Payroll That Lands in the Books Correctly.
Your payroll provider pays the people. What is left is making sure every run reaches the general ledger accurately, and that labor cost shows up against the job, property, or entity where the money was actually earned.
- 30 minutes
- Complimentary
- By video
- No obligation
Every run recorded and reconciled Labor allocated to the job Your provider stays your provider
- QuickBooks ProAdvisor Gold
- 10+ Years Finance Systems Experience
- Secure Cloud Bookkeeping
- Serving Clients Nationwide
Payroll Is Usually the Largest Cost and the Least Visible One
Payroll runs on time. That is not the issue. The issue is what happens to those numbers after the money leaves the account.
In most files, a payroll run arrives in QuickBooks Online as a single lump: one wage expense, one tax expense, sometimes one net cash entry that does not quite tie to the bank. It reconciles, more or less, and nobody looks again.
That lump is the reason a contractor cannot tell you the labor cost of the job that finished last month. It is the reason a property owner sees maintenance payroll as a company-wide expense rather than a cost against the building that consumed it. Gross margin by job, or by property, is arithmetically impossible when the largest input is unallocated.
The other half of the problem is quieter. Employer taxes, withholdings, and benefit deductions sit in liability accounts between the run and the remittance. When those accounts are never reconciled, they accumulate small differences that eventually turn into a balance sheet nobody can explain.
From the Payroll Report to the General Ledger
Meridian works from the reports your payroll provider already produces. The provider keeps running payroll and keeps filing the returns. Meridian makes sure the accounting behind it is right.
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1
Record each run from the provider report
Gross wages, employer taxes, withholdings, deductions, and net pay are entered as their own components rather than one combined figure, and the entry is tied to the actual cash that left the account.
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2
Allocate labor where the work happened
Wages and burden are mapped to the job, property, class, or entity that consumed them, using the coding your payroll provider already captures wherever that is available.
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3
Reconcile the payroll liability accounts
Withholding, employer tax, and benefit liability balances are checked against what has actually been remitted, so the balance sheet does not quietly drift over the year.
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4
Reconcile payroll cash to the bank
Direct deposit totals, provider fees, and tax drafts are matched to the bank statement rather than assumed to net out.
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5
Report labor as a readable cost
Labor appears in your monthly reporting as a cost you can compare across jobs, properties, or periods, instead of a single line you have to take on faith.
Contractor payments are handled as vendor transactions rather than payroll. Whether a worker is an employee or a contractor is a determination for you and your tax or legal advisor to make. Meridian records the classification you provide, and will flag anything in the file that looks inconsistent with it.
What Is In, and What Is Not
Every engagement is scoped in writing before it starts, so the boundary is agreed rather than assumed.
What this service may include
- Recording payroll runs from your provider reports into QuickBooks Online
- Allocating wages and burden to jobs, properties, classes, or entities
- Reconciling payroll liability accounts to amounts remitted
- Reconciling payroll cash, provider fees, and tax drafts to the bank
- Recording contractor payments as vendor transactions
- Mapping the payroll chart of accounts so labor cost is readable
- Labor cost included in your monthly reporting package
- A reconciled payroll history your CPA or tax professional can rely on
What sits outside the scope
- Running payroll as a licensed payroll provider
- Preparing, filing, or remitting payroll tax returns
- Registering for state or local payroll tax accounts
- Determining employee versus contractor classification
- Wage and hour, benefits, or employment law guidance
- Setting or approving pay rates, and administering benefits
Meridian Ledger Group LLC provides bookkeeping, payroll support, and financial reporting. It does not provide tax, legal, audit, or investment advice, and does not prepare or file tax returns. Payroll is processed and filed by your payroll provider. Meridian supports the accounting behind it.
What Labor Cost Has to Answer, by Industry
The mechanics of recording a payroll run are the same everywhere. What differs is the question the allocation has to be able to answer afterwards.
Construction
Field labor is allocated to the job so gross margin can be read per job rather than per company. Burden is treated as a direct cost, not swept into overhead.
Construction bookkeepingReal Estate
Payroll for on-site or maintenance staff is attached to the property that consumed it, and kept separate from entity-level administrative cost.
Real estate bookkeepingProperty Management
Payroll is split between your own operating cost and costs that belong to an owner or a property, so owner statements do not absorb the wrong expense.
Property management bookkeepingThis Is a Good Fit If
- You already use a payroll provider and want to keep it.
- Labor is one of your largest costs and you cannot currently read it by job or property.
- Payroll reaches QuickBooks Online as a lump sum, or as an entry nobody has verified.
- Payroll liability balances on your balance sheet no longer make sense to you.
- You want labor cost inside the monthly reporting rather than in a separate portal.
Payroll support is usually delivered alongside monthly bookkeeping, because the allocation only stays useful if it happens every cycle rather than once.
See What Your Payroll Entries Are Hiding
Thirty minutes, by video, at no cost. Meridian will look at how payroll currently reaches your books and tell you what it would take to read labor cost by job, property, or entity.
- 30 minutes
- Complimentary
- By video
- No obligation
Mon to Fri, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Pacific Lake Stevens, WA. Working virtually nationwide.
Payroll Support FAQ
Do you run my payroll?
No. Meridian Ledger Group LLC is not a licensed payroll provider and does not process payroll, file payroll tax returns, or remit payroll taxes. Your payroll provider continues to do all of that. Meridian handles the bookkeeping and reporting behind it.
Which payroll providers can you work with?
Any provider that produces a payroll register or journal report, which in practice means all of the mainstream ones. QuickBooks Payroll, Gusto, ADP, and Paychex are common. What matters is the report, not the brand.
Can you allocate labor to individual jobs?
Yes, where the underlying data exists. If your crews already record time against jobs in your payroll or time tracking system, the allocation follows that. If they do not, the first step is usually agreeing how time will be captured, because no accounting treatment can recover detail that was never recorded.
Do you handle employee versus contractor classification?
No. That determination belongs to you together with your tax or legal advisor. Meridian records the classification you provide and will tell you if something in the file looks inconsistent with it.
What about payroll tax notices?
Meridian can help you locate the underlying transactions and reconcile what was recorded, which is often what a notice actually requires. Responding to the agency and any filing correction sits with your payroll provider or your tax professional.
Can you set up job costing in payroll for me?
Meridian can advise on how the chart of accounts and class or job structure should be arranged for the reporting you want, and will coordinate with your provider. Configuration inside the payroll platform itself is done by you or by the provider, since they control that system.
Also From Meridian Ledger Group
Monthly Bookkeeping
The cycle payroll support runs inside, closing on the same date each month.
Monthly bookkeepingConstruction Bookkeeping
Why unallocated labor is the single most common reason job margin cannot be read.
Construction bookkeepingFinancial Reporting
Where allocated labor finally becomes a number you can compare and act on.
Financial reporting