In 2019 I incorporated my business and started paying myself a salary as an S-Corp owner. When I sat down to do my taxes in early 2020, I discovered what a significant positive impact that had made on my tax bill — and I was genuinely surprised that more small business owners didn't know about this. It felt like information that should be freely available to anyone running their own company.

I'd actually been building the payroll software since 2017 — what started as an Excel spreadsheet and a SQL database with no UI eventually became something I thought other people could use. I'm a developer, and the tax calculations are all public information, so I figured I can just build this. It turned out to be more complicated than expected, but I was already in deep.

Then the world had other plans. Early 2020 — the beginning of the pandemic. I had a high school-aged son at home, a two-year-old running around, and a baby on the way. I also had some health things to manage that I won't get into here. The payroll app was not the priority. Family was. Staying healthy was.

So I worked on it in the gaps — a couple of hours on the weekend, a late night here and there. Then in early 2026 — seven years after I started — I realized it was ready. I'd written nearly 300,000 lines of code by myself. I know that's not the best metric, and it doesn't account for the dozens of rewrites and refactors along the way. But it's a lot of work, and I'm proud of it.

Now I want to share it — because I think it's the easiest way for a small California employer to handle their own payroll while staying in total control of the process. It's kind of fun in a twisted business-owner sort of way. And it doesn't hurt that I can offer it for less than the competition.

I'm John Reid — a self-taught C# developer who's been writing code since 1994 and running my own businesses for most of my adult life. I've operated sole proprietorships, a general partnership, and several corporations. My current software consultancy has been active since 2014, doing work for state agencies in California.

I started John on Business because I've spent 30 years figuring out how to start and run small companies — and I kept getting asked the same questions by friends and colleagues. I realized I could only help so many people one-on-one, so I started writing it down.

Most importantly, I'm a husband and father. I have five kids — three sons and two daughters, and a wonderful wife who's mom to the two girls and stepmom to the three boys. They're why I care about the financial decisions I write about and build software around. The S-Corp election, getting serious about payroll, understanding what I was actually keeping versus paying in taxes — those weren't abstract exercises. They had real consequences for my family. I want that clarity for yours too.

I'm not a payroll bureau and I'm not trying to be. I'm a small business owner who built the tool I wished existed, and I think it might be exactly what you've been looking for too.

New to payroll or S-Corps? Before diving into the software, the free articles and videos at johnonbusiness.com cover the concepts behind everything this app calculates — S-Corp tax strategy, payroll basics, entity structure, and more. No paywall, no email gate, no ads.

JoB Payroll calculates your payroll, tracks your tax deadlines, pre-fills your federal forms (941 and 940), and prints checks and paystubs on check stock you provide. It keeps your records clean and gives you everything your accountant or tax preparer needs.

What it doesn't do: it doesn't file anything on your behalf, it doesn't move money, and it doesn't pretend to be a full-service payroll bureau. You stay in the driver's seat. You sign and mail your own returns, you make your own tax deposits through EFTPS and the CA EDD portal, and you source your own check stock. That's not a limitation — for most small business owners, that's exactly the level of control you want.

Questions before you sign up? Send me a message — it goes straight to me.