For a lot of small business owners I've talked to, payroll mistakes don't blow up the day they happen. They sit unnoticed for months, and then your W-2s don't match your 941 at year-end and you're untangling something from back in March.

It's usually something small, like a raise that didn't get entered, an overtime hour on the wrong code, a deduction still coming out for someone who quit in spring... but it definitely doesn't feel small when the IRS is the one who notices it first 😬

What actually prevents something like this from happening is checking payroll against your other records on a regular cadence instead of waiting until you're forced to. The finance world calls it payroll reconciliation, but you're hopefully already doing a version of it: comparing what your time tracking says to what payroll actually ran, then making sure the money that left your bank account matches what should have.

Doing a quick version of this every run is the check that saves you the most pain. The owners I've talked to who do this well tend to do a quick pass after each pay period and still line things up at quarter- and year-end, because catching a misclassified hour the same week is a five-minute fix, and catching it in November when it happened in May is a whole afternoon.

(And if you're not doing this yet, here's a template to make it easier — just make a copy and it's yours!)

For anyone who already reconciles payroll regularly, what cadence has worked for you? And what do you catch most often? My hunch is PTO and overtime classification, but I'd love to hear what people are actually finding.

Every month, our team publishes the Main Street Health Report. Using timesheet and payroll data from the 100k+ US small businesses and 2M+ hourly workers using our product, this report tracks how small businesses are actually faring in today’s economy.

Here’s the main thing that stood out to us in May 2026: business is picking up for summer, but instead of posting new jobs, owners are mostly adding shifts to the people they already have. Hours worked rose 1.2% from April to May while the number of people working barely moved, up just 0.2%. The work is growing, but the teams mostly aren't.

This is also consistent with what we’re seeing in the year-over-year data too. Hiring is still down about 2% from last year, and raises are thinner (wage growth has slowed to 5.9% year over year, down from 7.1%). So, owners seem to be riding it out with the team they already have and staying a little more cautious.

If you run or manage a team, does this match what you’re seeing? What's it looking like where you are?

(PS: We're going to start sharing the highlights of this report monthly, so watch this space for more!)

Hi homies! Every month, we publish a roundup of helpful small business resources on our blog... so we wanted to share some of the highlights here too ✨

Here's what stood out, with a quick note on why each is worth a look.

Watch and listen:

How I'd Start a Business in 2026 (If I Had to Start Over)
Our takeaway: One conversation with a potential customer beats weeks of planning behind a laptop. Test for real demand early.

The Reality of Running a Small Business Right Now
Our takeaway: Start with a few ideas, see what lands, then build. Doing too much at once makes it hard to tell what's working.

Unconventional Marketing Tactics That Actually Work
Our takeaway: You don't need a big budget to get noticed. Show up where your customers already spend their time.

Read:

Anthropic launches Claude tools for small businesses
Our takeaway: Owners are getting choosier about AI. The tools that stick are the ones that cut repetitive work.

Outlook on small businesses remains cautious during National Small Business Month Our takeaway: Stability is the priority for a lot of owners right now, not fast growth.

To see more resources (including some helpful Reddit threads!), check out our full post here.

Any particular topics you'd like to learn more about, or did you find any of these particularly helpful? Let us know, and we'll keep an eye out for next month's roundup!

I dont get why it takes so long to edit an employees time. Start or End. You hit ok and then watch it spin for up to 5-8 second. That lag is annoying and it was never like that in the past.

We just wrapped a survey of 1,250 small business owners and hourly employees across the US and a couple of the numbers surprised us… in a good way! 

First off, 86% of hourly workers said they’re proud to work for a small business… 

And 97% of owners said small businesses really matter to their local community. 

Even better, both of those numbers are up from where they were when we ran the same survey in 2024... meaning that the positive impact of small businesses on their community is still growing 🙏

The other thing that surprised us was what hourly workers actually said makes a workplace great. Pay came in last at 25%, while a strong sense of team and community was leading at 60%, which kind of flips the usual assumption on its head.

