Quarter End Preparation Guide

• ✅ Clear filing and payment blockers: prior failed filings, missing tax IDs, unresolved NSFs

• ✅ Review and explain balancing payrolls and upcoming variance collections/refunds

• ✅ Confirm where Check intends to file and whether the customer wants us to file there

• ✅ Ensure complete payroll history is loaded (especially prior provider history)

• ✅ Terminate churned customers and check in on inactive accounts

1. Resolve tax filing and payment blockers

• Missing Tax Inputs Report: Missing or incorrect tax IDs prevent Check from filing or paying taxes on time. These gaps are the most common cause of delays and rejections.

“Your account is missing required state or local tax IDs. Please update these as soon as possible so we can file on your behalf without delays. Without this required information, you may be responsible for agency assessed penalties or interest.”

• Funding Failures: Check will not file and cannot guarantee on-time tax remittance until the account balance is resolved. Check will still generate employer tax return copies, but they will not be filed with the agency.

“Your account currently has an unresolved funding failure. We’re unable to file or guarantee on-time tax payment until this is corrected. If not resolved before the end of the quarter, you may be responsible for agency assessed penalties or interest.”

• Failed Filings: Review both the prior quarter’s failed filings and the current quarter’s proactively detected failures. Unresolved failures from the prior quarter often predict issues this quarter, usually caused by missing tax IDs, incomplete TPAs, or inactive accounts. In addition, Check flags expected failures for the upcoming quarter based on known missing requirements. If these issues aren’t corrected before filing month, customers may face late filing penalties and delayed submissions.

“We were unable to complete one or more of your tax filings last quarter due to missing or incorrect information. This issue may cause delays again this quarter. Please address the outstanding items so we can submit your upcoming filings on time and help you avoid agency-assessed penalties or interest.”

• Employers Starting This Quarter: New employers can generate already-filed errors if they haven’t fully terminated services with their prior provider. This results in duplicate filings and rejected returns. Customers must confirm termination and ensure their last filing date is set correctly.

“To avoid duplicate or rejected tax filings, please confirm that you’ve fully terminated filing services with your previous provider and set your last filing date appropriately. This ensures filings for this quarter are submitted correctly and without delays.”

• Missing or Invalid SSNs: Incorrect or placeholder SSNs require amendments later and may impact employees’ access to state or federal benefits. Correcting these now prevents filing errors, mismatches, and downstream employee issues.

“We identified one or more employees with missing or invalid Social Security numbers. Please update these as soon as possible to ensure accurate reporting and to prevent issues for employees who may need to access state or federal programs.”

2. Get ahead of quarter-end refunds or collections

At the end of each quarter, Check will need to collect or refund for tax adjustments that have accumulated throughout the quarter. This is a standard process in the payroll industry—taxes can fall out of balance for many reasons, such as a mid-quarter rate change or simple rounding drift over time.

Processing tax adjustments is necessary to be able to successfully file for companies at the end of the quarter.

In Check, tax variances are calculated and stored on a special type of payroll called “balancing” payrolls. These payrolls are available in draft after the first week of a quarter, and refreshed automatically every weekend. Then, on the 2nd business day after the close of the quarter, balancing payrolls are “approved” and variance collections or refunds are computed and scheduled for several days later.

Reviewing balancing payrolls

There are three (3) different reports available to you to review balancing payrolls and plan your communication to employers about upcoming variance collections. These are:

Report	Data Level	Description	Access From
Quarterly Variance Report	Partner level	Total variances, payment amounts, and agency refund amounts for all companies across your employer base.	Console
Tax Receipt	Company level	A per-liability breakdown of the balancing adjustments for the company, and which are fulfilled immediately vs. already paid to the agency and refunded after filing.	Console (+ Communications)
Preview Report or Payroll Journal	Employee level	A breakdown of variances by employee and tax.	API, Console

Quarterly variance report (Partner level)

The Quarterly Variance Report can be accessed by first navigating to the Reports tab in Console, selecting “Quarterly variance report”, and then selecting the current year and quarter.

Column definitions and examples

Column	Definition	Example Value
Company ID	Unique identifier for the company in Check's system	com_GLNmgeXia8yioT968nSc
Company Legal Name	Registered legal name of the company	Stark Industries
Total Liability	Total tax variance amount on the balancing payroll	295.12
Balancing Payroll	Identifier for the specific balancing payroll	pay_st1wudRlzHua3EzFqMRA
Payroll Status	Current status of the payroll	paid
Updated At	Timestamp of the last update to the balancing payroll	2025-11-19T15:38:00Z
Approved At	Timestamp of when the balancing payroll was approved	2026-01-02T09:24:00Z
Payment	Unique identifier for the payment transaction	pyt_HlSYFp9q8DhUhSIbJju6
Payment Type	Whether funds are being collected or refunded	Collection
Payment Date	Date the payment was or will be processed	2025-01-05
Payment Amount	Actual dollar amount of the payment transaction	295.12
Agency Refund Amount	Portion of the liability being refunded from the tax agency after filing	0.00
Writeoff Amount	Amount being written off rather than collected or refunded (applies when the Payment Amount is less than $1)	0.00

The Quarterly Variance Report shows all draft balancing payrolls across companies, as well as payment amounts after the quarter is closed and balancing payrolls are approved. The most important attributes to review are:

• Total liability — the total variance amount from the balancing payroll.

