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Payroll That Runs Without You Watching It

Processing, deposits, and year-end filings handled inside the payroll system you already use, with the entries flowing straight into your books.

Payroll is the one thing in a small company that absolutely cannot be late and absolutely cannot be wrong. Employees notice immediately, and so do the agencies collecting the tax deposits. This is the work of making payroll a routine rather than a recurring scramble: runs processed on schedule, deposits made on time, filings submitted, and every bit of it recorded correctly in the general ledger.

Most of the businesses served here already have a payroll platform. ADP, Paychex, QuickBooks Payroll, RUN Powered by ADP, Paycor, and Gusto are all familiar territory, so there's no forced migration to something new. The gap usually isn't the software. It's that nobody is reconciling what the platform reports against what the books say, which is how a quarter closes with wages in one place and liabilities in another. Having payroll and bookkeeping handled together closes that gap, whether the work is done on site around Lexington or remotely.

Everything under Payroll

Everything that has to happen between a timesheet and a clean year-end, handled on your existing payroll platform.

Payroll Processing

Hours, salaries, deductions, and reimbursements processed each pay period, then posted to the ledger so wage expense is right the first time.

Payroll Tax Deposits & Filings

Federal and state withholding deposited on your required schedule, with quarterly and annual returns prepared and submitted when they're due.

State Unemployment (SUTA) Filings

Kentucky unemployment reports prepared each quarter, wage bases tracked correctly, and rate changes applied when the state issues a new one.

Workers' Compensation Audit Support

Audit season goes faster when payroll is already split by class code. Documentation gets pulled together and questions from the auditor get answered.

New Hire Reporting

Every new employee reported to the state inside the required window, a small filing that's easy to forget and carries penalties when it's missed.

W-2 Preparation & Filing

Year-end wage statements reconciled against your quarterly returns before anything is filed, then distributed to employees and submitted to the agencies.

1099-NEC / 1099-MISC Preparation & Filing

Contractor payments reviewed, W-9s chased down before January, and forms issued to the right vendors under the right box.

Morning light across a quiet professional office

Why payroll errors surface at the worst time

A payroll mistake almost never announces itself in the pay period where it happened. It shows up nine months later in a workers' comp audit, or in a notice from the state, or when the W-2 totals don't match the four quarterly returns already filed. By then the fix means amended returns and a lot of digging. The way to avoid it is unglamorous: reconcile payroll to the general ledger every period, keep the liability accounts clean, and confirm deposits actually cleared rather than assuming they did. That happens as part of the regular monthly work here, not as a year-end scramble.

Contractors, employees, and the line between them

Construction and service companies run into this constantly. Someone gets paid as a contractor for a couple of years, then a state agency looks at how the work was actually directed and reclassifies them as an employee. Back taxes, penalties, and interest follow. Nobody here is going to make a legal determination for you, and questions with real exposure belong with your attorney. But the practical side gets handled: W-9s collected before the work starts, payments tracked so 1099 totals are right, and a flag raised when a vendor relationship starts to look more like employment than a contract.

W-9 collected before the first payment, not the following January
Contractor payments tracked separately all year
Payroll reconciled to the ledger every period
Class codes maintained for workers' comp audits
W-2 and 1099 totals checked against quarterly filings before submission

What owners ask about Payroll

We already use ADP. Do we have to leave it?

No. ADP, RUN Powered by ADP, Paychex, Paycor, Gusto, and QuickBooks Payroll are all systems this firm works in regularly. If your platform is doing its job, the work happens inside it. A change only comes up if the system genuinely can't handle something your business needs.

What happens if we get a payroll tax notice?

Bring it over. Most notices trace back to a timing difference, a deposit applied to the wrong period, or a rate that changed without anyone updating the system. The first step is matching the agency's records against yours to find where they diverged, then correcting it and responding with documentation.

Can you handle payroll if we have employees in more than one state?

Yes. Multi-state payroll means registering in each state, tracking separate withholding and unemployment rules, and watching wage bases that don't line up with each other. It's more moving parts than a single-state run, but it's a normal part of the work for growing companies.