Payroll Specialist

Ramirez Hospitality Group•Highlands Ranch, CO

13d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Payroll Specialist will own the promise of ensuring employees are paid correctly and on time for six restaurants and one corporate office. This is a specialist role focused on payroll processing, running the full weekly cycle from timekeeping review through funding, reporting, and reconciliation. The role also supports the People team in areas where payroll and HR overlap, sitting at the intersection of People, Finance, and the restaurants. The Payroll Specialist will work closely with the Director of People, the Director of Finance, the VP of Finance, and all six General Managers.

Requirements

Minimum 2 years of hands-on payroll processing experience, having owned a cycle end-to-end.
Toast Payroll and Toast POS experience required.
Restaurant industry experience.
Current working knowledge of labor law as it applies to payroll at both the federal and Colorado level.
Ability to document processes and build procedures.
Ability to raise issues directly and kindly to the right person early.
Discretion in handling confidential information.

Nice To Haves

Bilingual English/Spanish.
Restaurant365 (R365) experience, particularly payroll exports and the payroll to accounting handoff.
Experience building payroll journal entry mappings or supporting period close.
Multi-entity payroll experience across separate EINs.
Benefits administration or deduction auditing exposure.

Responsibilities

Full processing for six restaurant locations and the corporate office in Toast Payroll, including timekeeping review, tips, adjustments, retro pay, terminations, funding, and post-processing verification.
Ensure payroll is processed on time, every week, with no exceptions and no surprises.
Review and verify timekeeping data, catch misclassified punches, duplicated adjustments, rate changes without paperwork, and discrepancies before downstream processing.
Track every addition and edit to payroll on a weekly basis, maintaining a log of changes, requesters, entry times, and reasons.
Produce clean weekly summary reporting for Finance and Ownership that is accurate, consistent, and delivered on schedule.
Identify issues that trace back to a restaurant and escalate them to the Director of People with necessary detail and documentation for correction at the store level.
Maintain working knowledge of current federal and Colorado wage and hour law as it applies to payroll, including overtime, tip credit and tip pooling mechanics, minimum wage rules, meal and rest period treatment, final pay requirements, and recordkeeping.
Identify potential labor compliance issues within payroll data.
Recognize when a schedule or punch pattern does not make sense in the context of restaurant operations, such as a salaried manager coded hourly or overtime without a clear reason.
Build and maintain written standard operating procedures (SOPs) for payroll processes.
Support the People Team with onboarding paperwork, benefits deduction accuracy, employment verifications, personnel file integrity, and other HR/payroll intersections as needed.
Treat payroll work as sacred, recognizing that paychecks support families.