“I hired a guy who showed up on his start date but didn’t return the next day and isn’t responding to my calls. I don’t yet have any of his paperwork completed to add him to payroll. What do I do?”
Your HR Survival Tip
While this isn’t an everyday occurrence, it does happen. This is a good reason to get all your new hire paperwork done as soon as the employee first reports to work.
As the employer, you may feel you don’t need to pay this person since you don’t have enough information to put them into your payroll system. Or perhaps you think you can just write them a check as an independent contractor. Both are wrong. This is treated basically the same as a longer-term employee who walks off the job. You have 72 hours to produce a final paycheck and wage statement (pay stub).
If no paperwork has yet been completed you probably don’t have the social security number, which is necessary to add the employee to payroll. However, you can still create a “manual check” through your payroll system… you just won’t save it because you can’t associate it with an employee in the system.
This manual check process allows you to enter the pay rate, hours worked, and taxes. When you don’t have a W4 providing you with the employee’s requested exemptions, both IRS and California say you should default to single with zero exemptions. Once you have the numbers, create your own version of a pay stub because you can’t save this in the system without a social security number. You create a check by actually writing a check for the net amount, using the same bank account normally is used for payroll.
Once you have a check and wage statement ready, contact the employee by whatever means possible to let them know you have their check ready. You are not obligated to mail it unless requested by the employee. If the employee doesn’t respond, put the check and wage statement in their file. When the employee eventually shows up for the money, get the W4 completed so you can now actually process the manual check through your payroll system.
If you don’t know how to obtain a manual check through your payroll service, ask them to train you. It’s important you know how to create a final paycheck, even for regular terminations. It’s not hard and there are times when you just can’t wait for your payroll company to call you back.
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