You may have made up your mind to outsource all or some of your payroll duties. But if you sit down to find potential vendors and research the market, you get overwhelmed by a long list of payroll service companies claiming about being good at what they do.
When looking at payroll options, it will be best to choose a reliable company. Your company is liable for paying taxes and workers on time, not payroll service companies.
A lot is at stake here. You need to carefully do your homework so as to make sure the payroll service provider you choose stays compliant with all the regulatory standards, is reliable, and provides what you need. To help you achieve this, the following tips to consider:
1. Know the Service Provider’s Requirements
Service providers, such as BoardRoom, have different offerings. One of the services they provide includes customer service modules, tax remittance, new-hire reporting, tax-return features, and on-time salary payment, to name a few. But the real question here is whether you need either of these services.
Full-suite services are more expensive than simple packages. So smaller startups and companies need to make sure they use the services they pay for. More complex or relatively large organizations often afford to take on the bells and whistles and may find benefits they had not considered previously.
2. Evaluate the Customer Service
When looking for service providers, most business owners need to work with a provider who offers them the lowest estimate.
This doesn’t take value into account, and most payroll experts and HR managers find that providers are costing them more as they play phone tag or fix mistakes.
Before signing the dotted line with one of the payroll service providers, look at their customer service. They must be able to respond to all your questions and how simple it is to reach out to them whenever you need help.
A team, which provides the best customer service is likely to live up to your expectations as well as smoothly conduct payroll administrations weekly.
3. Look at the Reputation
In order to ensure your service provider delivers what they promise, it will be a great idea to find a company with a great reputation. As you prepare a list of partners, find objective and reliable reviews in technology publications or on industry news platforms.
Plus, it is wise to go through the feedback that actual users left on review sites or forums like Capterra. To better understand how it will work with a service provider, see whether they give references you may talk to so you may hear firsthand how the provider is.
4. Custom and Monitoring Reports
Detailed and comprehensive payroll reports provide helpful information on personal and financial data. Access to such details may help in different areas, including searching, accessing relevant data, and doing follow-ups. When hiring a payroll service provider, ensure you consult those reports.
In other words, optimization of payroll management can generate productivity improvement. Of course, to ensure you get this improvement, you will have to measure with KPIs or metrics that help understand the data’s complexity.
5. Accessibility and Ease of Use
Many payroll services these days allow access to a very secure site for workers to view the history of individual payroll. Printing pay stubs, keeping track of sick/personal/vacation, reviewing payroll history, and having a password-protected site provide the best service for your workers. These details at your fingertips can help to reduce the payroll questions you need to answer.
But web-based payroll systems aren’t the only way you may provide payroll details. Some payroll services need phone-ins at a specific time and date, which might be inconvenient for ever-changing schedules.
There are other options to e-mail or fax, though being able to enter details anytime and anywhere from web browsers gives you a chance to check whether all the details are correct.
6. Check the Statutory Compatibility
Numerous regulations and rules are in place to guarantee compliance, accuracy, and security. So choosing the right payroll provider competent in tax compliance, data privacy compliance, and regulatory compliance is important when it comes to error-free payrolls.
It is important to hire the right payroll provider with tax compliance departments to handle those modifications, as the regulations governing tax compliance for payrolls are evolving continuously. Plus, once the conversions are complete, the tax compliance team needs to update your payroll tables annually and help with year-end payroll processing.
A reliable payroll service provider must also have the best tax compliance team of experts who can examine the existing data for tax issues.
7. Determine the Experience and Qualifications
A payroll service provider you choose must have the right credentials from reliable institutions. They should be responsible and cautious and, at the same time, have enough experience.
If they have worked with other businesses within your industry, it can be much easier for them to meet your demands as well as prepare for obstacles your company may encounter.
8. Consider the Features
In order to choose one of the best payroll service providers for your business, you need to look at the features you wish your payroll services to come with. This should be in addition to dealing with payroll processing and tax obligations.
Some features you need to consider may include PTO management, multiple wage rates, garnishment payments, detailed payroll reports, several payment options, and workers’ comp administration.
Plus, note that, as far as multiple payment option features are concerned, there are a few payment alternatives. These might include direct deposits, paper checks, and prepaid debit cards, to name a few.
The Bottom Line!
The pain of starting things over with a new service provider might seem enough to justify the pain of clunky payroll processes. But as of now, all you need to do is to start your search. Whether your condition is integration with the current HRIS or stellar customer service, the right payroll service provider will get you up and running with the best services.
