US payroll, inside SeroBooks Pro

Where US payroll lives at Sero

Sero has two payroll offerings, and it is worth being clear about which does what. SeroPayroll is a standalone product for Canadian payroll only. US payroll is built into SeroBooks Pro, the accounting plan that also includes demand forecasting, job costing and the audit trail. If you run a US business, or a Canadian business with US employees, SeroBooks Pro is where your payroll belongs.

SeroBooks Pro is $300 a month in USD, or $3,000 a year, and includes six users and three locations, with a 14-day free trial. Because payroll is part of the plan rather than a per-employee add-on, the price does not climb every time you hire, which makes budgeting simpler for a growing team.

What US payroll covers

Each pay run calculates federal and state income tax withholding for your employees, alongside earnings, deductions and net pay. Pay runs follow the same approve-then-post discipline as the rest of SeroBooks, and a posted run reaches the general ledger exactly once, so wages, withholdings and payroll liabilities are always reflected in the books without a separate journal entry.

At year-end, SeroBooks produces W-2 data as EFW2 files for submission to the Social Security Administration, and 1099-NEC slips for independent contractors. The 1099-NEC support is slips only, so plan to submit those through your usual filing route. Your accountant can review everything with a free practice seat before anything is filed.

• Federal income tax withholding
• State income tax withholding
• W-2 EFW2 files for the SSA
• 1099-NEC contractor slips

Payroll in the same ledger

Running payroll inside the accounting system removes the monthly journal entry from an outside payroll provider and the reconciliation that inevitably follows. Wages hit the right expense accounts, withholdings and liabilities sit on the balance sheet until they are paid, and job costing on SeroBooks Pro can allocate labour to projects so you see the true cost of each job.

Roles and permissions, enforced on the server across 207 permission nodes, let you keep payroll details visible only to the people who need them. A bookkeeper can reconcile the payroll bank account without seeing individual salaries, and the append-only audit trail on Pro records every change to employee records and pay runs.

Cross-border businesses

SeroBooks Pro payroll covers Canada and the United States in one plan. A Canadian company with a US sales team, or a US company with Canadian staff, can run both payrolls against one ledger, producing Canadian slips such as T4 and ROE alongside US W-2s. There is no need for two payroll providers and two sets of journal entries every pay period.

Businesses that only need Canadian payroll, and keep their books elsewhere, can use SeroPayroll on its own from $25 a month instead. If you later move your accounting into SeroBooks, the same login works across both products, so switching does not mean starting again with a different vendor or relearning a new system.