Flexi Announces its Payroll and HR Solution

Partnership with Optimum Solutions provides payroll, HR and time & attendance to Flexi’s customers.

NAPLES, Fla./March 25, 2010— Flexi Software, a provider of best-of-breed, back office accounting software solutions, targeted to banking, insurance and financial service industries, announced today its strategic partnership with Optimum Solutions, a provider of payroll, human resources, and time & attendance software.

The partnership between Optimum Solutions and Flexi Software will benefit both companies by providing their clients with the best-of-breed accounting and payroll, human resources, and time & attendance solutions, enabling them to operate their businesses more efficiently and cost effectively.

“Our vision is to offer our customers complimentary solutions that help them streamline their business processes and make them more efficient. The Optimum Solutions will offer our customers an easy to use payroll, human resource and time & attendance solution,” said Stefan R. Bothe, CEO of Flexi Software.

“Optimum Solutions is excited about the partnership with Flexi Software. Interfacing Optimum’s .NET/SQL HRIS software solution with Flexi’s back office accounting software will provide both existing and prospective clients with a straight forward, easy to use system,” stated Scott Henderson, Director of Sales at Optimum Solutions.

About Optimum Solutions

Optimum Solutions, Inc. is a software development company providing payroll, human resources, and time & attendance software for both the Microsoft Windows and IBM System i platforms. Optimum Solutions’ mission is to help businesses pay and manage their personnel by providing reliable and fairly priced state-of-the-art HRIS software. All of Optimum’s software applications share one employee master file database to provide a seamless integrated system. For more information call (800)489-6026,email sales@optimum-solutions.com or visit www.optimum-solutions.com.

About Flexi

Founded in 1991, Flexi develops, markets, and supports a suite of back-office accounting software solutions that help enterprises within the Banking, Insurance, and Financial Services industries streamline their accounting processes. Flexi’s system integrates easily with other systems, and provides powerful and flexible accounting capabilities. The fully integrated suite includes modules for General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Fixed Assets, Purchasing, and Projects. For information, visit www.flexi.com.

The Making Work Pay provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provides a refundable tax credit of up to $400 for working individuals and up to $800 for married taxpayers filing joint returns. The credit is being distributed through reduced withholding. The federal tax tables were reduced for single income tax filers making under $75,000 and joint filers making under $150,000.

The purpose of the IRS Withholding Calculator application is to help employees to ensure that they do not have too much or too little income tax withheld from their pay. It is not a replacement for Form W-4, but most people will find it more accurate and easier to use than the worksheets that accompany Form W-4.

You should use the withholding calculator to ensure that the reduced withholding will not result in under withholding (possibly causing you to owe taxes next year) if:

• You are an employee with two concurrent jobs,
• You and your spouse both work, or
• You can be claimed as a dependent (since you are not eligible for the MWP Credit).

You may use the results of this program to help you complete a new Form W-4, which you will submit to your Payroll department.

So, you’ve heard that there have been changes to your 941 form, but just what are those changes exactly? Well, here’s a brief rundown.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Recovery Act, P.L. 111-5) offers a 65% COBRA premium subsidy for up to 9 months to workers who were terminated involuntarily between September 10, 2008, and December 31, 2009. This range was extended in February, 2010, and now applies to any employee terminated before March 1, 2010. Basically, the Act says that if a worker pays at least 35% of the COBRA premium, he or she must be treated as though the full premium cost was paid for the Group Health Plan continuation. So, the employer, or individual providing the COBRA coverage, ends up paying the difference in the COBRA Premium on behalf of the ex-employee. The Recovery Act then provides a way for the employer, or the entity to whom COBRA premiums are payable, to be reimbursed those premium payments made on the ex-employee’s behalf. The employer may be reimbursed the difference between the full premium amount and the amount paid by the worker.

To do this, the employer is allowed to take enter a refundable credit on the Form 941 to reduce their quarterly unemployment tax liability, or apply directly to the IRS to receive the money back.

