Payroll Setup holds the facts about you as an employer that every remittance and every year-end return is filed against: your payroll program account with CRA, the legal name it is registered under, and the remitter type CRA assigned you. It also lets you look up the statutory holiday calendar SeroBooks uses for each province. Fill it in once before your first pay run, and come back when CRA changes your remitter type.
Open it
- Employees ▸ Payroll Setup
- Home Page ▸ Employees band ▸ Payroll Setup
The screen is titled Payroll setup. Its note reminds you that CRA assigns the remitter type from your average monthly withholding two calendar years back and tells you in writing, so it is never guessed.
Employer account
The first card, Employer account, holds three required fields.
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| CRA payroll program account | The 15 characters ending in RP0001 (or RP0002 and so on) printed on your remittance voucher, for example 123456789RP0001. Every T4 and every remittance is filed against it. In a US company this field is Employer Identification Number (EIN): the nine digits the IRS issued, for example 12-3456789. |
| Legal name | The name CRA holds for the account, not your trading name. In a US company, the name the IRS holds. |
| Remitter type | The remitting schedule CRA assigned you. The choices come from SeroBooks' list for your country. In a US company this field is Deposit schedule, set by your lookback period. |
The Canadian remitter types
The Remitter type list describes each choice in words. This is what each one means and how SeroBooks sets the due dates from it:
| Choice in the list | CRA's name | Average monthly withholding | When a remittance is due |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small employers in good standing, by CRA agreement | Quarterly | Under $3,000, with a clean compliance history | 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January |
| Average monthly withholding under the first threshold — due the 15th of the following month | Regular | Under $25,000 | The 15th of the month after the month you paid your employees |
| Average monthly withholding above the first threshold — due twice monthly | Accelerated threshold 1 | $25,000 to $99,999.99 | Pay made from the 1st to the 15th is due on the 25th of the same month; pay made from the 16th to the end of the month is due on the 10th of the next month |
| Average monthly withholding above the second threshold — due up to four times monthly | Accelerated threshold 2 | $100,000 and over | Four periods a month, each due on the third working day after it ends |
A due date that falls on a weekend or a federal holiday moves to the next business day.
In a US company the Deposit schedule list offers: deposits due the 15th of the following month (monthly), deposits due Wednesday or Friday depending on the payday (semiweekly), the next-day rule for any day accumulating $100,000 or more, the quarterly Form 941 return, and FUTA reported annually on Form 940.
Save the employer account
- Enter the three fields.
- Press Save. SeroBooks shows Saved. The remittance schedule is built from this. in green beside the button.
| Message | What it means and what to do |
|---|---|
| Both the program account and the legal name are needed. Every information return is filed against them. | One of the two text fields is empty. Fill it in and save again. |
| Could not read what is on file — saving now would overwrite it blind. Check the connection and reopen this tab. | SeroBooks could not load your current settings when the screen opened. It refuses to save so that it does not replace what is stored with blanks. Check your internet connection, close the tab and open it again. |
| What is on file could not be read, so saving would overwrite it blind. Reopen this tab and try again. | The same situation, shown when you press Save. |
When the screen opens it reads what is already saved, so re-saving after fixing a typo in the legal name keeps your existing remitter type.
Statutory holidays
The second card, Statutory holidays, shows the holiday calendar SeroBooks uses for a province when it calculates statutory holiday pay inside a pay run. The lists genuinely differ: for example, Ontario pays Boxing Day and not Remembrance Day, and Alberta the reverse. An employer with staff in two provinces gets two different answers.
- Type the two-letter province code in Province (for example
BC,ON,AB,QC). - Press Show the calendar, or press Enter in the field.
- SeroBooks lists each holiday for the current year with its date and name.
If a province's calendar is not loaded, SeroBooks says No calendar is loaded for that province. It is not borrowed from another one — a wrong holiday is a wrong day of pay.
You do not enter holidays here. The calendar is shown so you can check a holiday pay figure that surprises you.
What is set elsewhere
The third card, What is set elsewhere, points to the payroll settings that live on other screens:
- A social insurance number and bank details are entered on each employee, stored encrypted, and shown masked. See Employee Centre.
- WCB and EHT rates are per province and are set on Employees ▸ Employer Levies. See Employer Levies.
- The five accounts payroll posts to are mapped under Company ▸ Accounting Setup, where SeroBooks can fill them all in one step. See Accounting Setup.
The rules that turn time-clock punches into paid hours (rounding, meal breaks, longest shift, overnight shifts) are on the Timesheets screen under Clock rules. See Timesheets.
The payroll accounts
A pay run cannot be posted until these five accounts are mapped in Accounting Setup. SeroBooks suggests these names and reuses an account you already have with the same name:
| Account role | Suggested account | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Wages and salaries — the gross, before deductions | Wages and Salaries | Expense |
| Employer payroll contributions — the cost on top of the wage | Employer Payroll Contributions | Expense |
| Net pay owed to employees until it is paid out | Payroll Clearing | Liability |
| Payroll amounts owed to the federal authority | Payroll Remittances Payable (CRA) | Liability |
| Payroll amounts owed to the province or state | Payroll Remittances Payable (Provincial) | Liability |
Outside Quebec the provincial account normally stays at zero, because CRA collects provincial income tax on the same remittance as federal tax. Quebec employers remit Quebec income tax, QPP and QPIP to Revenu Québec, and that is what the provincial account is for.
Permissions
Saving the employer account needs the Edit Payroll Setup and Clock Rules permission under Payroll ▸ Setup. If your role does not have it, SeroBooks asks someone whose role does to approve the change. See Roles and permissions explained.
Common problems
- The Remitter type list is empty. The list comes from SeroBooks when the screen loads. Check your connection and reopen the screen.
- The Remittances screen shows the wrong due dates. Check the remitter type here. An accelerated remitter set as Regular is shown due dates about three weeks later than CRA expects.
- Filing the year-end return says the program account is missing or malformed. Enter the full 15-character account, including the RP program identifier and reference number.