It can be unnerving when exempt employees, who are paid a set salary, are chronically late. An employee could be 15 minutes late each day for a week and receive the same paycheck as someone who works the whole day. Unless the employee is able to make up for the lost time at the end of the day by staying late, that’s just not fair.
5 CommentsIn the United States, expense reimbursement is only required in a couple of cases.
1. In the event an employment contract contains expense reimbursement, an employer is responsible for expense payments.
2. When employees pay for business related expenses, they are kicking back money to their employers. These kickbacks must be subtracted from an employee’s wages to accurately calculate minimum wage. If employees are not paid at least minimum wage, free and clear, the employer is in violation of the FLSA.
However, some states have their own laws surrounding expense reimbursement. Those states include: Illinois, California, Massachusetts, Montana, Pennsylvania, New York, Iowa, and the District of Columbia. Illinois was the newest addition this year.
Editor’s Note: To view the mileage rate information for 2021, please go here.
Each year, the IRS issues a new standard mileage rate. While paying mileage is not mandatory in most cases, the IRS publishes a fair rate which employers can use to reimburse their employees.
For 2019, the rate is up 3.5 cents. At first thought, this might seem a little odd since gas prices are down, but the mileage rate is based on much more than gas prices.
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Employee payroll needs to adhere to a regular payroll schedule. Employers can’t just pay their employees whenever they get paid from their clients and they can’t postpone payroll because they ran into a big expense. However, while you do have to stick to a schedule, you can announce your plans to close payroll early so that employees get a check in time for the holidays.
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Whether to give a cash bonus, how much to give, and whether there are alternatives are questions many entrepreneurs ask during the holidays.
The bonuses that employers give at the end of the year sends a message to employees. And, during the holidays, employees are listening. So before you give employees their bonuses, or don’t, think it over very carefully.
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Everyone knows employees need to track time so they can be paid accurately, but freelancers and entrepreneurs may not realize that they should be tracking their time too. Time is an entrepreneur’s most valuable resource and so it’s important to allocate it wisely. Time tracking can help entrepreneurs and freelancers do just that.
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Making a payroll mistake could mean getting reported to the Department of Labor. It could mean that you’ll get sued, fined, ordered to pay back wages, and forever fear the DOL. It’ll be an ugly mess over an honest mistake, right?
Well, not necessarily. If employers honestly try to follow the rules and don’t deliberately try to reduce overtime, the DOL may be lenient with a payroll mistake. At least that’s how it has appeared in a recent case.
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Freelancers often start out (and end) charging too little for their services. It’s easy to feel like you’re asking too much – especially when your fee is more than you yourself have ever paid for anything – but businesses have bigger budgets than most individuals have so it’s more likely that you under charge your clients than over charge them.
Besides this lack of understanding of business finances, other problems might stand in your way of charging a fair rate:
Sick time pay is an obvious benefit for employees but, while not quite as apparent, it is no less beneficial for employers.
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New Jersey is set to join several other states in a growing trend mandating employer paid sick time. The New Jersey sick time law goes into effect on October 29th, 2018 and employees will begin accruing sick time on that date. The new law creates one statewide standard and preempts any previously enacted municipal sick leave ordinances.
Occasionally, employees need to take more time off than they have accrued. Early time off requests might come up for any number of reasons such as unexpected family visits or holidays soon after being hired. Whatever the reason, it often happens that employees want to take more time off than they have earned. Employers need to decide if negative leave is acceptable for their business.
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The excuses employees give when they’re late or don’t show up for work can be a little hard to believe sometimes. Hearing them again and again can be tiresome too. Nevertheless, you should treat each case individually and with care because sometimes absences happen for good reason. Create an attendance policy that deals with tardies, excessive absences, and the dreaded no call no show.
Timesheets.com has a free tool for calculating time off accruals that you can use to help you formulate a policy.
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