SD–HIRE–01 · United States · federal baseline
28-page pack · 14 sections · plus fill-in checklist, how-to guide and sources · 46 pages across 4 files
The offer was made on a Friday, the person starts Monday, and nobody knows which form has to be signed by Wednesday or where it gets filed afterwards.
Tick the box above to continue. The button stays off until you do.
The written procedure for taking on your first employee: the five decisions that have to be made before an offer is made at all, a full offer letter drafted out, Form I-9 handled properly including the three-business-day deadline and the seven errors that come up most, Form W-4 and the first payroll run, state new-hire reporting, the day-one forms, the four-file personnel record structure, the posters that must be up before the person walks in, and every federal retention period stated and cited to the rule it comes from. 248 fill-in blanks across 14 sections. It deliberately reproduces no government form: Form I-9 and Form W-4 carry expiry dates and are revised on the agency's schedule, so a pack that bundled a copy would be selling you a defective form with a delay on it. Every official form is named with the page to download it from on the day you need it.
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What lands in your inbox
You fill in the document itself and hand it on. The checklist is there so you do not leave a blank in it. Everything else is reference. Every file is a PDF you can type into on screen, or print and write on, so you need nothing else to use it.
The rest of the set
Businesses like yours usually start with these. It is where a trade starts, not a complete legal inventory of everything it could ever be asked for — no list on any website is that. Every line below says where it came from.
Showing what an any business hiring its first employee is asked to carry. It is the only trade on our list that needs this document.
Any business hiring its first employeeFive items on the list, one of them a multi-file kit rather than a single document. You are looking at one of them. We sell three of the other four; one we do not have yet.
OURSNot a rule we can point at — this is what the trade gets asked for.
OURSNot a rule we can point at — this is what the trade gets asked for.
OURSNot a rule we can point at — this is what the trade gets asked for.
Named because leaving them out would make the list look complete when it is not. Tell us which one you need and it goes on the build queue with your trade attached.
REGA regulator asks for this.
29 CFR part 1904
Your state can add to this. We have written down one place where this trade’s set differs from one state to the next. What we sell is written to the federal baseline, and a state that runs its own programme can ask for more than the federal rule does.
Print this checklistInside the file
01The pack itself, 14 sections with 248 fill-in blanks, as a PDF you can type into
02The five decisions before the offer: employee or contractor, exempt or non-exempt, what the job pays and how, the start date, and who owns the first day
03A full offer letter drafted out, plus the four things Section 4.3 deliberately writes it not to do so it does not become an employment contract
04Form I-9 worked through: who completes which section, the three-business-day deadline in practice, the seven errors that come up most, how to correct one, and reverification on rehire and name change
05Form W-4 and payroll: the dates people miss, the Social Security number question, state withholding, and what actually comes out of a paycheque and who sends it where
06State new-hire reporting, and Section 13's method for getting your own state's deadline, which this pack will not invent
07The day-one forms: emergency contact, direct deposit authorisation, the acknowledgements, and the first-day conversation in the order that works
08The four-file personnel record structure, what the wage-and-hour file must contain, and who may see which file
09Every federal retention period stated and cited, with the I-9 calculation worked through line by line
010Four checklists: before the first day, on the first day, within the first week, and by thirty days
011Ten things that go wrong in the first month, each with what to do about it
Plain-English Monday actions
Official-source registry
These are the real rules this plan is built on. Every citation was read against the published text on the date shown above, and each link goes to the official source, not to a summary.
Exclusions
Before you buy
When a rule changes, or an objection to this set keeps coming up, we rewrite it and the new version lands in your account. You do not pay again. That applies to everyone who buys, member or not, for as long as we sell this document.
The files are yours the moment payment clears, so we do not give money back just because you no longer want them. You agree to that in the box above the button before you pay, not afterwards in small print.
If a file is the wrong one, will not open, is missing pages, or does not match what this page says, that is on us and we correct it at no cost, member or not. A version fitted to your business is either included with membership or $49 on its own. That promise is the reason the no-refund rule is fair.
Want this set edited to match how your business actually works? A non-member buys one tailored edit for $49, no membership needed, and it comes back within 2 business days. A Simply Current membership is $30/month and every fitted edit is included — it wins on the second edit.
One more time, plainly: this is United States · federal baseline. A state or a city can be stricter than the federal floor, so check your own before you file or submit anything built from it. Anything we add for your state ships as a free update.
