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Intro to Business • HR: Payroll Fundamentals (Udemy.com)

Understand the Basics of Processing Employee Payroll

Created by: Ron Trucks

Last updated September 2023

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What you will learn

  • Master the basic information required for payroll process
  • Understand what is required for an employee to be legally hired and paid for their work
  • Learn the process for calculating gross pay when using hourly wages, salary, commissions, and more
  • Grasp the difference between Mandatory and Voluntary deductions from an employee's paycheck
  • Work through the entire process of calculating earnings, deductions, and net pay for employees

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Course Description

From how to calculate earnings to determining which taxes apply and how to file them, processing payroll can be kind of confusing.

In this course, we use everyday, easy-to-understand language to explain the fundamentals every person responsible for getting payroll processed should understand - whether you're the person actually doing, a small business owner overseeing someone else, or a student learning the activity.

While this course uses United States information as examples, the information and principles included apply to almost every country in the world.

Successful students will not only grasp how each of the different aspects of payroll process work, they will understand how (and when) those pieces come together resulting in employees receiving actual paychecks.

Throughout the entire course, quizzes and actual working "homework assignments" are used to reinforce the lessons as well as help the student understand what they are grasping or needing to restudy.

Some of the many areas covered in the course include:

  • Starting off, students learn the basic legal requirements that must be met before employees start receiving payroll, along with expectations employers should keep in mind when they work with their employees.

  • Next, the course delves into how gross pay is determined, whether it's hourly wages, annual salary, tips, commissions, bonuses, incentives or more.  Also, the definition and expectations of Independent Contractors is covered, along with tax forms for these services.

  • How often are employees paid and how that affects many different steps of the entire operation.

  • Which payroll deductions are Mandatory according to government, versus which ones are Voluntary.  How are all those different deductions calculated, collected, matched, and paid.

  • Several different tax form types are required to successfully process payroll each pay period and every year.

MANY other lessons are included such as:

  • What is Unemployment Insurance and is it paid by the employee or employer?

  • Court-ordered Garnishments legally require an employer to withhold an employee's pay and turn it over to someone else.  Understand how and why.

  • How does an employer process and prepare an employee's final paycheck.

  • Which records need to be kept and for how long.

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Instructor Details

Ron Trucks

For over 30 years, I’ve worked with businesses of every size—from mom-and-pop shops to billion-dollar financial firms—helping them build stronger operations, better teams, and smarter strategies.

Along the way, I’ve spent more than 20 years teaching business management at the college level, working with students who wanted not just theory, but real-world skills they could use.

My approach is simple:
Make the complicated understandable - and the intimidating activities doable.

Here on Udemy, I've helped over 50,000 students strengthen their business knowledge, earning over 8,000 five-star reviews by keeping the focus on practical, clear, and real-world learning.

Whether you’re starting a business, managing a team, or just wanting to understand how businesses work, I’m excited to help you build skills that make a difference.

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Reviews

4.6

2,551 ratings on Udemy

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By Oscar Cisneros Carrasco on 5/13/2026

Great content! Clear communication style. My personal preference would be to get to the point a little faster. Feels like a tad too much "intro" info at the beginning of each video. This is a personal preference, others may find the intros on each video helpful.

By Lisa Hultgren on 2/1/2026

This course was great. Covered the basics and I loved that there are resources and printables available. That said, some of the practice sheets and answer sheets do not match, or have incomplete information. Still one of the better courses I have taken. Would recommend.

By Dawn J Ryman on 2/4/2025

I really enjoyed this short course. As I've applied for a job that prefers some payroll experience I thought this course would help me get a leg up as it's the one aspect of the job functions I don't have the most experience in. The instructor is clear and easy to understand. I will definitely look up other courses by this company.

By Samuel Brown on 8/21/2024

This course was very organized and straight forward. I'm trying to further my education and knowledge outside of a typical degree and I think Ron as well as bsnsAtlas in general are providing a great service! Well worth it if you're trying to get your feet wet without diving head first into the pool!

By Dawn Broadbent on 3/28/2024

I found out that I love combining payroll activities with my excel skills. I was totally digging the assignments. There was an assignment where the teacher got the answer wrong. In the Q&A, they said it was going to be fixed but almost a year after the comment, it hasn't been fixed yet. There was one assignment where I got almost every question wrong so I consulted the answer sheet but it doesn't show the math of how they got the answers so that is still unresolved for me.

By Adriana Leon on 1/9/2024

I really liked the instructor introduction and the summary of what I'm going to learn in this course, made me excited to get into the materials! :) I would have loved more detail on State and local taxes, but I get that this course is for fundamentals only, so it's not a big deal.

By Ruby Leigh on 1/1/2024

I really enjoyed this course and it was really really well done, very explanatory and easy to follow, the only thing I would've liked to seen was on the answer sheet for the correct answers to have an explanation or some sort of work so if there's any errors made mathematically or process wise it's visually shown as some of them are multi-step problems, again though, really enjoyed this course and it was really informative and fun!

By Ian Walker on 9/7/2023

A very knowledgable and informative course on Payroll Fundamentals in the USA. However, with regards to the homework assignments, more explanations on how the answers were caculated to the given questions, would be more beneficial, than just simply giving the answers.

By Anonymized User on 3/29/2023

*Course has just been introduce , i am just in the introduction of the course that I have enrolled too * almost half way on the course and I am really learning a lot , this is course is really a great help in understanding Payroll

By Lucas Van Balen on 1/31/2023

This course shows (again) the teacher's experience teaching! good pronunciation (no accent that is hard to understand for non-English speakers), organized and the basic, with a bonus: real world experience in business. All lessons are to the point, the basic with no trimmings and verbal fillings that goes in circles, in other words the explanations are the point. It sure is a great complement to the Bookkeeping series.

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Overall Score : 92 / 100