Starting Fresh Again at Work - The Importance of Order
We've been focused on getting a fresh start in our work lives. Today we'll focus on the importance of "order" in our work. Examples will come from personal experience. I find them particularly helpful. Maybe you will too.
To sum up our previous ideas on getting a fresh start, we've taken the opportunity to step back and refocus our efforts at work at the same time that we transition from those "special" seasons - Lent and Easter - to what the post-Vatican II calendar calls "Ordinary Time." It's important to note here that "Ordinary Time" does not refer to what is not special; rather it has to do with the ordered life of the church during periods where we neither emphasize fasting nor feasting, penance nor celebration (Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter). The Sundays during Ordinary Time are numbered to emphasize that sense of order. I suspect most Catholics won't know this, so don't be surprised if you didn't. But now that you do, let's use this knowledge as our springboard to discuss the idea of order at work.
As Ordinary Time emphasizes the importance of finding order in our everyday religious practices, so too we Catholic men at work should find order in our daily labor. While I've always had some sense of order in applying myself to my work, it was only when I started my small business a while back that I understood the critical importance of establishing a more strict order for my everyday routines. There's a lot involved in running a business, no matter how small. Employee payroll provides a particularly good example of this.
First and foremost, you need to make sure that profits flow such that money is available on payday - no mean task for some businesses. If company cash flow is unsteady, a line of credit with a bank can help; but that has to be properly managed too. You need to know your limits, when payments on the line are due to the bank. While managing your business's cash flow to meet regular employee payroll can be challenging enough, the regulatory burden of payroll taxes can be a bit daunting.
There are both federal and state rules regarding the payment of payroll taxes. Frequency and due dates for federal and state tax withholding, as well as reporting requirements, differ. The IRS wants to see your payroll tax deposits on a regular basis each month. But in our state, you're required to deposit those funds each quarter. Without an orderly, ideally somehow automated, process here, juggling all this will likely take up too much of the precious time and energy you need to run and build your business.
In addition to the ongoing execution of your payroll process, there's the record-keeping. You need to keep strict, accurate records of employee and employer withholding and deductions for FICA, federal and state income taxes. That needs to be done in such a way that all can be submitted at the end of the year, accounting for who was withheld at what amount and when. Of course, you can hire bookkeepers and accountants to do all this, but a small business, especially one just starting out, may not have the resources to hire professional help to cover everything, at least initially. Besides, even if you do hire a third party, you're the one responsible for seeing that their work is accurate. So you're involved at some level no matter how you choose to do this.
But we're not done yet. In our state, you're required to pay premiums for Disability and Worker's Compensation insurance. These premiums are based on estimated payroll at the beginning of the year. At year end, the state sends an auditor to your place of business to verify that the estimates were accurate, or, if not, to calculate any adjustments to premiums. For that audit, you need to present physical copies of all payroll transactions. That's physical, not digital copies. As a business that's 99% digital in its record-keeping, we made the wise decision to outsource payroll to a third-party provider that would not only make the necessary payments accurately for all tax withholding and insurance premium payments, but would organize all records to provide easy access . At the end of the year, we could therefore download and print out all transactions, such that we could three-hole punch them into a binder and hand it to our auditor. I still remember the relief I felt when that first audit took place and we handed the auditor our binder. They were in and out within two hours, without even a peep. Remember, this auditor was concerned solely with out required insurance premium payments. The year-end reporting of payroll taxes was another matter. altogether. We won't go into that, but rest assured it wasn't a walk in the park.
You can probably see why I picked payroll taxes and other mandatory payroll deductions for this first example of a need for order in your business. While not everyone owns a business, everyone does need order in their work life. Next time we'll offer some suggestions that can be used by anyone who has to go out and earn a living.
To sum up our previous ideas on getting a fresh start, we've taken the opportunity to step back and refocus our efforts at work at the same time that we transition from those "special" seasons - Lent and Easter - to what the post-Vatican II calendar calls "Ordinary Time." It's important to note here that "Ordinary Time" does not refer to what is not special; rather it has to do with the ordered life of the church during periods where we neither emphasize fasting nor feasting, penance nor celebration (Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter). The Sundays during Ordinary Time are numbered to emphasize that sense of order. I suspect most Catholics won't know this, so don't be surprised if you didn't. But now that you do, let's use this knowledge as our springboard to discuss the idea of order at work.
As Ordinary Time emphasizes the importance of finding order in our everyday religious practices, so too we Catholic men at work should find order in our daily labor. While I've always had some sense of order in applying myself to my work, it was only when I started my small business a while back that I understood the critical importance of establishing a more strict order for my everyday routines. There's a lot involved in running a business, no matter how small. Employee payroll provides a particularly good example of this.
First and foremost, you need to make sure that profits flow such that money is available on payday - no mean task for some businesses. If company cash flow is unsteady, a line of credit with a bank can help; but that has to be properly managed too. You need to know your limits, when payments on the line are due to the bank. While managing your business's cash flow to meet regular employee payroll can be challenging enough, the regulatory burden of payroll taxes can be a bit daunting.
There are both federal and state rules regarding the payment of payroll taxes. Frequency and due dates for federal and state tax withholding, as well as reporting requirements, differ. The IRS wants to see your payroll tax deposits on a regular basis each month. But in our state, you're required to deposit those funds each quarter. Without an orderly, ideally somehow automated, process here, juggling all this will likely take up too much of the precious time and energy you need to run and build your business.
In addition to the ongoing execution of your payroll process, there's the record-keeping. You need to keep strict, accurate records of employee and employer withholding and deductions for FICA, federal and state income taxes. That needs to be done in such a way that all can be submitted at the end of the year, accounting for who was withheld at what amount and when. Of course, you can hire bookkeepers and accountants to do all this, but a small business, especially one just starting out, may not have the resources to hire professional help to cover everything, at least initially. Besides, even if you do hire a third party, you're the one responsible for seeing that their work is accurate. So you're involved at some level no matter how you choose to do this.
But we're not done yet. In our state, you're required to pay premiums for Disability and Worker's Compensation insurance. These premiums are based on estimated payroll at the beginning of the year. At year end, the state sends an auditor to your place of business to verify that the estimates were accurate, or, if not, to calculate any adjustments to premiums. For that audit, you need to present physical copies of all payroll transactions. That's physical, not digital copies. As a business that's 99% digital in its record-keeping, we made the wise decision to outsource payroll to a third-party provider that would not only make the necessary payments accurately for all tax withholding and insurance premium payments, but would organize all records to provide easy access . At the end of the year, we could therefore download and print out all transactions, such that we could three-hole punch them into a binder and hand it to our auditor. I still remember the relief I felt when that first audit took place and we handed the auditor our binder. They were in and out within two hours, without even a peep. Remember, this auditor was concerned solely with out required insurance premium payments. The year-end reporting of payroll taxes was another matter. altogether. We won't go into that, but rest assured it wasn't a walk in the park.
You can probably see why I picked payroll taxes and other mandatory payroll deductions for this first example of a need for order in your business. While not everyone owns a business, everyone does need order in their work life. Next time we'll offer some suggestions that can be used by anyone who has to go out and earn a living.
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