Sense with Cents - Payroll Tips and Q&A by Dennis Pearson

Have a payroll question? Ask Dennis

Payroll isn't just numbers on a check stub. It's the rules behind those numbers — the withholding calculations, the state-by-state differences, the deadlines that cost real money when you miss them.

I'm Dennis Pearson, developer of Medlin Payroll Software. I started as a professional mechanic — that was my trade in my teens and early twenties. I still think like one: figure out what the result needs to be and find the simplest way to get there. That mindset followed me from the shop floor and racetracks to the keyboard.

I learned payroll the hard way — working for small family businesses, then managing my own as a bakery owner. When I partnered with Jerry Medlin to transition Medlin Payroll from DOS to Windows, I took over the development within a year. I wasn't coming in cold. I'd already lived the problems our software needed to solve. For decades now I've been writing the code that turns payroll law into working software — every tax table update, every regulatory change, every edge case that trips people up. When the rules change, I'm the one making sure the math still works.

But the code is only half the education. More than 45,000 paid customers running over 100,000 different businesses have been my other teacher. I've seen what trips people up, what costs them money, and what the ones who get it right do differently. That's not textbook knowledge — it's pattern recognition earned one phone call and one email at a time, from phone support starting in 1984 through today's email-based support.

And we don't just sell the software — we use it. From running a bookkeeping practice in the 80's to handling our own payroll through today, we've sat in the same chair as our customers. When I write about a payroll deadline or a common mistake, it's not hypothetical. We live it too.

That experience taught me something: most payroll issues don't come from bad software. They come from not understanding what the software is doing or why. The sense behind the cents has gotten lost.

I'm also at a point in life where teaching matters more than building. Part of a well thought out succession plan is making sure the knowledge doesn't walk out the door with me. The last piece of my own plan is to share the things which others have not yet learned. My "what if I am gone tomorrow." This blog is one piece of that — getting what I've learned down in a form that outlasts any one person.

Clear, practical explanations of payroll rules, common mistakes, and the kind of real-world insight you only get from years inside the machinery. No jargon for jargon's sake. No compliance-speak. Plain old, hopefully common sense, discussion between people who deal with payroll.