the employee owes. The taxation agency sends the levy to the taxpayer’s employer, who must withhold the required amount from the taxpayer’s wages. Straight-time calculation is typically used to determine payment for weekly work hours of 40 hours or less. It also applies to other types of regular wages, such as holiday and vacation pay. An employee’s direct and indirect compensation equals their total compensation.

Imputed Income

A standard for measuring the affordability of employer healthcare coverage under the ACA. It’s easy to get lost in the lingo of human resources and payroll. Browse by category, alphabetically, or use the search bar to find what you need. The Ascent, a Motley Fool service, does not cover all offers on the market. To encourage your workers to take the overnight shift, you might offer any takers an additional $5 per hour.

Many employers choose to allow the employee to earn (or accrue) a certain amount of time per pay period they work. A comprehensive record of each employee’s payroll and wage data for a given pay period. Variable pay, or incentive pay, is a far-reaching term for employee payments made to influence employee behavior or reward meeting specific goals. Employees earn variable pay after reaching a company milestone, like a sales target, or an employee-specific objective, like making a sale as a salesperson. Not all wages are taxable; for example, an employer’s contribution to an employee’s health insurance premiums is not taxable.

Also included is any additional time the employee is allowed (i.e., suffered or permitted) to work.” Defined by the United States Department of Labor. In some states, employers must pay out unused vacation time to terminated employees. The total financial and nonfinancial compensation an employer pays an employee for work performed. “In general, \”hours worked\” includes all time an employee must be on duty, or on the employer’s premises or at any other prescribed place of work.

  1. Employees may edit their addresses and submit updated income tax withholdings forms through the portal.
  2. This includes the base pay plus any additional earnings like bonuses, vacation pay, and commissions.
  3. The chosen pay period is defined by its beginning and ending dates.

Front pay makes up for lost compensation suffered by the victim of discrimination. An employer-provided benefit which is so small in value that accounting for it would be administratively impractical or unreasonable. Includes occasional coffee, snacks, gross margin definition doughnuts, flowers, fruit, books, etc. Learn how PTO is defined and see examples of policies your company can use. The acronym SSA can refer to either the Social Security Act or the Social Security Administration. The Social Security Act was enacted by President Roosevelt in 1935 as part of the New Deal plan.

The U.S. Department of Labor requires employers to keep all payroll records for three years. The IRS requires that all tax records, including those for five types of budgets in managerial accounting payroll taxes, be kept for at least three years, and longer in some cases. Net pay is the amount of pay an employee receives after all withholding and deductions from gross pay have been made. Handling your own payroll for your business can be tricky because the payroll/payroll tax process involves a vocabulary all its own.