HR Administration
By JD Farrugia
Jun. 1, 2025
Every month, companies run payroll to pay all of their employees’ wages. This process requires the collection of data, such as hours worked from timesheets, gross pay, net pay, tax withholdings, and so on. This information provides insight into the inner workings of a company and can be used to populate different types of payroll reports.
Payroll reports are documents created by human resources teams to keep tabs on employee payroll data and a company’s tax liabilities. Depending on the type of payroll report used, these documents usually include information like pay rates, the number of hours worked, overtime logs, any withheld taxes, employer tax contributions, and the amount of paid time off (PTO) taken.
From small businesses to larger corporations, keeping track of payroll records is important for maintaining a good relationship with your employees, keeping your business running smoothly, and remaining compliant with tax regulations.
Payroll reports are great for:
Payroll reports differ depending on the information you want to collect, your payroll provider, and any customizations you make to the reports. Some of the most common types of payroll reports are:
These reports contain payroll information about any individual employee, a department, or the company as a whole in a given date range or pay period. They include information such as net and gross wages, tax withholdings, and FICA tax deductions.
As the name suggests, this is a detailed report on a specific employee or department or the company’s pay history. The report shows every movement and activity separately.
Also known as a pay stub report – this document contains an employee’s personal, pay, and tax information. Your employees should have access to all of their own summary reports.
These reports show all tax withholdings per employee, the amounts your company has paid to government agencies, and any pending amounts still owed to the government.
These documents show all payments you have made to employee retirement plans. Such retirement plans include 401(k) and 403(b).
This report provides employers with an overview of all PTO an employee has taken within a calendar year and how much time off they have left.
Payroll reports are internal documents and are rarely, if ever, submitted to external parties. An exception would be if a company is undergoing an audit by the IRS or a state entity or if a workers’ compensation claim is involved.
There are, however, other kinds of forms employers must submit on a regular basis to local, state, and federal governments. Much of the information needed for these forms can be found in your internal payroll reports, saving you a lot of admin time.
Some of the most common government tax reports and forms include:
Regardless of what type of internal payroll report you’re looking to adopt, there are four basic steps to help you get your process organized.
The first step to getting the most out of your payroll reports is making sure that the data presented in them is accurate. This starts by making sure that things like hours worked and overtime taken have been recorded correctly.
Workforce.com accurately stores employee data, like pay rates, hours worked, breaks taken, and overtime used. Synced with scheduling, you can track labor costs and hour variances in real-time, perfecting employee time before it reaches payroll. And when you are ready, you can quickly export all timesheets right to your payroll system, setting you up to create the best possible payroll reports for your business.
With Workforce.com, you can generate customizable payroll reports tailored to your needs. You can choose from a library of report templates, and modify it according to your requirements.
Get clear insight into how you pay your employees, including total wage costs, employee compensation taxes withheld, net pay, PTO, payroll deductions, retirement contributions, and other relevant information concerning employee pay. You can filter this information by role, location, team, and employee.
But Workforce.com goes beyond payroll. It combines payroll, time tracking and HR data in one platform to give you a 360-degree view of your organization.
Workforce.com’s reporting tools can track workforce management metrics like attendance, shift acceptance, and missed breaks, helping you improve shift coverage, punctuality, and wage and hour compliance. On the HR side, it allows you to generate reports on performance reviews, incidents, and warnings to support coaching, policy enforcement, and people development.
Having all this data in one place helps you spot discrepancies, identify trends, make more informed decisions. You can clearly see what you pay, what your people do, and how your team is growing.
To find out more about how Workforce.com can help streamline payroll reporting, book a demo here.
Schedule, engage, and pay your staff in one system with Workforce.com.