About this site
Fifty notes on running payroll in a small business, written from the desk of the one person who does it. Owners, directors, office managers and bookkeepers — anybody for whom payroll is four hours a month attached to a date that cannot move, alongside four other jobs.
What it covers
Who runs payroll and whether to do it at all. The calendar: pay dates, the deadlines that are not yours, bank holidays, the month with an extra run, year end. What has to arrive before anything can be keyed — hours, changes, starters, leavers, absence. The run itself, the checks before approving, and the comparison that catches nearly everything. What follows it: payslips, funding, the payment, the filing, the records. What to do when it has already gone wrong. And the problem that sits under all of it — one person who knows the whole chain.
The argument running through it
The date does not move, the inputs do not arrive by themselves, and in most small businesses one person holds the whole sequence. Nothing here changes the first. Most of it is about the second. The part that matters most is the third, and it is an afternoon's work that never has a deadline.
What it is not
It is not legal, tax, accounting or employment advice, and it does not tell any business what anybody should be paid. What must be filed and by when, what a payslip must show, what may be deducted, what notice applies, what penalties attach and what records must be kept all differ by jurisdiction, by the size and form of the employer and by the contract, and they change. Those are questions for somebody qualified in the place concerned.
It is also not a guide to the arithmetic of pay, a product comparison, or a review of any payroll package or provider.
About the figures
Every number used anywhere on this site is an illustration of what one small employer recorded for itself, labelled as such on the page where it appears. None of it is a benchmark, an industry average or a statement about any named business, and none of it should be read as a description of how anybody else's payroll behaves.
About this domain
The Standing Date is an independent reference project about the practical sequence, records and continuity risks involved in small-business payroll.