- May 23, 2020
- Posted by: BackOffice LLC
- Category: BackOffice Blog
If you’re like many small business owners in the Miami area, doing payroll is one of the most tedious parts of your job – but it’s one of the most critical parts, too. After all, your employees are a key part of your business’ success, and they want to get paid just as much as you do. Which means that every pay period, you need to worry about:
- Calculating workers’ hours and pay
- Complying and paying Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA) taxes and payroll taxes
- Recording everything for annual Florida state and federal forms, like your employees’ W-2
- Preparing and sending employee checks
A ton of work goes into simply paying your employees, which is time and energy that you’re not spending on growing or developing your business. To compensate for this, you are looking to work with a payroll-services partner who can handle all the complicated stuff and free you up to look towards the future.
But how can you find the best payroll services that Miami offers? What should you be looking for? In this blog post, we’ll examine tips for finding a payroll provider in the magic city.
#1: Ask Your Colleagues for Recommendations
If you’re a small business owner looking for payroll tax services, your starting point should be asking other small business owners about who, if anyone, they trust to handle their own payroll. Ask about the payroll services that the firm has been offering, what positives has the business owner seen since becoming a client, and any pain points that might make them a poor fit for your company.
This shouldn’t be the end of your research, but it’s a good place to start. After getting recommendations, you should investigate the companies you’ve been told about, learn about their history and their reputations. It’s important to do your due diligence here, even if a payroll tax services provider has been given a glowing review. While some payroll companies will assume full liability for things like tax penalties, many don’t – a payroll company that mismanages things like payroll taxes is typically going to be your business’ responsibility to fix, so you should do your research to ensure that the recommended payroll partner doesn’t have a history of screw-ups in its past.
#2: Consider Pricing, Deluxe Models, and Value
Like most small business owners from Miami to Seattle, you’re probably used to pinching pennies and being thrifty to help grow your bottom line. You shouldn’t stop when searching for a payroll services provider. We think that payroll services are invaluable to many small and medium-sized businesses (we wouldn’t offer them otherwise), but the truth is that it is an additional expense, and you’re going to want to make sure it’s worth it for your business.
Consider a payroll company’s fee(s) for the services it’s offering. How much of your time will it save? How much is your time worth? Perhaps simply taking the stress off your plate and freeing up your time to focus on other things is value that can’t be calculated, but that’s a choice left up to you and your business partners.
Make sure to get a complete sense of everything a payroll company offers, too. Many payroll tax services providers only focus on processing payroll, but others have additional services or deluxe pricing models. These may turn out to offer better value for your business and get you better ROI, or you may be best off sticking to more modest offerings. On the other hand, a price model that may seem too good to be true often is, and surprisingly low rates could mean the company in question has tons of hidden fees they might not be telling you about just yet.
Remember that being thrifty doesn’t mean never spending money – it means knowing what has the value to make it worth the cost.
#3: Prioritize Great Customer Service
In a perfect world, you’d never have any problems with, or ever be confused by, what your payroll company is offering. Sadly, we don’t live in that perfect world, and it’s natural that you’ll have questions. Before choosing a payroll services provider, consider their customer service, and see if you can speak with some of the people who would be helping you with a question. Are they friendly and knowledgeable? Plus, consider pricing – is this one of those hidden fees where it’ll cost you per call? If so, you might want to look elsewhere.
#4: Evaluate Further Offerings and Growth Opportunities
It’s always a good idea to consider any further offerings a potential payroll services partner may have for small businesses like your own. If everything goes well, your business will be growing, and it’s very nice to work with a payroll services company that can grow alongside you. Perhaps this means scaling up your existing services – does the payroll company have the bandwidth to handle a larger account? – or adding new ones, like HR or general accounting services.
This isn’t strictly necessary, of course. Some of the best payroll companies around only offer payroll services, which allows them to specialize and devote their resources to this one field. But it’s always nice to be able to contract further services from a company you know – and who knows your business well in turn.
#5: Don’t Rush – and Listen to Your Gut
It may be tempting for you to make this decision in haste, because you’re really hoping to get this off your plate before, say, the next pay period is due. You shouldn’t rush this search, though. Managing all the moving parts of payroll is a vital aspect of any business, and it’s critical that you find a payroll tax services provider who is a good fit for you and the work your organization does.
While it’s important to make a decision based on facts and data, that doesn’t mean you should neglect what your instincts tell you, either. If you’re going to be working very closely with a payroll company, you’re going to want to have a good relationship with them, which means you’ll want to select a payroll services provider who seems trustworthy and who you can get along with.
There are many fantastic payroll services Miami offers, and we think BackOffice Solutions is one of them. Contact us today for a free quote and see how we can make your worries about managing payroll a thing of the past.