As your company grows from the ground up, many of your administrative tasks can become more cumbersome. In particular, managing payroll can be especially challenging when your team expands from just a few people to a whole lot of people.
This is why you’ll eventually want to hire a payroll specialist—someone who helps process employee payroll accurately and on time each pay period.
Good payroll specialists do more than just keep tabs on payouts. They also communicate with everyone on your team like pros, maintain organized and up-to-date records of your entire payroll process, and even look for ways to improve the payroll system altogether.
That said, if you think you’re ready to go through the hiring process and add a payroll specialist to your team, you can start by taking a gander at our payroll specialist job description—which you’re free to borrow however you want, even if that means copying and pasting it.
The Perfect Payroll Specialist Job Description
If you’re just trying to publish a job listing out in the wild, you can go ahead and post this job description as it already is. However, if you want to get the most out of it, you’ll probably want to tweak and personalize it to fit your company’s specific needs and match your brand’s tone of voice.
Role Overview
We are looking for a payroll specialist to join our team. You’ll work alongside our accounting department, HR, and operations managers to process payroll each pay period.
Payroll processing involves a lot of moving parts, so this role requires more than just making sure everyone gets the paycheck they’re owed. You’ll also need to manage employee benefits, submit reports to government agencies, and perform audits—just to name a few. Of course, taking care of payroll-related questions from employees and third parties is another big part of the job as well.
When you’re not prepping payroll, you’ll also help with duties like data entry and receivables, among others.
The perfect payroll specialist will be able to handle all of this and more. We’re looking for a candidate who can mesh with a diverse group of employees, handle stressful situations with professionalism, and stay laser-focused on the fine print.
Lastly, we’re hoping and expecting you to be a go-getter who wants to improve our processes not only to enrich our business practices, but also to make your job easier and more enjoyable.
Responsibilities
Although this is not an exhaustive list of your full responsibilities, here’s a general idea of what you’ll do as a payroll specialist on our team:
- Process timesheets
- Make direct deposits and electronic fund transfers
- Withhold and pay federal and state payroll taxes on time
- Pay garnishments like child support and tax debts
- Calculate, edit, and print checks
- Track PTO and sick leave accruals
- Create pay stubs and send them to employees
- Process paperwork for new hires
- Review records for errors
- Keep all employee payroll information up-to-date
- Prepare quarterly and annual reports
How to Tell If You’d Be a Great Fit
First and foremost, the best candidates will have experience with the ins and outs of payroll software. They’ll also have a knack for organization and punctuality so that deadlines are never missed.
We’d like you to show us your previous experience running payroll and owning the process. If you’ve already worked on improving the payroll process in your previous roles, even better.
We want a team member who can:
- Keep confidential documents confidential
- Communicate well with others via email, phone, or in person
- Crunch numbers and extract meaningful insights
- Solve problems with gusto
- Navigate dense local, state, and federal payroll laws
We don’t require any particular or hyper-specific educational background or training for this position. We’re looking for someone who can learn our processes quickly, execute them, and make them better.
What Makes a Great Payroll Specialist Job Description
Many of the payroll specialist job descriptions that you’ll find on job listing sites are dry, dense, and boring. In other words, they don’t inspire much excitement for the job.
Ideally, you want to find a candidate who can’t wait to dig into the challenges facing your company. That’s why it’s important to make your description highly personable in addition to professional. Be honest about what parts of the job are not fun, but also make it clear that the eventual hire will have the freedom to improve all aspects of the process—including the not-so-fun ones.
Also, remember to include a salary estimate and your company’s benefits in the job description so that candidates know you offer fair compensation.
That’s all there is to it—just blast out your new job description, toss in a competitive compensation package, and you’ll find the perfect fit for the role before you know it.
