An employee time tracking system is a great way to monitor hours, create pay periods, and produce accurate timecards for your company and employees. Some employers commonly miscalculate a workweek to determine a pay period. A workweek is described as a seven-day consecutive period in which an employee works.

Payroll Schedules Explained: Types & Cutoff Dates for 2025

Since most months have more than just 4 weeks, or 28 days, a semi-monthly pay period will often include days in 3 separate workweeks. When deciding on a pay schedule, a common choice you have to make is choosing between a semimonthly and biweekly pay schedule. Only 18% of employers use a semimonthly pay frequency, making it the second least popular pay schedule after monthly (used by only 4.4% of employers). For example, in the month of April, the first pay period runs from the 1st to the 15th, covering 10 workdays, and employees are paid on the 15th. The second pay period runs from the 16th to the end of the month, covering 11 workdays, with payday on the 31st.

Keep Your Payroll Records Organized with PaystubHero!

• Payroll calculation involves determining an employee’s gross pay, deductions (taxes, benefits), and net pay for a specific pay period.
• “I pray that more Democrats in the Senate will come to their senses and do the right thing, and when they have the next opportunity on Monday to vote to open the government. I surely hope that they will,” Johnson said.
• The cutoff date is usually a few days before the pay date to allow payroll teams to finalize hours, deductions, and benefits, ensuring accuracy and compliance in the payment process.
• In biweekly schedules, you pay an employee after every two weeks—typically on the same day of the week.
• A semi-monthly schedule involves payments twice a month, often on the 15th and the last day of the month.

Bank holidays specifically impact the ACH network, meaning payments scheduled to arrive on such days will not process until the next business day. Banks are legally required to make direct deposits available by the next business day after receiving funds from the ACH, though many choose to release funds sooner. A significant factor causing paycheck timing to vary is the occurrence of non-business days, specifically weekends and recognized bank holidays. If a scheduled pay date falls on a Saturday, Sunday, or a federal banking holiday, payroll departments typically adjust the payment schedule.

Weekly Pay Period

Depending on where your business operates, state and local law may dictate whether you have to pay terminated employees immediately or within a Retail Accounting certain timeframe after their last day. To properly calculate overtime in monthly and semimonthly pay cycle situations, an employer must establish an official workweek and calculate overtime based on the start of the workweek, not leaving any orphan days behind. When calculating overtime, the employer must determine if the workweek starts on the pay period start date. If the pay period start date and workweek start date match, then great, but, if not, you will need to pull up the previous pay periods’ worked hours and start calculating weekly payroll from the start of the work week. The BLS survey revealed that a biweekly pay schedule was the most common payment frequency in the private sector, finding that 43 percent of businesses in the U.S. paid their employees biweekly.

With both sides refusing to budge on their demands, the shutdown appears likely to continue through this week. In a 52 to 42 vote, Republicans’ short-term bill to fund the government until Nov. 21 fell short of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the measure. Follow live updates on the shutdown for Tuesday, Oct. 7, 2025, here. The National Park Service’s contingency plan said certain excepted activities would https://owow.ciao.jp/2022/02/21/bookkeeping-pricing-packages-plans-bench/ continue during a shutdown, including trying to suppress active fires, sewage treatment operations and the protection of borders and coasts. A National Park Service contingency plan released Tuesday night said parks remain partially open during the shutdown. Certain other operations are also being halted, including responses to inquiries about public health issues and the analysis of surveillance data for certain diseases, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

period paid

Basically, you work for a full month and are compensated at the end of that period. The proper payroll schedule will simplify your accounting work and make your getting paid on the 5th and 20th employees happy. For example, U.S. laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) set guidelines for calculating overtime based on the workweek, which may differ depending on the payroll cycle you use to run payroll.

Leavitt says Trump spoke with Johnson today, but he hasn’t spoken with Democrats lately

A bi-weekly pay period means you are paid every two weeks, which translates to 26 paychecks per year. Unlike semi-monthly pay, which occurs twice a month, bi-weekly pay is consistent in terms of the day of the week. When giving a semimonthly paycheck to a salaried employee, you divide their annual gross salary by 24—the total number of pay periods.

• The mistake comes in when employers accidentally put Monday as their starting day and Monday as their closing day.
• When you start a new job or get a raise, you’ll agree to either an hourly wage or an annual salary.
• The information on MEL is not legal advice, but general information related to legal issues commonly encountered.
• Running accurate, timely payroll is key to build trust and to keep your business running like a well-oiled machine.
• You can adjust your budget based on your actual income more easily.

The first 30 hours were paid on the previous paycheck covering the pay period from the 1st to the 15th. On this paycheck, you will be paid for 10 regular hours and 10 overtime hours for this week. This pay schedule is commonly used for salaried positions, particularly if you hold an executive role, a managerial position, or work in a specialized profession.