Payroll services in Cochrane

Payroll for Cochrane employers is part of our monthly package, which starts from $300 a month with the bookkeeping and GST filings included. Filings covered: source deduction remittances, T4 and T4A slips and summaries, records of employment, and WCB-Alberta reporting.

Who employs people in Cochrane

The Town of Cochrane’s description of its economy, with technology firms, home-based professionals and a downtown of retailers and professional services, gives a fair picture of the payrolls we see. A downtown retailer, restaurant or clinic employs a core team and adds part-time staff around busy periods. A contractor working across Cochrane, Calgary and Rocky View County grows a crew through the building season and shrinks it after. A home-based technology or engineering corporation often has one employee on the payroll — the owner — and then, one day, a first hire. Each of those situations has its own failure point, and none of them is the tax table.

What Alberta does not charge, and what that is worth

Alberta levies no employer payroll health tax. For a Cochrane employer, the statutory cost of employing someone is federal: CPP and EI on both the employee and employer side, plus income tax withheld from the employee, plus WCB-Alberta premiums. There is no provincial levy layered on top and no second payroll registration with the province.

That absence is real money once a payroll grows. A British Columbia employer with $2,000,000 of remuneration pays employer health tax at 1.95% on the whole amount; the same payroll in Alberta attracts no equivalent provincial charge. For a Cochrane business weighing a hire, the cost is the wage, the employer CPP and EI, WCB premiums, vacation pay and general holiday pay, and nothing else from the province.

General holiday pay: Alberta’s 4.2% formula

Where Alberta is not simpler is the holiday calculation. Alberta recognizes nine general holidays, with four further optional days an employer may choose to treat as general holidays. General holiday pay for a general employee is at least 4.2% of the wages, vacation pay and general holiday pay earned in the four weeks immediately preceding the general holiday. The base is not just wages. It includes vacation pay and earlier general holiday pay, so a holiday that falls shortly after another one is calculated on a slightly larger base.

This is a different mechanism from the formulas used in other provinces, and it is one of the places payroll software set up for another province silently produces the wrong number. For a Cochrane shop with part-time staff whose hours vary week to week, the 4.2% base moves every time, which is exactly why it needs to be calculated rather than estimated. The optional days are a policy choice; once chosen, they should be written down and applied consistently.

Seasonal crews and records of employment

Seasonal hiring is the other recurring feature of a Cochrane payroll. A building or landscaping crew that grows in spring and shrinks in autumn, or a shop that adds staff for its busiest months, produces a batch of records of employment every time the season turns. Each ROE reports insurable hours and earnings by pay period. Employers who keep clean pay-period records produce them in an afternoon; employers who do not spend a week reconstructing them while also managing the layoff itself.

Vacation pay accrues through the season and is paid out on termination, and it belongs on the balance sheet as a liability while it builds. Bonuses and retroactive increases have their own withholding method rather than following the ordinary periodic tables. All of it is routine when it is set up properly at the start of the season and painful when it is not.

The first hire from a home office

For a home-based corporation, the first employee is a bigger step than it looks. The business needs a payroll program account with the CRA, a WCB-Alberta account where the industry requires coverage, a pay schedule, a TD1 from the employee, and a remittance schedule that the CRA assigns based on the size of the withholding. Then it needs to remit on time, every time, because late remittances attract penalties and interest, and the CRA tracks the pattern. We set all of this up before the first pay run, so the first T4 season is uneventful.

Paying yourself through payroll

Many Cochrane owners are the only person on their corporation’s payroll. A salary to the owner needs exactly the same withholding, remittances and T4 as any other employee, and it has to be decided before it is paid. Whether a salary, dividends or a mix is the right answer is a planning question we work through with the personal tax return and the corporate return together; once it is decided, payroll is how a salary actually happens.

WCB-Alberta

Workers’ compensation in Alberta is administered by WCB-Alberta, with premiums set by industry classification and charged on assessable earnings. Registration and reporting are separate from your CRA accounts entirely. For Cochrane contractors, coverage also matters at the subtrade level, which we cover on the trades accounting page.

What the engagement covers

• Pay runs with Alberta tax tables applied to Alberta employees
• Income tax, CPP and EI withheld and remitted on your assigned CRA schedule
• General holiday pay calculated on the Alberta 4.2% basis, including optional-holiday policy
• Vacation pay accrued and tracked as a liability
• WCB-Alberta registration support and assessable earnings reporting
• Records of employment produced from pay-period records, including seasonal batches
• T4 and T4A slips and summaries filed after the calendar year end

Fully online, with no office in Cochrane

EverStone is a sole practitioner CPA firm that works online. There is no Cochrane office to visit. Cochrane employers are served through video calls, secure document exchange and e-signature, and timesheets and payroll approvals move the same way. The payroll sits on the same file as the books and the year end, so the T4 summary, the remittances and the corporate return all tell the same story. Seasonal payrolls swing with the work, so the remittances belong in the cash forecast rather than surprising it.

Payroll elsewhere in Alberta

The same service, online and at the same published fees, for owners in Calgary, Airdrie and Red Deer.