• Find your HR website
    • Australia
    • Germany
    • Hong Kong
    • Singapore
    • Thailand
    • United Kingdom
    • United States
Alight Get Started
Alight
  • Solutions

    What’s new Health Administration Solutions Wealth Administration Solutions Payroll Administration Engagement and Communications HCM and Financial Management
     

    What’s new

    Alight Total Health Alight AMS as a Service

    To unlock and create growth

    Integrated solutions designed for enterprise-wide results. These offerings make the most of your investments in both technology and people.

    Health Administration |
    Employer Solutions

    Health Benefits Administration Healthcare Navigation Reimbursement Solutions Dependent Verification Services Compliance

    To better wellbeing

    Solutions to help employees and employers choose, use and manage their health benefits.

    Wealth Administration |
    Employer Solutions

    Defined Benefit Administration Defined Contribution Administration WealthSpark™ Managed Accounts & Advisory Self Directed Brokerage Pension De-risking

    To build a future

    Solutions to help employees and employers choose, use and manage their wealth benefits.

    Payroll Administration |
    Employer Solutions

    Cloud HCM and Payroll Administration Global Payroll

    To keep spend in shape

    Solutions to administer, optimize and scale your payroll.

    Engagement and Communications |
    Employer Solutions

    Benefits Guidance Hyper-personalization Communications Consulting UPoint® and Digital Innovation Research

    To spark interest

    Solutions to create a more memorable employee experience.

    HCM and Financial Management |
    Professional Services

    HCM Cloud Advisory HCM Cloud Deployment HCM Application Management Services (AMS) Financial Cloud Advisory Financial Cloud Deployment Financial Application Management Services (AMS) Workday Adaptive Planning Implementation

    To keep things running smoothly

    Solutions to better manage your workforce from the cloud.

  • INSIGHTS

    Explore Insights Latest Insights
     
    Categories Topics Function

    CATEGORIES

    Health Wealth HR Financial Management HCM SEE ALL

    FEATURED INSIGHTS

    Finance is moving to the Cloud ...are you ready?

    Read More

    The Advantages for Health Saving Accounts (HSAs): Employees find balance between health and wealth

    Read More

    TOPICS

    Alight Research Benefits Administration Compliance, Legislation & Regulation Consumer Healthcare Education Customer Success Stories Dependent Verification Health Savings & Reimbursement Accounts Open Enrollment Payroll & Compensation Savings & Retirement Planning Workday
    SEE ALL

    FEATURED INSIGHTS

    Finance is moving to the Cloud ...are you ready?

    Read More

    The Advantages fo Health Saving Accounts (HSAs): Employees find balance between health and wealth

    Read More

    FUNCTION

    Human Resources Finance Information Technology SEE ALL

    FEATURED INSIGHTS

    Finance is moving to the Cloud ...are you ready?

    Read More

    The Advantages fo Health Saving Accounts (HSAs): Employees find balance between health and wealth

    Read More
  • EVENTS

    Explore Events

    FEATURED EVENTS

    Webinar
    Cloud transformation during disruption and change
    ON-DEMAND WEBINAR
    WATCH NOW
    Webinar
    Rethinking and activating your 2021 enrollment plan
    ON-DEMAND WEBINAR
    WATCH NOW
    Webinar
    Global payroll—now and up next
    ON-DEMAND WEBINAR
    WATCH NOW
  • WORK WITH US

     
    Our Markets Our Partnerships

    OUR MARKETS

    5K Employees Public Sector 5K - 10K Employees Brokers 10K+ Employees Europe APAC

    FEATURED CASE STUDIES

    Curtiss-Wright: Increasing utilization and satisfaction with an integrated benefits platform

    View Case Study

    Pathway Vet Alliance: Thriving in the cloud with Alight and Workday

    View Case Study

    OUR PARTNERSHIPS

    Workday SAP SuccessFactors Cornerstone OnDemand Oracle Alight Partner Network

    FEATURED CASE STUDIES

    Curtiss-Wright: Increasing utilization and satisfaction with an integrated benefits platform

