Payroll errors have a long shelf life. A wrong address in March, a contractor paid through the wrong channel in July, or a bonus run on the wrong date in December all end up in the same place: a January tax form that doesn't match what you thought you paid. The fix is cheaper in October than it is in February.

This is a Q4 checklist for HR and finance teams running payroll on Rippling. It's built around one idea: the forms you file in January are printed from the records you keep today, so the work is mostly upstream.

October: Clean the Data That Will Print on the Forms

Start with the employee record, because that's what your W-2s and T4s will be built from.

• Names, SSNs, and addresses. A name that doesn't match the Social Security Administration's records is one of the most common reasons a W-2 gets flagged. Pull a report of every active and terminated employee paid this year and scan for missing or malformed SSNs, nicknames used in place of legal names, and old addresses. Ask employees to confirm their legal name and mailing address now, while it's a routine request.
• Work location and residence. Anyone who moved or started working remotely from a new state this year may have state withholding, unemployment, or local tax obligations you haven't set up yet. It is far easier to correct mid-year than to amend filings in the spring.
• Terminated employees. Confirm that every employee who left this year has a correct final pay date, final address for their tax forms, and no lingering deductions. Terminated employees are the group most likely to never see a mailed W-2 if their address is stale.
• Contractors. Collect a W-9 from every contractor before you need it, and compare who you paid through accounts payable against who you paid through payroll. The contractor you forgot to onboard properly is the one who becomes a January problem.

Know This Year's Numbers

A few figures are worth having in front of you when you review year-to-date totals.

• Social Security wage base. For 2026 it is $184,500. Social Security tax (6.2% each for employee and employer) stops once an employee's wages reach that amount, while Medicare has no wage cap. If you have highly paid employees, check that their Social Security withholding stops where it should.
• 1099-NEC threshold. For payments made in 2026, the reporting threshold for contractor payments rises from $600 to $2,000, and it is indexed to inflation after that. Don't assume anyone under the new threshold needs no tracking, though. You still want clean records of who you paid and how much.
• Filing deadlines. Form W-2 and Form 1099-NEC are both normally due January 31. Because January 31, 2027 falls on a Sunday, the due date for 2026 forms moves to Monday, February 1, 2027. Form 941 for the fourth quarter and Form 940 follow a similar end-of-January timeline, so plan to close the year early.
• Canada. If you have Canadian employees, T4 slips and the T4 Summary are due by the last day of February, moving to the next business day when that lands on a weekend. Quebec employees also receive RL-1 slips.

November: Reconcile Before December Gets Busy

• Payroll register to general ledger. Reconcile wages, employer taxes, and benefit deductions in your accounting system against your payroll reports for each month through October. Differences you find now are small. Differences you find in January have had twelve months to compound.
• Benefit deductions to carrier invoices. Compare what you withheld from employees to what carriers billed you. Mismatches usually trace back to a coverage change or qualifying life event that updated one system and not the other. If you're about to run open enrollment, our benefits renewal guide covers how to keep those in sync.
• Taxable fringe benefits. Review anything that creates imputed income, such as group-term life coverage above the tax-free limit, personal use of a company vehicle, relocation payments, and certain gift cards or awards. These need to be in wages before the final payroll of the year, not added afterward.
• Retirement plan true-ups. If your plan has an employer match calculated per pay period or annually, confirm which one and whether any true-up needs to run before year-end.

December: Final Payroll Calendar, Bonuses, and Off-Cycle Runs

• Work backward from the last payroll date. Wages are generally reported for the year in which they are paid, not the year in which they were earned. That makes your final pay date the line between 2026 and 2027. Confirm bank holiday schedules and any processing cut-offs well in advance.
• Bonuses and commissions. Decide whether year-end bonuses are paid in December or January, and tell finance and employees early, because the pay date affects both company expense timing and the employee's tax year.
• Corrections and off-cycle runs. Any correction that should land in 2026 needs to be processed before the year closes. Gather your known adjustments, such as missed deductions, retroactive raises, and expense reimbursements that count as wages, and run them in a single planned off-cycle payroll rather than as scattered one-offs.
• PTO. Check your PTO policy for carryover caps and payout rules, which vary by state and by policy. If your policy resets on January 1, give employees fair notice so the balance they lose is never a surprise.
• New federal reporting items. Tax legislation passed in 2025 created deductions tied to qualified tips and overtime premium pay, which means some employers will need to track those amounts separately. Ask your tax advisor what reporting applies to your workforce and confirm how your payroll data captures it.

January: Forms, Corrections, and Communication

Freeze payroll data once your last 2026 run is complete, then review before anything is distributed.

• Spot-check a sample of W-2s across different situations: a high earner, a multi-state employee, someone with imputed income, and someone who terminated mid-year.
• Reconcile total W-2 wages and withholding to your quarterly filings before submitting.
• Confirm how employees will receive forms, and make sure anyone who has left the company can still get theirs.
• Have a corrections process ready. A W-2c is far simpler when you know in advance who owns it.

Where Rippling Helps and Where It Can't

Rippling calculates and files payroll taxes with the relevant federal and state agencies, and because payroll, benefits, and HR data live in one system, a change like an address update or coverage election flows through to payroll without re-keying. That removes a whole category of year-end mismatch.

What it can't do is fix data that was entered incorrectly. Use Rippling's reporting to pull year-to-date wages, deductions, and taxes by employee and by location, and treat that as your reconciliation baseline. If you have only done a light review of your setup since implementation, a health check before year-end is often more valuable than one in the spring. Our post on Rippling HealthChecks explains why.

The Bottom Line

Year-end isn't hard because the rules are complicated. It's hard because small problems collect all year and surface at once. Spend October on data, November on reconciliation, December on timing, and January on review, and the forms mostly take care of themselves.

If you'd like another set of eyes on your payroll setup before year-end, get in touch with the thePeopleStack team. We do year-end reviews and managed payroll for Rippling customers every day. This post is general information and not tax or legal advice, so confirm specifics with your tax professional.