Payroll outsourcing: 7 signs it’s time for outside help

7 signs it’s time for payroll outsourcing

Sign 1: Running payroll late

Many of your employees don’t have much wiggle room when it comes to their personal finances. For example, the Federal Reserve recently found that 40% of US households can’t afford to pay for an unexpected $400 expense.

When you’re late on a pay run, that can mean really messing with the lives of your employees (not to mention the trust you’ve built with them). So if payroll ever slips off your radar — or if bank holidays regularly throw off your timing — you might want to consider a comprehensive payroll service that actively reminds you to get your paychecks out (or does them for you).

Sign 2: Making data entry errors.

Under or overpaying employees is never a good idea, but business owners who are overwhelmed by the amount of paperwork they have to deal with often make mistakes during harried late-night payroll sessions. You’ve got to pay employees on time, but you’ve also got to set the right number of allowances, deduct the right amount, and accurately enter the number of hours worked (among other things). When you get any of the numbers wrong, it means having to correct your previous payroll, and it can also mean your tax filings will include mistakes if you don’t catch them in time. Worst of all, paying employees or contractors too little can cause major friction with your team.

Outsourcing payroll reduces input errors by reducing the number of steps you have to take, and by doing all the math for you. If you still manage to mess things up, corrections are a lot easier to run, or there may even be someone to handle them for you (depending on your provider).

Sign 3: Missing tax deadlines.

In most states, a typical small business has at least eight separate payroll-related tax filings to make each year: Quarterly filings of IRS Form 941, plus analogous state filings. Getting these filings processed on time is yet another burden that can sneak up on small business owners. And making late filings or late deposits can be costly.

Most payroll services make these filings for you. Note that some will charge an extra fee for these regular filings, so make sure you understand all the costs that are included before you pick a provider. See more tips here.

Sign 4: Being late with W-2s or 1099s

In addition to the state and federal forms you file on behalf of your company, you also owe employees and contractors wage statements to help them do their annual filings. For the previous year, W-2 forms for employees and 1099 forms for contractors must be delivered by January 31. They also must be filed with the Social Security Administration and the IRS by January 31. Penalties for late W-2 filing start at $50 per form and increase the later they are filed.

Creating your W-2s and 1099s is also a service that most payroll providers handle, typically for an additional fee.

Sign 5: Experiencing cash flow issues (especially around tax time)

Even the most successful small businesses struggle with cash flow from time to time. Maybe your business has seasonal ebbs and flows, or maybe one-time expenses can throw your operating budget off-kilter. Whatever the issue, a good payroll service can help you manage cash flow in a few ways:

• Giving you good aggregate payroll data for making better cash flow projections
• Making you eligible for pay-as-you-go Workers Comp (which does not require budget-busting lump-sum premiums)
• Withholding the payroll taxes you owe each pay run so you don’t have to come up with all the funds at once
• Integrating with your accounting software so you can see your whole financial picture in one place
• Paying employees through direct deposit so there are no lost checks, and no lags between when a check is written and when the funds are drawn from your account

Sign 6: Struggling with deductions for benefits and garnishments

If you offer benefits, you’ll have the added complication of deducting and withholding the contributions employees make.

From time to time, you’re also likely to get notice of a court judgment (like alimony or child support) or tax levy against one of your employees. When that happens, you’ll be responsible for deducting and remitting a portion of their income to the appropriate party each pay period. It’s another little thing most small business owners would rather not deal with.

Whether you’re deducting benefits or wage garnishments, payroll outsourcing services usually make it easy to automate the process. It’ll be one less thing for you to think about (and potentially mess up).

Sign 7: If you bill hourly for professional services

Taking time to run payroll means you have to stop working on something else. If you bill hourly for the amount of time you work or the number of clients you see (like doctors, lawyers, designers, architects, or other professionals might), it means there’s a very real cost to running payroll.

