Setting Up a Service Bureau

The CCS Payroll Professional Series, part of an extremely flexible and fully exposed accounting system, specializes in automating complex payrolls and eliminating manual input wherever and whenever possible. A Payroll Service Bureau, with its special requirements, must be set up as follows in order to take full advantage of the time-saving features of CCS Payroll:

Setting Up a Service Bureau

1. Create Company ZZ. This company will be the entity (Company, trust fund, etc.) that deals with the IRS on behalf of your clients. It will also be the entity that invoices your payroll clients. Enter the name and address in the Company Entry/Edit Form that you want to show as the return address for all correspondence with the IRS. The EIN that you enter here must be the Service Bureau EIN (If you are an IRS Batch Filer, click the <B> button on the right of the EIN/PIN and enter your Batch filer # and Pin in in the dialog that appears.). See Billing and Reporting, below, for details on invoicing clients.

NOTE: We suggest that you create another company within CCS Payroll to handle your internal payroll. While you could enter your employees into Company ZZ and use it to generate payroll, it makes better sense from an audit trail perspective for you to separate your agent activity from your employer activity.

2. Create a Template company. In CCS Payroll, you can designate one company as the Template Company by checking the Propogate box in the Company Form. Any changes made to applicable data in that company will be optionally propagated to all other companies. You can, for instance, change the Federal Tax Table in the Template Company and have that change reflected in all other companies instantly. An employee's data, in contrast, would not be copied to all other companies unless you specifically instructed the program to do so. Do not make Company ZZ your Template (Propagate) Company. Its primary purpose is to perform payroll-related activity with the IRS on behalf of your clients and to serve as an invoicing vehicle for your payroll clients.

Another important purpose of the Template company is to set up default Codes, Criterias and Batch Reports. Once created and designated as the Propagate company, any companies that are created after that time will already have these Codes, Criterias & Batches defined in them, thus eliminating much repetitive work.

When you create this Template company you will need to run through the Setup Wizard and choose the "default" 000 choices for Craft, Crews, Clients, etc...

Define any basic Earning & Deduction Codes that you normally use. This will also create standardization across your companies. If you define a child support code with a ID of 750 in the Template company, then 750 will be used for child support in all of your companies (if you define the Template before you create any companies). Define any Report Criterias and Report Batches you wish to propagate from the Template company. You might want a Batch for the reports at the end of each payperiod and a second batch for the end of quarter reports.

3. Create a separate Company for each of your payroll clients. Put each client's name, address, etc. in the Company Entry/Edit Form. Add employees and client-specific earning and deduction codes to each Company ( following the QuickStart Guide will be very helpful here) and process their payrolls accordingly.

NOTE: If you are importing data from Protym or any other source contact CCS for information on this process before proceeding.

4. Once companies have been created for each of your payroll customers, you need to be able to track activity and produce invoices for each of them. These activities are accomplished by setting up each of your payroll customers as Clients in Company ZZ. Here is the process

  • Go into Company ZZ.
  • Click on Codes and then Clients.
  • Click on the Add button to initiate the Add Mode.
  • Input a Client # for the client. (You can use the Company Number that you assigned to this client or create a new set of numbers--it's up to you.)
  • Select the proper Company # from the Link to Company combo box (near the bottom right-hand side of the form).
  • Click on the Update button (near the middle right-hand side of the form). The program will fill the remaining fields for you by copying the data from the appropriate Company form.

For example, if Acme Brick is a payroll customer of yours, you would create a new Company for Acme Brick. Let's say you assigned it a Company number of "22". You would fill in all of the relevant information about Acme Brick in Company 22's Company Form. At some point you would switch to Company ZZ, go to the Client screen, add a new Client # 22, link this client to Company 22, and click on Update. The relevant data for Acme Brick would be copied to this form.

We have implemented the following special features in Company ZZ:

 

Billing and Reporting: Company ZZ incorporates special billing and reporting applicable only to service bureaus, including client billing and client activity reporting. These features are found in the Service Bureau option of the Utilities menu.

NOTE: Some of the regular, company-specific reports (from Payroll Home Menu || Reports) were written with Service Bureaus in mind, especially those listed under Worksheets and Misc. Forms. Here you will find Payroll Worksheets, a timecard form that you can print out and supply to your clients for them to complete and Tax Deposit Slip Sheets that provides your clients with EFTPS Voice Response System data so that they can phone in their tax payments.

Impounding: CCS Payroll allows you to impound client tax payments until the due date. We will go through the steps of impounding a 941 payment in Company 99 to illustrate the process. In Company 99:

  1. Be sure that the Banking Information is filled in for Deduction Code 90 (Employee SS). NOTE: When you complete the banking information in Code 90-0, the program fills in 79-0 (EIC) 91-0 (Company SS), 95-0 (Federal W/H), 98-0 (Employee Medicare) and 99-0 (Company Medicare) for you.
  2. From the Payroll Home Menu, click on Disbursements.
  3. Employee Range and Period Ending Date Range: complete as required.
  4. Settlement Date: Put in tomorrow's (or any future) date.
  5. Payment Mode: Select 941 in the top combo box. In the bottom combo box, select ACH Impound, Paper Check Impound or EFTPS Batch Filer depending on how you want to transfer the funds to your Service Bureau account.
  6. Draw From: Select the company you wish to draw the money from.
  7. Click on the Refresh List button to see the Deduction Code totals that fit the parameters that you have established.
  8. Click on the Select All button to check every line item or individually click on those that you wish to impound.
  9. Click on the Pay button. The selected line items will be marked as paid and will disappear from the Disbursements screen of Company 99. They will appear in Company ZZ's Disbursements screen, thereby allowing you to keep track of payments due to the IRS.
  10. Generate Tax Reports for Company 99 as required.

When you are ready to pay the impounded taxes, go to the Disbursement Screen in Company ZZ, bring up the impounded transactions, and check the ones you want to pay. Select either Batch Filer - Pay Impound or ACH Pay Impound as the transfer type (under Payment Mode) and click on Pay. Client EINS, PINS, banking information, etc, are automatically obtained as required from each client's (i.e., Company's) data--none of this information is entered directly into Company ZZ. Agent information is obtained from Company ZZ data. (Note: The Batch Filer ID is the EIN for Company ZZ). CCS will take care of the rest, creating the file in the chosen format which will contain the proper due dates, pay periods, etc. for each of the impounded transactions.

NOTE: The Express Version does not have access to Company ZZ. You can still use the CCS Express Payroll Program to do the payrolls for multiple clients; however, processes that require an Agent or Submitter EIN are not possible without Company ZZ. For example, using The CCS Payroll Pro-Version in connection with the Batch Filer software that is available from the IRS, you can fully automate the impounding of any or all tax payments of your clients. Batch Filing requires a Batch Filer ID. Because this information is only found in Company ZZ, Batch Filing is impossible from the Express Version. You can still do EFTPS payments via the Express Version, but only via the PC-Filer mode or ACH Credit type exports, neither of which require a Submitter EIN.