Today's Payroll Apps Offer Plenty of Choices
If your firm is looking for an additional source of revenue, why not consider payroll services? While payroll is fraught with the potential for time-consuming problems, a good system can minimize the long hours required to make adjustments and update tax tables. And, if you don't want the hassle of keeping client payrolls on your system, you can always work with a service bureau to process payrolls for clients, either directly or under your supervision. The real decision is how to recommend that your clients handle their payroll, and secondarily, whether to bring the application in-house or outsource it. Both approaches have benefits and drawbacks. Doing payroll in-house protects the data, and lets clients maintain control. The client doesn't have to worry about losing a phone or Internet connection, or whether the checks or reports will be delayed. The downside is that payroll requires lots of maintenance. Your client needs the staff and computer resources to support the application. Angry employees don't care if the payroll PC was having disk problems, or that a downed line prevented a direct deposit from making it to their account. They want their money when it is due. Outsourcing payroll can take several forms. You can process the payroll for your clients, effectively establishing a payroll service bureau within your firm. Several of the packages reviewed here make this process a lot less daunting. You can also set clients up with a service that allows them to effectively process payroll in-house, using a supplier's servers and software. PayCycle and Intuit's Complete Payroll give the client almost complete control, even to printing checks and reports in-house. Finally, you can take a traditional route by referring your client to a service bureau. ADP and Paychex are the largest, but are far from the only ones. Both vendors are accustomed to working with accountants and have services geared for small and midsized businesses. You may want to visit these companies' Web sites for details on their offerings for accountants. ADP has a special division dedicated to meeting the needs of smaller and growing businesses. For these clients, the vendor's EasyPayNet may be a good choice, as it provides Web-based payroll entry, along with pricing specifically geared towards smaller companies. One often-touted benefit of service bureaus is that there's no large, up-front investment. With the reasonable costs of today's PCs and software, a more appropriate consideration might be that your clients won't have to worry about data backup and ongoing software and tax table maintenance. Vendor information:1099-Etc & A-T-F
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