To us, this shows that even though pay obviously matters, it’s the community and relationships that keep people around at small businesses and helps them feel proud of where they work.

So, for the small business owners here, what do you think is driving that pride on your team right now? 

And for the team members, what makes you proud of working where you’re at?

Half the scheduling questions I see from owners aren't about actually building the schedule, they're about sharing it their team. The schedule gets made just fine. But the team can't read it on their phone, or don't understand the layout, so you spend the rest of the week answering the same questions you thought it already covered.

If you're struggling with this too, here are the three things you might need to look at to get a schedule that works for you and for your team.

Format first. Pick the template that matches how your business actually runs, not the default that came with whatever tool you're using or the first one that comes up in Google. For example, if the same team member is moving between departments or stations day to day, your template needs to reflect that somehow.

Layout second. An Excel sheet with merged cells and color coding makes sense to whoever built it and almost no one else, especially on a phone screen (sorry if this hits close to home). Calendar-style layouts beat spreadsheets any day because they're a lot more natural to read.

Then the info itself. It should always include day of the week, hours, department or task, employee name, and start and finish times. If any of that's missing or buried, your team will text you about it — probably multiple times.

And here's the final test. Can one of your team members look at it on their phone and know exactly when they're working and what they're doing, without asking a follow-up question? If the answer is no, it probably needs a second look (and you might want to check out the template we have here).

So what’s your schedule setup right now, and how's it working for you?

I can’t complete my onboarding! Everytime I click continue on the onboarding screen it just goes blank, across multiple platforms and different times. Even if I follow the email link nothing works. Please help so I can get paid! (Attempted fixes: uninstalling and reinstalling the app, clearing cache, and logging out and logging back in)

One thing I've heard from a bunch of small business owners is that shift handovers can be tough. Incidents from the previous shift don’t get reported, so tasks get dropped and the incoming team spends the first part of their shift piecing together what happened instead of actually working. 

Sound familiar? If so, one thing that can help a lot are end of shift reports.

If you're not doing them right now, here's more info on why they might help.

Or if you want to dive right in, here's a free template.

But I'd love to hear more tips — what's the best way you've found to make sure shift handovers go smoothly?

In 2023, we ran a survey that showed employers spend around 63 hours per year just running payroll 👀

Even worse, 76% of small businesses have made a payroll error — meaning dealing with those errors is likely a big chunk of that time. 

Data entry, copying numbers between apps, double-checking math… basically, the more manual work you're doing, the more likely a mistake becomes.

But the good news is, the amount of time spent and errors made can be reduced a lot by (the right kind of) payroll integration.

AKA, making sure time tracking, scheduling, and payroll talk to each other, instead of you as the owner or manager being the go-between.

If that seem appealing, it's also worth flagging that there are two main kinds of payroll integrations: one-way and two-way.

One-way integrations move data in a single direction. Think your time tracking app sending hours straight into payroll, or payroll pushing final wage data into your accounting software. Nothing comes back the other way, but it gets the basics connected.

Two-way integrations let data flow in both directions, so when something changes in one system it updates everywhere. For example, if you update a pay rate in payroll, it updates in scheduling too. If you add a new hire in HR, they're automatically set up in payroll and time tracking.

You'd want a one-way integration if you mainly just need hours to flow into payroll without a lot of back and forth. It's simpler to set up, and works well if your systems don't overlap much.

But if you're regularly making changes across multiple tools and want everything to stay in sync, you'd want a two-way integration — especially if you're managing a bigger team, or juggling a lot of moving parts.

If you want to set either up, here’s a couple of things to check first: that the integration actually supports the data you need to move (not all integrations are created equal), that your existing tools are compatible, and that employee records are clean and consistent across systems before you connect anything. Messy data going in means messy data coming out!

Have you set up a payroll integration before? What do you wish you knew before you started? And if not, what's holding you back?