How Caregiver Payroll Works: Timesheets, Weekly Pay and W-2s

A caregiver hired under California's Self-Determination Program (SDP) is a real caregiver with a real paycheck. Here is how hours turn into pay: who records them, who approves them, what is withheld, when the money arrives and what happens in January.

Your caregivers work for you, not for Sentinel Four. You are the managing employer: you choose who is hired, set the schedule and direct the work. Sentinel Four is the co-employer for payroll, taxes and workers' compensation, so the paperwork is handled and you stay in charge.

The weekly cycle

Sentinel Four runs payroll weekly. The pay period runs Monday through Sunday, and paydays fall on Mondays. That has been the schedule since the pay period that started Monday, December 29, 2025. Before that, pay was semi-monthly; the last semi-monthly period was December 16 to 28, 2025, paid January 8, 2026.

Weekly pay means a caregiver is never far from a payday. It also means the family has a short window to approve hours every week. The full 2026 calendar of pay periods and paydays is in Sentinel Four 2026 updates.

From clock-in to approved timesheet

Every caregiver paid with SDP funds is subject to Electronic Visit Verification (EVV). In practice that means:

1. The caregiver clocks in at the start of the shift and out at the end, using the AxisCare app on their own phone.
2. Those clock records build the timesheet for the week. There is no paper timesheet to fill in after the fact.
3. At the end of the pay period the family reviews the hours and approves them. The family is the supervisor; the Financial Management Service (FMS) is not. Sentinel Four does not approve hours on a family's behalf.
4. Approved hours go to payroll.

If a shift was worked but not clocked, or clocked wrong, the family and the case manager fix it before approval. Clocking in and out: EVV for SDP caregivers covers corrections.

What comes out of the check, and what does not

A caregiver's gross pay is hours times the wage rate on the wage notice. From that gross, the employer withholds:

• federal income tax
• California state income tax
• Social Security
• Medicare

Those amounts are remitted to the tax agencies on the caregiver's behalf. What is left is net pay.

There is a second set of costs the caregiver never sees on the stub, because the employer pays them on top of wages: the employer share of Social Security and Medicare, federal (FUTA) and state (SUTA) unemployment insurance, California's Employment Training Tax (ETT), workers' compensation insurance and paid sick leave. Together these are called employer burden. They come out of the participant's budget, not the caregiver's check. Employer burden explained goes through the numbers.

In the Co-Employer model, Sentinel Four is responsible for those filings and for workers' compensation coverage. In the Sole Employer model the family is the employer of record and we act as payroll agent, handling the timesheets, paychecks, tax filings and employment records. Caregivers and Self-Determination explains the difference from the caregiver's side.

Reading the pay stub

Caregivers are paid by direct deposit or by check. Either way, the pay stub shows the pay period, hours, rate, gross pay, each withholding and net pay.

Since January 1, 2026, caregivers who clock in and out on their own phone also see a separate line for a $2.50 per-pay-period device reimbursement. That is $10.83 a month, or $130 a year. It is non-taxable, it is Sentinel Four's response to California Labor Code §2802 (employers must reimburse necessary business expenses), and it does not change the wage rate. It applies in the Co-Employer and Sole Employer models.

Year end: the W-2

Caregivers are caregivers, not contractors. Each January they receive a W-2 showing the year's wages and withholding, by January 31. Vendors who are paid as businesses get a 1099-NEC where required, not a W-2. Year-end in Self-Determination covers what families should check before December.

When a timesheet is late

If hours are not approved by the cutoff, they are not lost. They are paid in the next weekly cycle once approved. Because the cycle is weekly, the delay is days rather than weeks, but it still matters to a caregiver who counts on Monday. The fix is habit: approve hours on the same day each week.

Other things that stop a check: a caregiver whose background clearance has not come through, hours that exceed what the spending plan and authorization cover, or a wage that does not match the wage notice on file. Each one is a call to the case manager.

Who to call

For anything about a paycheck, the person to call is your Sentinel Four case manager. Not a payroll hotline, not the app vendor. The case manager can see the timesheet, the approval, the wage notice and the budget line, so most questions are answered on the first call. A caregiver can call too; the case manager knows the family and the caregiver.

How Sentinel Four handles this

Every family works with a dedicated case manager, and that person is the one to call about a paycheck. We collect the onboarding documents and wage notice, set the caregiver up in ADP, withhold and remit taxes, and issue W-2s at year end. We do this for 1,200+ caregivers. Payroll runs weekly with paydays every Monday. Caregivers clock in and out in AxisCare, the family approves the hours, and the $2.50 device reimbursement appears as its own non-taxable line on the stub.

The portal shows the family the budget, the balance by category and every payment record, so a question like "how much of the respite line is left after this week's payroll" has an answer at 10 pm without a phone call. The payroll service page lists what is included.