Thursday 22 March 2012

Outsourcing payroll- an ideal option for small businesses

Well, it is a known fact that in order to run a business, you need to pay your employees, regularly and on time. Earlier, the work of creating and managing a payroll was done manually, using a simple pen and a paper. But those were simpler times.
In those golden times, there were few simple laws and taxes. Now, you have all types of rules and regulatory laws issued by various state or federal or local agencies. Every business needs to comply by these rules to ensure that every employee is paid their fair due and also that employers get work which is worth of the pay given. All this red tape has made maintaining a payroll very time-consuming work which is also prone to many errors if done manually. According to a survey, nearly 40% of a small business time is consumed by payroll alone. Therefore many companies are opting for external companies which provide payroll for a small business.
But what do we mean when we say payroll for a small business?  Payroll processing includes several processes. In very basic and layman’s terms, we can say that the company transfers your data, conducts checks on all the employees’ pays and then starts payroll processing. This includes collocating employee pay details which can be monthly or weekly, getting your approval for payment of staff, issuing pays and dispatching payslips to all employees and then sending a detailed report to your company. But there are many other responsibilities also. These responsibilities are also accepted by the company providing you the payroll for a small business. 
Let me explain some more about this work. First point is the tax management. The company which manages your payroll also manages the taxes of your employees. This is a very tedious work if your small business uses several payment methods like hourly, contracts, interns, trainees etc. But all these are dealt when processing payroll and you get a report about the amount to be withheld from the compensation. Second important part is reporting on costs. You need to know how much you are totally expending on employees cost. The outsourcing company compiles and gives a report on how much you are really spending.  Third job they do is the direct deposit of pay in the employees account. It saves you from the tensions like default check etc. The fourth important task handled by them is giving you online account access in case of direct deposits of pay.
Some of these responsibilities vary from nation to nation. Examples of such responsibilities are like handling of medical claim policies of employees, managing the provident funds and employee insurance, conducting quality audits and also analyising payroll records and also payroll taxes. Then a detailed report is made and sent to the client. Therefore using a company for payroll for a small business is totally worth your money.

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