    View Case Study

    Pathway Vet Alliance: Thriving in the cloud with Alight and Workday

    View Case Study
  • ABOUT US

    Our Story Leadership Team Newsroom Awards Careers

    FEATURED NEWS

    Crain’s Chicago names Alight’s Duke Alden to list of Notable LGBTQ Executives
    Read More
    Alight’s new suite of solutions helps turn business disruptions into drivers for enterprise growth
    Read More
    Alight Solutions to lead nationwide launch of the Retirement Clearinghouse Auto Portability program
    Read More
Find your HR website
Get started
  • Australia
  • Germany
  • Hong Kong
  • Singapore
  • Thailand
  • United Kingdom
  • United States
Home
Research & Insights
2021 Year-end checklist for payroll, human resources and finance

Year-end checklist for payroll, human resources and finance

Finish the year strong and be ready for 2021

As the end of the year quickly approaches – many organizations begin their payroll, human resources and finance activities without a standard, well-defined checklist or process. This lack of planning often leads to chaos, not to mention clean-up activities after the first of the year. Organizations end up wasting money and wasting the valuable time of their staff and employees.

In order to help you avoid a similar situation, we reached out to our Alight experts. They provided a year-end checklist for payroll – with a healthy dose of HR and finance.

First, consider any complex regulatory or organizational changes that can create challenges throughout the year for many companies.  This often leads to wage and deduction changes at federal, state and local levels.  In addition, health care, retirement and other benefit program changes can require payroll programming changes. 

A company that is utilizing financials on a digital platform  has quick access to this data throughout the year. With machine learning, repeatable items for year-end can be completed digitally versus manually, leaving less room for human error or oversight.

You'll need to make these changes prior to producing the year-end tax forms, or the first check of the new year. If there are any organizational changes, ensure - those required checks and balances are completed for proper wage taxation or benefit program compliance.  

Here are some important year-end and year-begin checklist items that will also help your HR, payroll and finance teams: 

  • Start early and use a year-round approach by standardizing your human resource processes with checklists and templates
  • Create standard tax and payroll-related project plans complete with task details, time tables and resource names
    • Ensure line items are added for input files such as relocation files, car allowances and imputed income files. These should be complete with file IDs and load dates.  
    • Create a plan for how errors or omissions will be handled.
    • Plan for your payroll project methodology to be tested before first use.
  • Develop quarterly and year-end tax and wage balancing checklists to ensure payroll tax data integrity.  Include checking the accuracy of crucial W4 data such as EINs, FICA wages and tax, Boxes 10-14, negative amounts, and missing SSNs.
  • Create risk mitigation templates and spend time discussing and developing plans with action steps to reduce or eliminate year-end payroll risks.  
  • Create standard wage and deduction audit checklists that will ensure accurate payroll and income tax data mapping to tax forms.  A second set of eyes will often catch a simple error that could save hundreds of amendments.
  • Check for and address all payroll and tax compliance and regulatory changes throughout the year such as Social Security and Medicare base wage limit changes and retirement plan limits. Capture this information in standard human resource plans.
  • Validate FEIN/EIN for payroll withholding accuracy and check SSA/other employer tax audits to ensure timely and accurate transmissions. These steps could help avoid large penalties to government agencies.

Looking for a trusted partner to help you with year-end activities for payroll, HR, finance and more? Alight Solutions has a structured oversight program to help with year-end and year-begin tasks. Our program comes complete with standard templates and checklists to ensure a thorough approach is followed organizationally as a year-round effort.

Ready to modernize?
Let's talk
Related Tags
HCM Payroll & Compensation Human Resources
Related Content
Article
A year in the life of AMS support →
We’ve analyzed the data from our Application Management Services (AMS) customer requests from April 2019 to March 2020.
HCM
Financial Management
Human Resources
Video
Pathway Vet Alliance: Thriving in the Cloud with Alight and Workday →
Pathway Vet Alliance was looking for a way to effectively and efficiently keep up with their growing organization. That's when they turned to Workday and Alight.
HCM
Workday
Customer Success Stories
White Paper
Shaping the cloud for your people →
Your company’s success depends on giving your employees what they need to do more with technology—more efficiently, more flexibly, more securely.
HCM
Human Resources
Lessons learned from 2020 about AMS strategy →
As we’ve continued to assist our clients with their application management needs, we’ve learned a few important lessons about the importance of proactive strategy and thoughtful investment to take wit
Financial Management
HCM
Workday

Resources

  • Talk to sales
  • Find your HR website
  • Careers
  • Legacy Resources

Connect with Us

  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • YouTube
  • Instagram

  • Office Directory
  • Terms and Conditions
  • Privacy Policy
  • Cookie Policy
Alight

© 2020 Alight®. All rights reserved.