GPI 225 – Always pay your employees on time without exception.

Paying your employees comes before paying any bills including those of the owner.  Employee payroll always gets paid first and on time.  Payroll trumps all other bills.  Even if the lights are turned off, employees will forgive you if they are paid first.  No matter what you have to do, pay your employees on time because there is no worse insult to your employees than not to pay them.

Never miss a payroll.  You cannot afford the anger that stems from every employee in the company not getting paid on a Friday afternoon.  You may get them paid within a day or two after that but this mistake will cost tremendous loss of respect within your firm for years.  They will never ever forget this one mistake so do not make it.

Train and invest in a payroll backup person.  This is one where you seriously need a solid backup and you must be willing to invest in several months of training, especially in a firm where payroll is complicated and frequently paid.  Once the backup is trained, force them to do payroll once per quarter to update them alongside your regular person in the job.