Year End Closing Checklist

Prep Work

Order W-2's and 1095 forms.
Enter any Fringe Benefits on employees' last checks.
Review Health Benefit Records.
Review Employee List for any missing information or accounts to merge.
Check special wage codes for appropriate W-2 box settings.
Gather payment totals for each tax, audit any discrepancies, and make additional payments as needed.
If you are multi-state: audit state totals and taxes (e.g. discrepancies between Arizona and California SDI.
Verify your logins for uploading any electronic files (i.e. W-2's) are still valid.

Closing

Use the Payroll Tax Reports Control Center to close the fourth quarter and year before the first payroll of the new year.

Quarterly Reports

Quarterly State Reports – use for CA, OR, WA electronic filing and other states printed / generic report.
State Quarterly Electronic file – all other states.
Federal Form 941 if you have employees classified as such.

Year End Reports

State reports as needed (California does not have any year end reporting).
Federal form 943
Federal form 940
Edit W-2 information (compile DD amounts, HSA, etc.)
Print W-2's for employees.
Create W-2 electronic file, use Accuwage to check your file before uploading to irs.gov.
Use W-2 electronic file for state annual filing (this only pertains to certain states).
Print employee 1095's.
Create 1094/1095 file for uploading to irs.gov.

Prep Work Resources

Review Instructions for Forms

While Datatech software completes most forms for you, you should be familiar with the details an instructions for completing the forms. This is especially true of rules regarding pre-tax deductions, fringe benefits and printing the cost of the employer sponsored health coverage on W-2’s.

Instructions for the forms can be accessed from the respective website of the form (i.e. irs.gov for federal forms and edd.ca.gov for California forms).

940:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i940.pdf

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f940.pdf

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f940sa.pdf

941:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i941.pdf

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f941.pdf

943:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i943.pdf

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f943.pdf

W2 & Filing:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/iw2w3.pdf