• Payroll status — the status of the balancing payroll. This will move to pending once the balancing payroll is approved, processing once the transaction is sent, and paid or failed depending on the outcome of the transaction.

• Payment amount — the expected employer refund or collection amount from Check.

• Agency refund amount — the expected refund that the employer will receive from the agency after filing is completed.

The resulting transaction or pay adjustment can differ from the overall liability adjustment when funds have already been sent to the agency and cannot be refunded directly to the employer.

• If Check still holds the funds for a given tax and they exceed the amount due, Check will refund the employer.

• If Check no longer holds the funds, the amount will be over-reported on the return so that the agency can process a refund.

Tax Receipt (Company level)

As of Q1 2026, you can generate a receipt alongside every quarter-end balancing payroll that gives employers a clear, self-serve breakdown of any resulting money movements.

The Tax Receipt will be available once the Balancing payroll is approved and can be accessed via Console as a PDF this quarter end or via the API starting next quarter end (in both PDF and JSON formats).

Optionally: for partners using the direct-to-employer Communication, employers will receive an email + receipt detailing the scheduled transaction resulting from balancing (if applicable).

Preview report / Payroll journal (Employee level)

Finally, you can access a breakdown of variances by employee using either the Preview report (if the balancing payroll is still in draft), or using the Payroll journal (if the balancing payroll has already been approved).

One reason this may be important is if there are sizable variances that were calculated on employee-paid taxes, and the employer should be notified in order to reconcile those variances with employees directly. While this is uncommon, it can occur due to corrections, voids, or variances in historical data.

To access this breakdown, first navigate to the balancing payroll in Console (which you can do by searching for the payroll ID in the search bar, or by navigating to Payrolls for the company and selecting the balancing payroll for the quarter). Then, open the “…” menu in the upper right and select Export payroll journal. Console will automatically generate either a Preview report or the Payroll journal, based on whether the balancing payroll has been approved.

Understanding the root cause of tax variances

Common example causes of tax variances are:

• Mid-quarter rate changes — For example, if a company’s state unemployment rate changes mid-quarter, then payrolls that were calculated during the quarter before the rate change was entered in Check will produce a variance.

• Exemptions added or removed — If an exemption to a tax was added or removed mid-quarter, then payrolls that were already processed may produce a variance to retroactively add or remove the tax.

• Mistakes during company setup — A company’s historical payrolls may have been entered with incorrect subject wages or tax amounts.

• Rounding throughout the quarter — Simple rounding differences between calculating a tax payroll by payroll vs. in aggregate on the entire quarter may produce minor variances.

• Other agency-imposed requirements — For example, credit reduction states for FUTA are announced in November ever year, and will appear as tax variances for employers in the affected states in Q4.

• Additional variances — When Check is filing, there may be times where we realize an additional collection or refund is required, resulting in additional debits or credits to your Employers throughout the filing month.

Using draft balancing payrolls proactively

• For large expected variances, communicate early. Proactively notify employers well in advance of Quarter End.

• If the balancing preview looks wrong, escalate quickly. If you have identified the root cause of tax variances and believe that corrections are required, create a Support request with the “Corrections + Amendments” request category. Addressing it early increases the chances it can be resolved before filings.

“Your estimated quarter-end variance [collection or refund] is $X. This amount will be finalized after quarter-close. If you see anything that looks unexpected—such as a large change in taxable wages or state tax amounts—please let us know. We can pause or adjust the timing while we review the details together before the amount is finalized.

3. File only where expected to file

4. Correct missing or inaccurate payroll history

• For employers who migrated this quarter, confirm no payrolls were skipped during onboarding and check for obvious gaps (e.g., first payroll mid-quarter with no prior history imported).

• Ask customers to notify you of any missed or off-system/off-cycle payments that haven’t flowed through the platform.

• Ensure any needed payroll corrections or adjustments are submitted well before quarter-end (ideally **20 business days).

• Review any failed payrolls that have not been voided as these can be a source of unfunded tax payments or overstating taxes owed.

“Review your quarter’s payroll history for completeness. If you processed any payroll outside of our platform this quarter (including with a prior provider), please let us know and provide wage/tax details. This helps ensure your filings are complete and avoids amended returns later.”