Intro to Business • HR: Payroll Fundamentals
What you'll learn
- Master the basic information required for payroll process
- Understand what is required for an employee to be legally hired and paid for their work
- Learn the process for calculating gross pay when using hourly wages, salary, commissions, and more
- Grasp the difference between Mandatory and Voluntary deductions from an employee's paycheck
- Work through the entire process of calculating earnings, deductions, and net pay for employees
Requirements
- As long as you understand addition and subtraction, you're ready to take this course!
Description
From how to calculate earnings to determining which taxes apply and how to file them, processing payroll can be kind of confusing.
In this course, we use everyday, easy-to-understand language to explain the fundamentals every person responsible for getting payroll processed should understand - whether you're the person actually doing, a small business owner overseeing someone else, or a student learning the activity.
While this course uses United States information as examples, the information and principles included apply to almost every country in the world.
Successful students will not only grasp how each of the different aspects of payroll process work, they will understand how (and when) those pieces come together resulting in employees receiving actual paychecks.
Throughout the entire course, quizzes and actual working "homework assignments" are used to reinforce the lessons as well as help the student understand what they are grasping or needing to restudy.
Some of the many areas covered in the course include:
Starting off, students learn the basic legal requirements that must be met before employees start receiving payroll, along with expectations employers should keep in mind when they work with their employees.
Next, the course delves into how gross pay is determined, whether it's hourly wages, annual salary, tips, commissions, bonuses, incentives or more. Also, the definition and expectations of Independent Contractors is covered, along with tax forms for these services.
How often are employees paid and how that affects many different steps of the entire operation.
Which payroll deductions are Mandatory according to government, versus which ones are Voluntary. How are all those different deductions calculated, collected, matched, and paid.
Several different tax form types are required to successfully process payroll each pay period and every year.
MANY other lessons are included such as:
What is Unemployment Insurance and is it paid by the employee or employer?
Court-ordered Garnishments legally require an employer to withhold an employee's pay and turn it over to someone else. Understand how and why.
How does an employer process and prepare an employee's final paycheck.
Which records need to be kept and for how long.
Who this course is for:
- Business owners, employees, students • And anyone wanting to better understand how payroll works from the fundamentals up.
Instructor
- 4.6 Instructor Rating
- 14,126 Reviews
- 51,162 Students
- 15 Courses
For over 30 years, I’ve worked with businesses of every size—from mom-and-pop shops to billion-dollar financial firms—helping them build stronger operations, better teams, and smarter strategies.
Along the way, I’ve spent more than 20 years teaching business management at the college level, working with students who wanted not just theory, but real-world skills they could use.
My approach is simple:
Make the complicated understandable—and the intimidating doable.
Here on Udemy, I've helped over 50,000 students strengthen their business knowledge, earning over 8,000 five-star reviews by keeping the focus on practical, clear, and real-world learning.
Whether you’re starting a business, managing a team, or just wanting to understand how businesses work, I’m excited to help you build skills that make a difference.