How to Choose the Right Pay Period Length for Your Business

Written By: Mark Fairlie
Last Updated October 26, 2026

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Buddy Punch stories, curious ideas, and the occasional unexpected read.

A pay period is the set length of time that an employee needs to work before they’re paid. The pay period determines how often you need to verify hours, calculate pay, and run payroll.

Among Buddy Punch users, 43% pay their employees biweekly — the most common pay period for these companies. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best choice for you.

Below, find out what the four main pay periods are, the pros and cons of each, and how to choose the right schedule for your business.

What is the most commonly used pay period?

Your ideal pay period will depend on the specific conditions of your business. But looking at how other businesses manage theirs can give you a useful starting point. 

Here’s how Buddy Punch customers split their pay periods among the four most common choices.

Looking at the pay period lengths for all companies that use Buddy Punch, 43% use a biweekly (every other week) pay schedule, 37.8% use a weekly pay schedule, 13% use a semimonthly (twice per month) pay schedule, and 6.2% use a monthly pay schedule.

Biweekly comes out on top, but weekly’s not far behind.

What’s the difference between a pay period and payday?

When you run payroll, you need to keep track of the pay period, processing deadline, and payday. 

• The pay period covers the dates of work you’re paying employees for.
• The payroll processing deadline is the date by which you need to submit payroll.
• Payday is the date employees receive their wages.

Let’s say your pay period runs from the 1st to the 14th of the month and payday is the 18th. Now work backwards from payday using the processing time required by your payroll provider. If it needs three days to process payroll, your processing deadline would be the 15th. 

The 4 most common pay periods

Most companies pay employees weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, or monthly. While the first and last are straightforward, biweekly and semimonthly work differently even though they sound similar.

Biweekly means every two weeks on a repeating cycle. Employees are usually paid twice a month, but may be paid three times in some months — for example, if they’re paid  on the 1st, they’d be paid again on the 15th and 29th. Semimonthly means employees are paid on two scheduled dates each month.

So your pay period schedule affects how many paydays there are each year.

Weekly pay periods

The weekly pay period type consists of 52 one-week pay periods, although some years can have 53. Employees receive their wages every week, so there’s less time between paydays than with biweekly, semimonthly, or monthly pay. This gives them access to each week’s wages sooner, which may make it easier for them to meet daily expenses. 

Advantages

• Fewer hours to check: With only one week’s hours, overtime, leave, and other pay details to cover, there’s less information to review each pay run.
• Overtime management: Pay periods and overtime workweeks running to the same schedule makes it easier to check regular and overtime hours together for each week.
• Faster corrections: If there’s a mistake, another regular payroll run comes around the following week, so you can correct it soon.

Disadvantages

• Most payroll work: You have to collect, check, approve, and submit payroll 52 times a year.
• Higher processing costs: If your payroll provider charges for each payroll run, processing payroll weekly can cost more over the year. The actual cost depends on how the provider structures its pricing.
• More complex accounting: If a weekly pay period crosses into a new month, you may need to split the payroll costs between both months.

Biweekly pay period

A biweekly pay period consists of 26 pay periods in a year. A biweekly pay period always begins and ends on a fixed day of the week. For example, if the pay period starts on a Monday, it will end on the Sunday 14 days later.

Advantages

• Fewer pay runs: 26 runs a year means half as many payroll cycles to check, approve, and submit as weekly pay.
• Keeps whole workweeks together: Two complete workweeks can go into the same payroll run, so neither workweek has to be split between runs.

Disadvantages

• Cash flow planning: Some months in the year will contain three paydays, so you need enough working capital.
• More bookkeeping: Often, one pay period will start in one month and end in the next, making accounting harder.
• Deduction planning: Let’s say you take a $200 monthly insurance deduction as $100 for each of two paychecks. In months with three paydays, you need to make sure you don’t take a third $100 out.

Semi-monthly pay period

A semi-monthly pay period has 24 pay periods in a year. Every month will always have exactly two pay periods. In most cases, the first pay period will run from the 1st to the 15th and the second from the 16th to the last day of the month.

Unlike biweekly pay, semimonthly periods follow the calendar rather than a repeating 14-day cycle. This means the start and end dates can fall on different days of the week from one month to the next.

Advantages

• Two pay runs every month: You always have the same number of regular payrolls to plan for in the monthly budget.
• Easier monthly deductions: If an employee pays $60 a month in union dues, you can take $30 from each of the two paychecks, as you can with many fixed monthly deductions.
• Simpler accounting: Keep work in the same calendar month with a pay period setup like 1st to the 15th and 16th to month end.

Disadvantages

• Harder overtime checks: Semimonthly periods can end midweek, so you may have to track one overtime workweek across two pay periods.
• Uneven total wage bills: Staff may work more during one half of the month because of how work is spread, so what you need for payroll will vary from one run to the next. However, this usually doesn’t affect employees on a fixed salary, because their annual salary is split into 24 equal payments.
• Different paydays: The 15th or last day of the month can fall on a weekend or public holiday, so payroll deadlines may need to be adjusted.

