Bookkeeping, payroll, and advisory for small businesses in Pasadena and the greater Los Angeles area.

Call or Text: (818) 648-3572

Full-Service Payroll

Running payroll every pay period including tax deposits, quarterly filings, and year-end W-2s.

What This Is

Full-Service Payroll is the ongoing, hands-off version of payroll. Every pay period, we calculate gross wages, withhold the correct taxes, process direct deposits, and make sure the right amounts hit the right government accounts on time. You approve the run, we handle the rest.

This is different from our Payroll System Setup and Training service, which is a one-time engagement for owners who want to run payroll themselves. With Full-Service Payroll, we sit in the driver’s seat every cycle so you never have to think about deposit deadlines, quarterly returns, or year-end forms.

Each Pay Period

We process hours, calculate gross and net pay, apply federal and California withholdings, run direct deposits, and post the entries to your books. Pay stubs are issued to employees and records are retained for your files.

Taxes and Filings

Federal 941 deposits, California PIT and SDI, unemployment, and local obligations are deposited on schedule. Quarterly 941s and DE 9/DE 9C filings are submitted. At year-end we produce W-2s for employees and W-3s for the SSA.

Why It Matters

Payroll is the area where mistakes cost the most. A missed 941 deposit triggers federal penalties within days. A misclassified employee can unwind years of returns. California has its own layer of rules through the EDD, and the penalties for late deposits or incorrect filings stack up quickly regardless of whether the error was accidental.

Owners who run payroll themselves often get it right for a while, then miss something during a busy month. A new hire gets onboarded without the right withholdings. A bonus gets run through without the supplemental tax rate. A quarterly return gets forgotten because the reminder was buried in email. By the time the notice arrives, the penalty is already assessed.

California Complexity

California has some of the most involved payroll rules in the country. Overtime thresholds, meal and rest premiums, sick leave accrual, final paycheck timing, and wage statement requirements all carry penalties when handled incorrectly. We keep up with the rules so you don’t have to.

Owner Time

Running payroll yourself looks like a 30-minute task. In practice it involves reviewing hours, resolving PTO questions, answering employee pay inquiries, processing the run, funding the tax accounts, and reconciling the posting. That adds up across a year and the time rarely comes back to the business in a productive way.

What Changes

Payroll becomes something that happens in the background. You approve hours and the rest gets handled. Employees are paid on the expected day, taxes are deposited on time, and your books reflect the correct labor costs without you having to verify the entries yourself.

Dennis spent years in construction accounting managing payroll for over 200 employees across union and non-union workforces, and later overhauled a firm’s payroll system by moving it from manual calculation to electronic time tracking that fed directly into QuickBooks. That same process discipline is what we apply to every client we run payroll for, whether the headcount is three or thirty.

Clean Books Integration

Payroll entries post correctly to your general ledger each cycle. Wages, employer taxes, and benefits land in the right accounts so your Profit and Loss reflects actual labor costs. No separate cleanup needed at month-end to reconcile what payroll did to the books.

Year-End Without the Scramble

W-2s are produced on schedule and distributed to employees before the January 31 deadline. 1099 filing for contractors can be bundled in. Your tax preparer receives clean wage reports that tie to the general ledger, which keeps their fees down and the return straightforward.

Pasadena's Small Business Bookkeeper

The Next Step:
A 15-Minute Call

Tell us where your books stand today. We'll ask a few questions, share how we can help, and give you a clear quote.

A Squared Bookkeepers is a Pasadena accounting firm serving small and medium-sized businesses throughout the San Gabriel Valley and greater Los Angeles. We provide full-service bookkeeping, payroll, and advisory services, led by an owner who brings 20+ years of accounting experience from institutional real estate and construction.

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