Oregon's Minimum Wage Just Went Up. Here's Your 5-Step Payroll Checklist.
- risingphoenixbs
- Jul 7
- 4 min read
You saw the notice about Oregon's minimum wage going up, thought “I’ll deal with that later,” and then later became today. That’s fine — you’re not behind, you’re just looking at it now.
Every July 1st, Oregon’s minimum wage moves — and every year it seems to catch someone mid-pay-period. This year’s increase is small, just 50 cents an hour, which makes it easy to shrug off and forget about until it’s a problem. But small changes still touch your whole payroll: your pay rates, your break room poster, maybe your budget for the rest of the year. And if you’re running a salon, a small shop, or a handful of hourly staff, fifty cents a head adds up faster than it sounds like it should once you multiply it across a full pay period.
If you run payroll yourself, or someone else handles it and you just sign off on it, here’s the checklist I walk my own payroll clients through every time the rate changes — plus one more date this month you’ll want on your radar. Ten minutes now saves you a much bigger cleanup later, and none of these steps require anything fancier than your payroll system and a few minutes of focus.
If you’re reading this and haven’t touched a thing yet, you’re not late. Most of this just needs to be handled before your next pay run, not the literal first of the month.
Step 1 · Confirm your zone and your new rate
Oregon doesn’t have one minimum wage — it has three, based on where your employees actually work. As of July 1st, it’s $16.80 an hour in the Portland metro area, $15.55 in the standard area that covers most of the state, and $14.55 in nonurban counties. If you’ve got people working across more than one zone — a stylist who books chairs in two counties, a crew that moves between job sites — each location gets its own rate. BOLI’s website has the zone map if you’re not sure which one you’re in. Look it up before you touch a single paycheck.
Step 2 · Update your payroll before your next run
Once you know your rate, get it into whatever holds your numbers — QuickBooks Payroll, a spreadsheet, whatever you’re using. Do it before you process your next payroll, not after. A rate that’s fifty cents off doesn’t sound like much, until it’s been wrong for three pay periods and now you’re doing back-pay math nobody asked for. If you have hourly staff, this is also a good moment to let them know their new rate in writing, even just a quick text or note — it heads off any confusion when the paycheck looks different. And if anyone’s rate was set as a flat number rather than tied to Oregon’s minimum, double check it didn’t quietly fall behind — that’s one of the more common gaps I find when I open up a new client’s payroll for the first time.
Step 3 · Swap the poster
Oregon requires an updated minimum wage notice posted somewhere employees can actually see it — break room, office wall, wherever the old one’s hanging. BOLI publishes the new version on their site every year and it’s a free download. Five minutes, done, one less thing sitting in the back of your mind waiting to be noticed by the wrong person at the wrong time.
Step 4 · Check who else it touches
The obvious group is anyone earning exactly minimum wage. But take a second look at everyone earning close to it too. If your newest hire jumps to $15.55 and the person who’s been with you two years is still sitting at $15.75, that gap just got uncomfortably small. That’s a conversation worth having on your terms, while you still have time to think it through, not after someone brings it up first. You don’t have to solve it today — just know it’s there so it doesn’t turn into a bigger morale problem down the road.
Step 5 · Mark July 31st on your calendar
While you’re already in your payroll numbers, this is a good moment to flag your second-quarter payroll tax report — Form OQ — due July 31st. It covers April through June, and it’s easy to lose track of mid-summer when everything else is competing for your attention. Handle it now, while the wage update has you in there anyway, and it’s off your plate for another three months.
“I used to dread every rate change because I was never sure I’d actually caught everything it touched. Now I forward Tammy the notice and it’s just handled. I don’t think about it again until she tells me it’s done.” — A Rising Phoenix Client
None of this is complicated once someone walks you through it — the hard part is just remembering it’s happening at all, on top of everything else you’re already running. Rate changes, poster updates, quarterly filings — they’re all small on their own, but they pile up fast when you’re also the one running the business, answering the phones, and keeping everything else together. You shouldn’t have to be the one tracking every deadline the state hands you.
If you’d rather hand payroll off completely, or just want someone keeping an eye on dates like this one so you don’t have to, that’s exactly what I do.
— Tammy
Rising Phoenix Business Solutions · Bookkeeping for Oregon small business owners
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