Monthly pay period

A monthly pay period means you pay employees once a month, giving you 12 pay runs a year.

That cuts down how often you have to prepare payroll and can reduce costs if your provider charges per run. But for staff, this means longer gaps between paydays.

Advantages

• Fewest payroll runs: You only have 12 regular runs a year to check, approve, and submit.
• Month-end accounting tie-in: If you already do your bookkeeping once a month, you can do payroll at the same time so you’re fully caught up with finances.

Disadvantages

• Biggest single payroll bill: You need enough cash available to cover a full month of wages on one payday.
• Extra runs: If you underpay a member of staff, the next regular payday may be almost a month away. Depending on the laws that apply, you may need to arrange an off-cycle run.
• Different schedules for different workers: State law may allow you to pay some employees monthly, but need you to pay others more often. That can require you to run multiple payroll schedules in parallel. 

What type of pay period should I use?

Every business is different, which means there’s no one pay period that’s suitable for everyone. Here’s how you can decide what works best for your company.

1. Check which pay periods are legally allowed

Start with understanding the laws of the states you operate in. Some let you choose between weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, or monthly pay, while others require you to pay certain types of workers more often. Adham Abadier, CPA and Founder of Catalyst CPA Corporation, advises:

“Check minimum pay frequency, the deadline between the end of a pay period and payday, advance notice rules, overtime timing, final pay rules, and any collective bargaining or employment terms.”

The table below shows how pay frequency and payday rules can vary between states.

These are just examples. Pay rules vary by state and worker type, so check your state labor agency before choosing or changing a pay schedule. Get a broader view across all states at the DOL website.

While these rules cover when you pay people, different laws affect how you work out overtime. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, you work out overtime for covered nonexempt employees by workweek, not pay period. Being paid a fixed salary also doesn’t automatically make an employee exempt from overtime.

For example, if someone works 45 hours in the first week of a biweekly pay period and 35 in the second, you can’t average the two weeks out at 40 hours each. They still have five hours of overtime from the first week.

2. Check if your cash flow can support the paydays

Paying staff more often spreads your wage bill out into smaller payments. Leave longer between each payday, and there are fewer wage bills, but each one is bigger.

Choose the option that best fits how money comes into and out of your business.

On a calendar, mark out your proposed paydays, days when you have to meet other bills, and days when you expect to get cash in from customers.

If some paydays fall in periods when you’ve got to settle larger bills or before money comes into your account, see if another pay schedule would spread those payments out better.

3. Compare the full cost of each schedule

Some payroll providers, like Buddy Punch, offer unlimited payroll runs, while others charge you each time you process one, even for mini-corrective runs when someone was underpaid or a mistake needs fixing. More frequent pay runs often mean paying those charges more often over the year.

But provider fees are only one part. To know the full cost of your pay schedules, add the cost equivalent of the time your team spends on each run, including collecting timecards, checking hours, fixing mistakes, approving pay, reconciling deductions, and updating accounts.

4. Ask employees about their preferences

Once you’ve ruled out any options that don’t work for your business, get your employees’ feedback on which of the remaining schedules they prefer. 

Give employees the proposed payday dates and ask whether the gaps between them would make it harder to meet rent, childcare, loan repayments, or other regular bills. If you’re considering a change in your current pay schedule, show them the proposed dates alongside their current paydays. 

Moving from weekly or biweekly to monthly, for example, could really throw off their household budgeting.

Devin Hornick, co-founder and partner at KORE1, says employers often don’t appreciate how much upheaval a change like this can cause:

“Deciding to make a change can be seen at the top as an easy administrative choice, while it can impose difficulties on employees who have come to depend on a set schedule for their outflows and inflows of money.”

You may not be able to give everyone their first choice, but their feedback can help you avoid an option that creates unnecessary problems.

5. Map out the full payroll schedule

Before you settle on a new schedule, map out how your preferred option would work over the next 12 months.

For each pay period, mark:

• When the pay period ends
• An internal deadline for managers to approve hours and corrections
• Your payroll processing deadline
• Payday 

Look for paydays or deadlines that fall around weekends, public holidays, year end, and any particularly busy periods. Managers may have less time to approve payroll during these periods. 

Check for any pay period that crosses month-end or year-end too, as this can affect your accounting. Managers may need to approve payroll earlier, and you may need to submit it to your provider sooner.

Contributors

• Adham Abadier, Founder and Certified Public Accountant, Catalyst CPA Corporation
• Devin Hornick, Co-Founder and Partner, KORE1

About the Author

Mark Fairlie is a business and workforce operations writer with firsthand experience building and scaling a company to 60+ employees before a successful exit. With over a decade of writing for SMB and SaaS audiences, he covers topics including payroll, time and attendance systems, and team productivity. Mark combines practical leadership experience with commercial insight to help businesses navigate the realities of managing and growing teams.