January is always a whirlwind for businesses, but for staffing and recruiting firms, it’s more like a full-blown storm. You’re juggling plans for the new year while racing to wrap up last year’s tax reporting for a considerable number of employees. The pressure is intense, but there are steps you can take now to ease the burden when year-end arrives.
At Avionté’s recent CONNECT conference, hundreds of staffing professionals gathered, eager for guidance on tools and strategies to help them better manage their operations. One of the most popular sessions, Best Practices for Year-End Tax Preparations, highlighted the importance of early planning. Instead of waiting for the last-minute rush, why not start your year-end preparations now?
So, whether you’re a seasoned pro or new to the industry, there’s always something you could most likely do better to make the year-end process smoother and easier. By incorporating the right tools and strategies, you can make a significant difference in your year-end processes, ultimately boosting your agency’s productivity and reducing operational costs while minimizing the risk of reporting errors.
Here are five steps you can take now to simplify year-end tax preparation for your staffing agency.
The first step to early preparation success is simple – plan for it! Establishing a clear strategy and timeline upfront sets the foundation for all your year-end tasks. Consider these steps:
Break down the overwhelming process into manageable steps by setting internal due dates for each task. Remember, deadlines can change from year to year, and in special circumstances, extensions may be requested. Do your research to ensure you’re planning for the correct dates.
This can be one of the toughest steps, but it’s essential to communicate internally about who is responsible for each part of the process. Look at your due dates and work backward to create a plan. Create a year-end checklist so you know exactly what steps need to be taken. For the convenience of our clients, Avionté put together for our users a comprehensive and printable checklist for both the US and Canada available in our Knowledge Base.
Designate a representative from each department—Finance, HR, Compliance, Payroll, etc.—to take ownership of their part of the process. As a group, reflect on lessons learned from last year’s year-end. What went well that you want to repeat? What challenges did you face, and what can you do to avoid them this year?
To tackle challenges from last year, familiarize yourself with available resources. Beyond software and data issues, stay informed about any tax changes for the upcoming year. Explore resources like the American Payroll Association, legal blogs, or HR organizations like SHRM that might provide valuable information to help you navigate year-end smoothly. Avionté also offers a wealth of back-office resources for our clients in our Knowledge Base, including articles, webinars, and year-end checklists.
Reviewing your data early is crucial for catching potential mistakes and ensuring accuracy. In fact, it’s never too early to begin your data review for the reporting year. By performing these steps, you can make sure your data is accurate now to avoid the scramble later:
Early detection of errors can save time and prevent issues during the busy season. With the right back-office system, such as Avionté, you can also prepare for updates to 1095-Cs once the IRS releases the final version of the form in the fall.
SOCs are six-digit codes used to classify workers based on their job duties, and some states require these codes to be associated with job titles. To avoid errors, consider using Avionté’s “Get Missing SOC Data AQ” report to identify and update job titles missing the required codes. This ensures accurate classification and minimizes potential errors.
Doing so helps avoid the need to revisit employees for re-verification of potential errors later. Additionally, running regular checks throughout the year can help you avoid penalties and long wait times for results. See below for more information.
This allows employees to identify and report any spelling errors or unexpected totals early. This gives you ample time to make necessary corrections before the filing deadline. Note that, with Avionté’s 24/7 mobile talent enablement platform, W-2s can also be conveniently posted to your employee’s mobile app. For more details, see step 4 below.
By taking these steps early, you can streamline your data management process, reduce stress, and ensure a smoother year-end reporting experience.
Now that you’ve got your existing employee data sorted, it’s time to focus on keeping new hires’ data just as accurate. Online delivery of tax forms offers a host of benefits, with time savings being a significant advantage. By moving away from mailing physical copies, you can avoid the delays and complications of the traditional process—no more waiting for forms to be returned or dealing with lost documents.
With online delivery, you minimize the chance of manual errors in data entry and document handling, boosting overall accuracy and efficiency. Employees also tend to complete their forms and finalize their onboarding more promptly when everything is available online, reducing administrative workload and increasing completion rates.
But how can you gather employee consent in a way that’s easy and efficient? To further streamline this process, Avionté has partnered with Adobe to simplify consent collection. By creating a consent form, converting it into a PDF, and uploading it into Adobe within AviontéBOLD, you can easily integrate this form into onboarding hire packets. Adobe manages the collection of legal signatures and stores consent information in your system, allowing you to easily track who has opted in.
