Payroll Service, Changing Providers -Chapter One: Reasons to Change Providers
MoneyMoz.com presents you “Payroll Service, Changing Providers -Chapter One: Reasons to Change Providers”, an article written by Charles Read. We hope you’ll find a lot useful information in here.
MoneyMoz.com will present you every article we find interesting and educating, and which has no copyright protection. If available we’ll link the source.
Why change your payroll provider?
- Service Stinks
- Cost too High
- Too many Errors
- No help with IRS
- Lost in the Shuffle
| MoneyMoz recommended article: Retirement Income for Baby Boomers Much talk has been made of the looming retirement of "Baby Boomers." Most recent there has been several articles written in various media concerning their use of home equity to retire on. Eileen Powel of the Associated Press said "home equity may be baby boomers' salvation; while comments of the Sydney Morning Herald says proceeds from selling their house is what six million Australian baby boomers are counting on for their retirement. Personally, I don't want to sell my house in order to afford retirement. Last week the Trustees of Social Security and Medicare published the annual report. The report stated that Social Security could be insolvent by 2040 and that Medicare Taxes could double by 2012. Startup Business Loans - Exploring Other Avenues for Building Capital Startup business loans are a great way to launch a successful business. Unfortunately they are sometimes the hardest to get from lending institutions. Startup business loans are one of the few areas that even the Small Business Administration do not offer to assist in and this becomes a major impediment to banks and credit unions making this type of loan available. The Small Business Administration is an agency of the federal government with a specific mandate to assist small business in America. It provides much of the funding for business loans made by banks in the form of guarantees for these loans. If a borrowing business defaults on a business loan or goes bankrupt the Small Business Administration will step in to cover the bank's costs. |
Service Stinks. Payroll service is all about service. If you don’t perceive that your business receives good service then you probably aren’t getting good service. Payroll service providers know that their level of service has to be extremely high. Are you getting what you were promised? Too often salespeople promise what production can’t deliver. Are your problems addressed, and more importantly solved, immediately. If your account has been overdrafted and you don’t get your money back in two business days or less you are not getting good service.
Cost too High. Are you paying more than you should? How do you tell? Get some quotes. There are a number of free quote services on line. Google “Payroll quotes” and go from there. Many times your payroll company will negotiate with you if you feel the price is too high, but not always. Remember also that the major payroll companies have a revenue maximization process. They will quote you a price to get your business. There used to be right on the Paychex contract a line called WIT for the salesperson to fill in. WIT stood for “Whatever it Takes”. The salesperson would give any concession to get the payroll business. Then the local office would stealthily increase the price every payroll or every few payrolls until it reached the maximum level the local office thought it could sustain.
The other thing a lot of payroll companies do is quote you prices but don’t tell you what is not included in that price. Things like a cost for: each hire, each termination, each report, each new report, each non standard report, each W2, each W2 reprint, tax service, phone entry, year end reports, unnecessary CDs, access fees, monthly fees and so on. Also if they give you a “discount” to get your business it can easily vanish.
Be careful of quotes to make sure everything is in them and your price is guaranteed for a period of time. Then check it every pay period to make sure it is what you expect.
Too many errors. Errors are inevitable when humans handle the payroll. If your service is making too many then you may choose to leave what ever the cost. Errors cost you in time and morale if not in actual dollars. Does your payroll provider try to fix blame for an error or do they just fix it. They should just fix it! If it really is your error and you admit it, expect a fee. If you think it is their problem and say so, they should take responsibility regardless of what they think. Does your payroll provider call you if they see something strange or do they just do it their way? If they do it their way you know they are not concerned enough about you to make a phone call or send an email.
| MoneyMoz recommended article: When Tactics Are Not Enough Your public relations people are busy. The buzz is all about hits on a radio show or mentions in a newspaper column. Or, which to do first, the trade show exhibit or the video clip. All useful tactics, but hardly the detailed planning needed to REALLY do something about the behaviors of those outside audiences that impact you the most. Without that planning, those changes in target audience behaviors you'll almost certainly need to achieve your objectives is unlikely to come about. And that just shouldn't happen. |
Every employee of every client looks at payroll and needs for it to be perfect. It won’t be, but it needs to be as close as possible
No help with the IRS. Does your payroll service when presented with a letter from the IRS tell you to call your CPA? Shame on them. The IRS will send you letters. The IRS makes mistakes. The IRS will not fix their mistakes unless and until you can prove to them they are wrong. Many times even if you made the mistake a good negotiator can get the IRS to remove the penalties and sometimes the interest. I can’t tell you how many penalties in the last fifteen years I have had abated simply by contacting the IRS in a professional manner and knowing what to say and how to say it. Your payroll service provider should be an expert in getting penalties abated. Your CPA will probably not be a payroll tax expert. Your payroll service provider should have CPAs on staff, that you can talk with to solve IRS and State tax problems.
Lost in the shuffle. Do you talk to a different person every time you call your payroll service provider? Do you get passed from extension to extension to extension until you end up with voice mail that is not returned? When you call for help do you get a voice mail system and not a person? When you call for help do you reach India? If you can’t talk to live people, who can solve your problems and do it in English, then you are lost in the shuffle. Enough said!
Check out
Payroll Service, Changing Providers. Chapter Two. What Should you Look for in a New Provider?
And
Payroll Service, Changing Providers. Chapter Three, What Should Happen When We Change Payroll Providers?
Charles J. Read, CPA has been in the payroll, accounting and tax business for 30 years the last fifteen in private practice. Mr. Read is the author of “How to Start a New Business” and is the owner http://www.PayrollonaBudget.com a paperless payroll company, http://www.CustomPayroll.com a full service payroll service provider and RMARK Financial Services a small business tax, consulting and bookkeeping firm. See an excerpt of Mr. Read’s interviews from William Shatners “Heartbeat of America” television show on the websites linked above.
Keywords assigned to this article by MoneyMoz: Payroll, payroll provider, payroll outsource provider, payroll service bureau, paperless payroll
| MoneyMoz recommended article: Get Started Now: Why the Time is Right for Internet Business If you have long dreamed of getting your piece of the Internet business pie but have held off due to fear, lack of skills, shortage of money, or any other reason under the sun, now is the time to get going. There are four reasons why the time is right to get going on line: general acceptance of the Internet, maturity of on line resources, the abundance of resources on which to build a business and the fact that anyone can afford to start an Internet business now. Let's take a look at why this is so. First, overall use of the Internet continues to grow, not only in this country, but worldwide. Technology we may find confusing is taken for granted by our children, and even grandma and grandpa now get on line. Consumers across all demographics are shopping, and often buying, on the Internet. Statistics show growth rates in the number of Internet users at over 20 percent per year for the past ten years. Recent U.S. Department of Commerce statistics report on line consumer sales of $117 billion in 2004, just 3.3 per cent of total U.S. retail sales of $3.6 trillion dollars. But, while total consumer sales grew by 6.8 percent in 2004, on line sales grew by 26 per cent. By all indications, this growth rate will continue to increase as the ‘www' generation becomes more comfortable with Internet buying due to improved customer service habits of on line vendors. How Do You Stand Out? "Why given all the competitive alternatives in the marketplace should anyone buy from you?" Would you be able to answer this for your business... |