Payroll Outsourcing 101: What A Small Business Owner Should Expect - CIRRUS Payroll + HR

Payroll has always been one of the most frustrating parts of running a small business – the time it takes to keep everything in order means less time spent making contacts, attracting customers, and actually running the business… which may be why payroll outsourcing has become such a popular option. Here’s what you should expect if you decide to go down this route yourself.

What You’ll Need To Do

One of the goals of payroll outsourcing is keeping things as simple as possible – you know, not paying a bunch of money only to realize months later that you were the one doing most of the work.

That’s why payroll itself is simple when you outsource it – using an online portal, you’ll submit the basic information, including any changes that need to be taken into account. That includes rates of pay, new hires, any additional benefits, the hours people worked (with or without overtime, as applicable), and whatever else is relevant.

Many small businesses like to have electronic records that automatically track these things – and we recommend this in most cases because hey, not doing the work yourself is why you’re outsourcing in the first place.

Oh, and you need to make sure that you actually have the money to pay your employees. That’s something you’re never going to get away from, but you might be surprised at how often new business owners can forget to make sure the money’s available if they’re busy expanding and aren’t doing the paperwork themselves. Ensuring funds are on hand to cover taxes, processing fees, and net paychecks will save you a lot of headaches down the road. Most services will send you a report each pay period to details how much money you need to cover payroll.

What You’ll Receive

These are the services you should expect to be getting – and if you’re not getting them when you outsource your payroll, then yes, you have a problem.

• Calculation of Payroll: This is the big one. You’ll need to know how much is being paid to each employee for the period at the agreed-upon rate, and we’ll make sure that this is accurate down to the penny.
• Send Direct Deposits: If your employees are receiving their pay through direct deposit, then you’ll never need to worry about forgetting to pay them. Again, this is something that actually happens more frequently than new business owners expect – the stress of actually running the business makes it easy to forget even some of the most important things, like…
• Taxes: These will be filed and paid for you, at both the state and federal levels. Nobody wants to forget these – or find out months down the road that they owe a bunch of back-taxes that will absolutely destroy their plans for expansion. You can also take advantage of…
• Automatic Reporting: New hires, tax registrations, quarterly forms, W-2s, and so on. The Government loves it forms, and more importantly, it’s very insistent that you have all of them filed properly. Stop worrying about whether or not you did everything you needed to for every new employee, especially if you have high turnover.
• Employee Portals: Employees deserve access to their payment history – we offer an online portal for viewing pay stubs, W-2s, and other relevant information. There’s also…
• Your Portal: The primary client portal provides reports on everything you need to know, available whenever you need them. Your accountant or tax preparer can also get access so you avoid playing middleman.

Payroll outsourcing has very real benefits for small businesses – if your paperwork’s piling up, you should consider getting professional help.