Payroll Outsourcing: The Hottest Trend in Small Business

The trend of small businesses hiring payroll outsourcing services, as opposed to running payroll in-house, has been dramatically increasing in recent years. Business owners have come to realize their time is much better spent elsewhere within their companies. Some are hesitant, asking themselves why they should pay an outside company to manage a task they are capable of doing, or have been doing, themselves. These skeptics can be assured, however, that this aspect of running a business is definitely better left to specialists.

The simple fact of the matter is, running payroll is time intensive and tedious. And in this case, it is completely true what they say: Time is money. The time wasted administering payroll themselves is much better spent doing something more productive for the business’ bottom line. If an in-house payroll person or department is employed, the time they spend administering payroll is money being taken right out of that bottom line. Whether it is being run by the business owner or a hired payroll person, it is virtually the same as throwing money away. However, by subcontracting a payroll service, all of the additional costs, such as maintaining a banking account, printing checks, and continued education about ever-changing tax laws, are all accounted for in one flat rate. This amounts to considerable savings when compared to the man hours necessary to accomplish all of this by an in-house payroll person.

Payroll services also offer a business owner the benefit of reliability. If there is one person running payroll for a business, and this person is well trained and experienced, he or she may be able to handle everything on time and without error. But, if this person falls ill or goes on vacation, his or her responsibilities will fall on another, less qualified employee. When this happens, the chance for error and delay is greatly increased. On the other hand, when a payroll service company is handling these duties and someone becomes ill, takes a vacation or even leaves the company, there are many other employees who are equally as well trained readily available to step up and take his or her place, without affecting the business owner’s life whatsoever.

One responsibility of a payroll department that can be completely eliminated from a business by hiring a payroll service falls under the legal umbrella. Laws and regulations are constantly changing on many levels: local, state and national. Keeping up with these changes and staying compliant are difficult to do and can take lots of time and money. By turning to a payroll service, a business owner will never have to worry about these legal issues again.

Finally, there is the issue of errors. Payroll mistakes are never a good thing. They take time and money to fix and are upsetting to employees. However, if a payroll service is handling these issues, they are legally obligated to fix any mistake they make, with no additional cost to the business owner. Not to mention, they are far less likely to make a mistake in the first place.

With all of these benefits and the ease of using the Internet for online payroll services, contracting out for these services is the one of the best decisions a business owner can make. The trend is likely to continue in coming years as business professionals become aware of all of the time and money that can be saved by turning to a payroll outsourcing service.