As the year draws to a close, ensuring your payroll, benefits, and compliance processes are managed smoothly and efficiently is essential for every organization. Dayforce provides robust tools that allow businesses to streamline these tasks, minimize errors, and comply with federal, state, and local regulations. Below are best practices for optimizing the year-end process using Dayforce to ensure your organization closes out the year effectively and prepares for a smooth transition into the new year.

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Tailored Solutions for Your Year-End Needs

Every organization faces unique challenges at year-end, so it’s important to adapt your approach to meet those specific needs. Whether you’re handling year-end bonuses, tax adjustments, or open enrollment, Dayforce’s flexible workflows ensure that you can tailor your year-end process for efficiency and accuracy. Here are a few ways to make sure your system is customized to your business:

• Custom Payroll Adjustments: Ensure that year-end bonuses, commissions, and other one-time payments are processed correctly. Use Dayforce’s payroll module to configure payroll workflows and manually apply adjustments as needed.
• Tax Form Configuration: Use Dayforce’s W-2 Wizard and 1099 Wizard to generate accurate tax forms for employees and contractors, ensuring all earnings, deductions, and tax withholdings are captured correctly.

Customizing workflows helps ensure that payroll and tax data align with your organization’s requirements, improving accuracy and reducing errors during year-end reconciliation.

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The Power of Centralized Year-End Visibility

Year-end brings together multiple processes that need to be closely monitored, from payroll to benefits to tax filings. Having a centralized system is essential for maintaining visibility and control over all these elements. Dayforce provides a single platform that integrates HR, payroll, and benefits data, making it easier to track and report on all year-end activities:

• Payroll Register: Use the Payroll Register report to review all employee earnings, deductions, and taxes before processing the final payroll of the year.
• Year-to-Date Payroll Summary: Generate this report to review and validate year-to-date totals across all employees, ensuring any discrepancies are identified and resolved before the year-end close.
• W-2/1099 Wizard: Leverage Dayforce’s tax wizards to prepare and validate W-2s and 1099s, ensuring they are distributed to employees and contractors accurately and on time.

Centralizing all year-end processes within Dayforce allows you to easily track data, resolve issues, and ensure accuracy, giving you a clear view of all payroll and benefits activity for the year.

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Navigating Compliance with Dayforce

Compliance is a critical part of the year-end process, particularly when it comes to payroll and tax filings. Dayforce offers a range of features to help businesses stay compliant with U.S. wage and tax regulations, as well as Affordable Care Act (ACA) reporting requirements:

• US Wage and Tax Report: Use the US Wage and Tax Report to summarize employee earnings and tax withholdings, ensuring compliance with federal, state, and local tax regulations.
• ACA Reporting Tool: For companies subject to ACA regulations, use Dayforce’s ACA Reporting Tool to track and report employee healthcare coverage. This tool generates the necessary IRS Forms 1094-C and 1095-C, ensuring you meet all reporting deadlines.
• Automated Tax Filing: Dayforce simplifies the filing process by allowing businesses to submit federal and state tax forms electronically, reducing the need for manual intervention and ensuring filings are completed on time.

By utilizing these features, organizations can stay compliant with tax and benefits regulations, reduce the risk of fines or penalties, and streamline their year-end reporting process.

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Best Practices for Year-End Payroll

Closing out payroll for the year is one of the most important tasks, and ensuring that payroll data is accurate before the final payroll run is critical. Dayforce offers several tools to help manage this process efficiently:

• Final Payroll Audits: Conduct a payroll audit using the Payroll Reconciliation Report to check for any discrepancies in employee pay, deductions, or taxes before running the final payroll. This ensures that all corrections are made before the year is closed.
• Process Off-Cycle Payments: If your organization issues year-end bonuses or corrections, use Dayforce to process off-cycle payments or manual checks. Ensure these are reflected in the employee’s total earnings for the year.
• Ensure Timely W-2 and 1099 Generation: Use Dayforce’s W-2 Wizard to generate accurate W-2s for employees, and the 1099 Wizard to ensure contractors receive their tax forms before the filing deadline.

Finalizing payroll with these best practices in place will ensure your employees are paid correctly and on time, and that your organization remains compliant with payroll regulations.

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Managing Benefits and Open Enrollment

Year-end is a crucial time for managing benefits, particularly if your organization is wrapping up open enrollment. Ensuring all benefits are correctly configured and that deductions are properly set up in payroll is vital:

• Benefits Enrollment Summary Report: Review the Benefits Enrollment Summary Report in Dayforce to confirm that all employee benefits elections for the new year are accurate, including health plan selections and retirement contributions.
• Update Payroll Deductions: Once open enrollment is complete, update payroll deductions to reflect the new employee benefit elections for the coming year. Ensure that any changes are properly configured in the first payroll of the new year.
• ACA Compliance: Use Dayforce to manage Affordable Care Act reporting and ensure that employees’ health coverage is properly tracked and reported.

By managing benefits and open enrollment effectively, you can reduce the risk of errors in payroll deductions and ensure compliance with benefits regulations as the new year begins.

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Preparing for the New Year: Agility and Flexibility

After closing out the current year, it’s important to prepare for the next by ensuring that payroll schedules, tax rates, and benefits deductions are updated and ready for the first payroll of the new year. Here are some ways Dayforce helps with this process:

• Update Tax Tables: Ensure that your federal, state, and local tax tables are updated in Dayforce before the first payroll run of the year to avoid any discrepancies in employee withholdings.
• Set Up New Payroll Schedules: Configure payroll schedules in Dayforce for the new year, ensuring they align with your pay cycle and holidays. This minimizes the risk of payroll delays or errors in the first run of the year.
• Roll Over PTO Balances: If your company allows paid time off (PTO) carryover, use Dayforce’s time-tracking tools to automatically roll over unused vacation balances into the new year.

Preparing ahead ensures that your organization’s payroll runs smoothly in the new year, helping you avoid issues and ensure compliance from day one.

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Building a Resilient Year-End Process for Long-Term Success

Building a resilient year-end process is key to minimizing disruptions and preparing for long-term success. By leveraging Dayforce’s integrated payroll, HR, and benefits features, you can reduce manual work, automate key processes, and ensure compliance with ever-changing regulations. Here are some key takeaways for building a strong year-end infrastructure:

• Automation and Integration: Automate payroll, benefits, and tax filings through Dayforce’s integration capabilities to reduce manual input and the risk of errors.
• Real-Time Reporting: Use Dayforce’s real-time reporting tools to keep track of key payroll and benefits data throughout the year, enabling better decision-making and planning for year-end.

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By following these best practices, you can ensure a smooth year-end process and set your organization up for success in the coming year. Dayforce provides the tools to centralize, automate, and streamline your payroll and compliance tasks, helping you navigate year-end challenges with confidence.

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