This is where the changes on the Form 941 come into play. The IRS added lines 12a and 12b to the form to allow employers to report those COBRA reimbursements to which they are entitled.

• Line 12a – COBRA premium assistance payments – The employer can enter only those COBRA premium amounts paid on the worker’s behalf. This is only the amount up to 65% of the total premium amount that was paid by the employer. No amounts paid by the employee should be entered here.
• Line 12b – Number of individuals provided COBRA premium assistance reported on line 12a – This line is pretty self-explanatory. This is the number of people who paid at least 35% of their premium and were given assistance for the rest.

Here is a link to the new 941 form for 2010.
Here is a link for instructions for filling out the Form 941.

If your company administers a federal COBRA subsidy program, the IRS has announced a February 17 deadline for notifying COBRA assistance-eligible employees/dependents that the subsidy program has been extended. In addition to the extension, there are also new regulations:

Employees who are involuntarily terminated from employment between September 1, 2008 and February 28, 2010 due to continuing poor economic conditions may be eligible for a 65% subsidy toward the cost of COBRA premiums. This will be in effect for a period of up to 15 months following termination.

Employees whose 9 months of COBRA subsidy payments already expired will be covered under the new law with provision for an extra period so that they may make retroactive payments for their remaining 35% share of COBRA premiums.

As of February 1st employers must post a summary of the previous year totals of job-related injuries and illnesses. Only the summary (OSHA Form 300A) is required. Employers should list the total number of incidents occurring in 2009 that were logged on the 300 form. Employers must also post the annual average number of employees and total hours worked during the year (to assist in calculating incidence rates).

The form is to be posted in an area easily accessible to all employees. The report must also be available to employees who move from worksite to worksite (ie; construction workers, and employees who don’t report to a fixed establishment regularly).

Employers with ten or less employees in certain industries may be exempt from OSHA injury and illness recordkeeping and postings. A complete list of exempt industries is posted on OSHA’s website.

On December 19, President Obama signed into law the Department of Defense (DOD) Appropriations Act, 2010, extending the COBRA premium subsidy that was enacted under ARRA through February 28, 2010. With this new act, employer will have to notify their COBRA employees and any newly involuntary terminated employees of this extension and could have to pay the 65% subsidy retro for some employees.

For details on this extension and the new provisions go to the IRS website at http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=204505,00.html.

For the calendar years 2009 and 2009 the IRS is allowing the masking of a Payee’s TIN, SSN, and IRS ITIN for 1099 paper filers. This is a pilot program and the notice of this program can be located at www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-09-93.pdf. The allows the filer to print only the last 4 digits of the payee number.

The purpose behind masking the Payee number is to help prevent identity theft. This program does not apply to electronic filers due to the fact, a file being transmitted will be encrypted.

To use this pilot program of masking the payee number the following requirements must be met:

• The number used on the 1099 must be either a SSN, IRS ITIN or IRS adoption TIN number. All of these are 9 digit numbers in the 000-00-0000 format
• The format on the 1099 should be 5 *’s or 5 x’ and then the last four digits. Example ***.**.1234 or XXX.XX.1234
• This only applies to the Form 1098 series, Form 1099 series or Form 5498 series for calendar year 2009 or 2010

Beginning in 2010 military spouses may be allowed an exemption from the New York State personal income tax withholding under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA). If the spouse is in the state solely to be with a service member to comply with military orders, they will need to complete a Form IT-2104-E, Certificate of Exemption from Withholding.

For employees in California who have spouses in the Military may be able to exclude wages from their personal income tax if the spouse is not a resident of the jurisdiction where the income is earned. This became effective in 2009 when the Military Spouses Residency Relief Act was signed. Employee’s who qualify for this relief will need to submit a new Form DE 4, Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate. The DE 4 has been revised to include this change. It can be found here.

The Form 940 has been released for Tax year 2009 and may be located on the IRS website.