The Payroll Accountant is responsible for ensuring compliance with applicable federal, state and local payroll regulations and in accordance with company policies and procedures. This role will provide shared services to the Accounting and Payroll departments. 

Primary Responsibilities:

• Ownership of the full payroll accounting cycle to ensure timely and accurate processing of payroll transactions including salaries, benefits, garnishments, taxes, and other deductions.
• Ensures accurate payroll reporting, tax filings and compliance with federal, state, and local payroll laws and best practices.
• Maintain appropriate records related to payroll information and employee data.
• Collaborate with HR team to ensure accurate employee data and payroll information.
• Stay up to date on payroll and tax regulations.  
• Perform regular internal audits and weekly reviews and approve weekly payroll batch runs for accuracy and regulatory compliance.
• Maintaining accurate general ledger mappings for all human resource information system (HRIS) codes.
• Updating tax rates for all localities, including multiple state unemployment rates and various locality rates.
• Performing monthly reconciliation of payroll data between Kronos, UKG, and PowerBi.
• Responding to tax notices and resolving them in a timely manner.
• Creating and managing HRIS cases for various issues. 

Required Skills/Abilities: 

• Extensive knowledge of payroll functions including preparation, balancing, internal control, and payroll taxes.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills. 
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills
• Proficient with Microsoft Office Suite and strong capabilities with Excel.
• Excellent judgment, decision-making and conflict resolution skills.
• Demonstrated understanding of the business's objectives, issues, and challenges by interacting and collaborating with cross-functional teams.
• Excellent organizational and time management skills with a proven ability to prioritize tasks and meet deadlines.
• Ability to remain tactful, calm, and persuasive in difficult and/or confrontational situations.
• Act with integrity, professionalism and confidentiality, and appropriately handle private/sensitive information.
• Demonstrated analytic capability – specifically in the areas of regulations and compliance laws. 
• Experience with HRIS, including ability to enter data accurately, and comfortable learning new technical systems as needed.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in Accounting, Finance or related field.
• 3 years’ experience with payroll software and multi-state payroll tax compliance. 
• Experience with UKG Pro and WFM Ready (Kronos) is a plus.