Getting Started with PayWow - An Overview
Last modified 11/4/2020 6:29:05 AM EST | Added by Paywow Team

Glad! You've chosen PayWow as your payroll partner. With us, you can simplify the complex payroll process and concentrate on taking your business to heights. All your payroll taxes and deductions will be calculated, and your tax payments and filings will be taken care of. 

Learn how easy it is to start services with PayWow in these simple steps:

Sign up with PayWow

To start using our services, you must first sign up with PayWow by choosing a plan that best fits your needs and confirming your email address. To make sure you have everything ready for setting up your account, check out our onboarding checklist.

Create an Account

Set a password of your choice for your PayWow account and help us know more about your business, the number of employees employed, and the primary work location. Once you provide these details, you’ll have to set up two-factor authentication to add an extra layer of protection to your account. 

Complete Onboarding Details 

Upon successfully creating your account, you must complete a few mandatory steps before running payroll. These include:

• Providing basic details like EIN and work location.
• Adding company signatory to sign all forms and tax returns on the business's behalf.
• Adding bank account information for deducting payments for direct deposits. 
• Completing bank account verification by submitting bank documents through the Verifier App and making sub dollar deposits. You can download the app on your phone from the play store or the verification email. Instructions on how to capture the documents live and submit it will be specified in the Verifier App. We suggest you submit documents for verification through the app as it is safe and secure. 
• Setting up federal and state tax details for PayWow to make payments and filings on the business’s behalf. 

Add Employees

Adding employees includes employment verification (Form I-9), filing a new hire form, providing myPayWow access, and setting up tax withholdings, benefits, and reimbursements. You can assign roles to employees like a collaborator that will allow them to help you manage your business and reporting manager to manage reportees’ shifts and time offs.

E-sign Authorization Documents

Before proceeding with payroll, you will need to e-sign a few documents from the Compliance tab:

• Direct Credit/Debit Authorization Form to authorize PayWow to credit and debit amounts from your bank account.    
• Form 8655 to authorize PayWow to file and pay your federal taxes.
• State documents to authorize PayWow to file and pay your state taxes.

Submit Supporting Documents

You’ll receive an email from PayWow asking you to submit a few documents for business verification through the Verifier app. Unless you submit these documents, you may not be able to run payroll. 

Below is a list of documents you’re required to submit:

• Any communication document to or from the IRS (EIN Letter, Tax Documents, or any other letters you’ve received) 
• State Existence Letter that you’ve received from your state
• Full image/copy of a non-expired government-issued identification (Driver's License, State ID, or Passport)
• Proof of address (Phone Bill or Utility Bill)

In case, you’ve to upload additional documents other than those submitted via the Verifier App, you can directly upload them from the Documents tab. 

Schedule Payroll

To run a regular payroll, you need to create a pay schedule. PayWow supports four types of pay schedules: weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, and monthly. Based on your payroll frequency, PayWow lets you create multiple pay schedules for employees. 

If you want to pay any bonus to your employees, you can run Bonus Payroll, and if you have employees who joined in the mid of a pay period, run an Off-cycle Payroll. You don’t need to have any pay schedules created for bonus and off-cycle payrolls. With these, you also get an option to skip an employee from payroll. 

Prior YTD Information

If you’re switching to PayWow mid-year and were paying payroll taxes, you must submit YTD documents, wage report, payroll summary report, payroll journal report, 941s, and state filing forms in the Documents section. 

Run Payroll

Once you’ve e-signed the authorization documents and submitted documents that support your bank account information, identity, and business, you can run payroll and pay your employees through check or direct deposit. Employees will be notified when payments are made to them, and they can view their pay stubs in the myPayWow app.

Stay Tax Compliant

PayWow will file necessary forms and issue payments ahead of deadlines, helping to keep your business tax compliant. PayWow handles the filing of new hire reports with the state, withholding, and payment of federal taxes, payment of FUTA, SUTA, Social Security and Medicare taxes, filing of 941/944, etc.

Features you need to know

• Benefits

It is important to offer benefits to your employees to show them that you value them. You can add various benefit types like Health and Life, Retirement and Savings, and other benefits. From Benefits-> Set up a new Benefit, you can select a benefit and add the benefit details. Then choose the employee names from the list of employees to avail that benefit and set the employee contribution per pay period in $ (dollars) or % (percentage). These contributions are calculated during the payroll and are reflected in the employee pay stubs.

To learn what are the benefit plans available in PayWow, click here.

Time Clock

You can use the time clock feature to track employee/contractor shifts. Employees and contractors will record their shifts once they granted access. 

• Employee Time Clock Access - You can enable the time clock for all employees or restrict to selected employees. Only employees will be able to record their shifts.
• Manual Punch - You can allow your employees to clock shifts manually if they miss clocking their shifts. As an administrator, you'll always be able to record shifts on your employees' behalf, but you can also opt to provide access to employees to record their shifts manually. 
• Auto-approve Shifts - You can enable auto-approval of shifts to approve employee’s shifts automatically to be integrated with payroll without your intervention.
• Payroll Integration for Employees - You can opt to integrate shifts into payroll. By opting, your employees' shifts will be automatically mapped while you process payroll.
• Work Hours Report - You can opt to receive work hours report on daily, weekly and pay period basis.
• Email Notifications - You can set notification preferences for your employees on their approval/denial of shifts.
• Geo-Fencing - Geo-fencing is a virtual barrier that allows you to set up a boundary range for your employees to clock in and clock out around the work location within that boundary range. You can customize geo-fencing for your employees to enable/disable it for any specific employee or all employees. If you disable it for an employee then that employee can clock in and clock out from any location.

To learn more how to use Time clock in PayWow, click here

• Time Off Policies

You can set up time off policies and enroll your employees to respective time off policies. An employee can request time off only against the policy they are enrolled in. Any number of policies may be created under Paid Time Off Hours and Sick Hours but only one is allowed under Holiday and Unpaid Policies.

To know more about time-off policies, click here

• Collaborator

To manage the administrative tasks of your organization, you can assign employees or non-employees as your collaborators and provide roles and permissions to access and manage the tasks. 

To learn how to add a collaborator, click here

• Tips

As tips of employees are also calculated in payroll, employees can add tips using myPayWow. You can also add and view the tips of your employees. 

• Integration

PayWow allows you to integrate your payroll and tax data from PayWow to your QuickBooks desktop and Xero accounts.

To learn more about QuickBooks integration, click here.