If you haven’t yet collected consent throughout the year, now is the ideal time to do so. A helpful tip: even if some employees initially opted out of online delivery, they might be willing to reconsider. Reach out to all employees again to offer them the option of electronic delivery. Effectively managing consent for online tax forms will simplify your processes, reduce costs, and enhance efficiency in handling employee tax documents.
With consent in hand and your data in order, you’re ready to finalize your strategy for distributing employee tax forms. If you’re handling the printing and distribution in-house, make sure you have the right paper stock, address labels, and other necessary supplies. Avionté’s back-office system offers reports to help you predict the number of forms you’ll need, ensuring you order just the right amount.
Avionté also offers 24/7 PAY, available on the Avionté 24/7 mobile platform. This feature allows your talent to instantly access their pay and tax information directly from their mobile devices, cutting down on the administrative tasks involved in responding to routine inquiries about paychecks and year-end tax details. But, even without our mobile platform, talent can still easily view their forms online via the AviontéBOLD talent portal. This streamlined approach reduces the need for talent to reach out to your agency to retrieve needed tax documents, enhancing the experience for your talent while saving your team valuable time.
However, even with the right staffing back-office system in place, printing and distributing tax forms can still be a hefty task – especially for high-volume staffing firms. To make the process more efficient and free up your team’s time for other important tasks, consider outsourcing your form distribution to a dedicated partner. Outsourcing not only reduces stress but also ensures your data is clean and accurate. That’s why it’s so important to work with a staffing software vendor that offers both a robust back-office platform and the right partner integrations.
Avionté has partnered with Greenshades to support our clients in managing employee tax form distribution. With Greenshades, you can send your data for processing, and they’ll assist in submitting your federal filings and preparing your state filings. They’ll also take care of printing and mailing the forms to your employees, saving you time and effort.
And by starting the process now and sending your filings early to Greenshades, you give them time to catch any missing or incorrect information, allowing you to make corrections well before the deadline. This proactive approach reduces stress and ensures accuracy. Plus, partnering early gives you the added benefit of early-bird pricing, making this streamlined approach even more valuable.
Want another pro-tip? Is your agency operating in a new state or jurisdiction? Did you know that, on average, agencies are overpaying state unemployment by 21% due to inefficiencies, wrong charges, and not auditing your rate? States have varying error rates, some as low as 8% and others as high as 40%. By proactively monitoring and controlling these rates, you can save significantly on overpayments.
To help manage these complexities, Avionté has partnered with HRlogics. Their Unemployment Tracker integrates seamlessly with Avionté Back-Office, ensuring that unemployment claims are processed quickly, efficiently, and in compliance with any updated rates. This system not only saves time but also helps lower your unemployment tax rate. With a 90% win rate for protestable claims, HRlogics is also a valuable resource if you suspect overpayments or invalid claims.
After setting up your distribution plan, it’s crucial to conduct final reviews as early as possible to ensure everything is accurate and ready for distribution. To prevent any surprises during tax season, make it a habit to regularly run reports and AQs (Advanced Queries).
Avionté clients can easily check tax reporting numbers using our back-office reports. For instance, the Taxes Summary report confirms that your state and federal totals are correct, while the “Get Employee” AQs help verify talent data, such as addresses and withholding amounts, before you distribute forms.
The “W2 Report 4Up Blank” generates W2 forms in a printable format that matches how they will appear on the talent portals. For those using Greenshades, the Get Employee AQs and W2 reports are populated by generating your Greenshades feed and can be accessed anytime, including for reviewing historical forms.
Year-end reporting for staffing is often a major hassle, but it doesn’t have to be! By following these five essential steps, you can position your team for year-round success and turn year-end into a streamlined, efficient process. Leveraging the right systems and forming strategic partnerships can significantly optimize your year-end operations, reducing administrative burdens, minimizing errors, and fostering a more seamless, stress-free experience for both your talent and your team.
To further support you in navigating year-end planning, Avionté provides a wealth of resources. Our Knowledge Base is filled with helpful articles and insights to guide you through every step. Don’t miss our live webinars, which you can sign up for at www.avionte.com/training. We’ve also created a comprehensive year-end checklist to help you track and complete each task as you prepare for the year-end transition. With the right tools, partnerships, and resources at your disposal, you can confidently tackle year-end with ease and precision!