For example, if you make $100 an hour and you spend four hours a month on payroll, you’re essentially giving up $400 in earnings. The math varies depending on what your billing rate is, but it should be easy to do the cost-benefit analysis by looking at how much a payroll service costs.

Are there disadvantages to outsourcing payroll?

There are four potential disadvantages for businesses who choose to use software or a service to manage their payroll:

• Outsourced payroll costs money. Every penny matters for some small businesses — especially newer businesses that don’t have much revenue yet. If spending $40 a month (or potentially a lot more) on payroll services will literally put you into bankruptcy, then it’s best to avoid the additional expense and do things yourself.
• Loss of control. Some business owners like to sign every check and enter every field in their accounting ledger. It helps them feel in control of their business, and it also gives them have a very close relationship with their books and their employees. While most payroll services give employers the power to approve each pay run before it goes out, they don’t allow the same sense of intimacy with your books.
• Switching at the wrong time can cause headaches. Payroll providers typically make quarterly tax payments four times a year. Switching to an outside payroll provider mid-quarter (or mid-year for some providers) can result in some tricky tax issues. To make sure you have a smooth transition, your first pay run with a new provider should generally be at the beginning of a quarter or calendar year.
• Lack of trust in providers. All outsourced providers are not made equal. Some local payroll services are terrific, and some are merely terrific salesmen. Some software providers check all the boxes, and other software can come with expensive surprises. If you don’t have confidence with your provider, it’s going to slow you down, so make sure you do your homework before signing up.

What’s the best way to outsource your payroll?

There are a number of viable solutions available that can make payroll less of a burden. We can’t definitively say there’s a perfect solution for you (although we’d like to think nobody does payroll software better than us). But in the interest of fairness and impartiality, here are the options most businesses consider when it’s time to seek payroll help:

Increase staffing. Many new business owners, overwhelmed by mounds of paperwork, end up hiring additional staff to handle payroll and related tasks. Whether you staff up internally or hire a part-time bookkeeper on a contract basis, adding headcount can mean adding the bandwidth you need to handle payroll. This is a great choice because it means you’ll have someone new who can potentially help out with other tasks as well. But if you hire someone who’s just learning the ropes, it can wind up meaning more work for you (at least in the interim) as they get up to speed.

Sign up for payroll software. There is a lot of great payroll software on the market. You should be able to find a solution that can do anything from calculating your payroll to paying employees to filing taxes for you. Some software even handles benefits and HR or integrates with your accounting software. Once you enter employees’ and contractors’ wage information each pay period, good outsourced payroll software should do everything else automatically.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there’s so much payroll software to choose from that it can be hard to find the right one. Higher priced offerings may give you more features and functionality than you need. Lower priced options may have hidden costs or exclude important features like automatic tax filings and payments. Before picking a software provider, check its ratings and reviews to make sure that you’re getting what’s advertised (and that businesses like yours appear to be happy customers). It may also be helpful to use this checklist to compare payroll solutions.

Use a traditional payroll service provider. If you want the human touch, a traditional payroll service could be the way to go. Each pay period you’ll send them all your wage information, then they’ll do all the math, cut the checks, and handle your taxes. Payroll services have the disadvantage of costing a little more than payroll software with similar functionality, but some business owners feel more comfortable with having a go-to person for their payroll needs. As with any payroll-related decision, make sure to check ratings and reviews of any service you’re considering.

Go through your accountant or bookkeeper. Modern accountancies are starting to offer payroll more frequently. Working with your accountant is usually the same concept as using a payroll service: You send them your payroll information before each run and they handle everything else. Sometimes they’ll use payroll software, and sometimes they’ll perform their own calculations. The cost and service level vary dramatically from accountant to accountant.

Every business has its own needs, so don’t feel like there is any right or wrong way to do this. You just have to decide how much time you want to spend on payroll, how much money you want to spend, and how much hand-holding you need. Your goal should be to find the solution that frees you up to do your best work. Whether that means hunkering down with a calculator and a notepad or going with a payroll outsourcing solution, we hope you have the information you need to get on the right path.