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Is This Your Situation: Feeling Overwhelmed with Payroll Regulations

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Your company is growing, and that’s great! You now have an office full of employees—and the headaches that come along with that: figuring out each person’s tax liability based on their W-4 forms, calculating overtime for nonexempt staff and more. Did you know you can outsource this whole task to a third-party provider?

Here are some of the advantages:

  • It frees up your time to do other things, like product development, sales and marketing.
  • You don’t have to become an expert. Managing payroll requires specialized knowledge and there are a lot of pitfalls that can lead to regulatory nightmares.
  • You don’t have to depend on one employee. Even if you have a staff member handling payroll, if that person suddenly leaves or is absent for an extended illness, you’ll find it nearly impossible to bring someone in immediately to take over. Meanwhile, problems will crop up.
  • You can actually save money by doing by outsourcing. Let’s say you and perhaps a staff member—both untrained in the nuances of payroll—incorrectly file paperwork. Before you know it, you could find yourself hit with penalties ranging from $500 to $1,000. The penalty costs will soon be higher than outsourcing would’ve been in the first place.

Of course, some companies try to save money by handing payroll over to an outsourced administrative assistant, who may be organized but unfamiliar with payroll rules. You’re still not off the hook! Even if this assistant makes a mistake, in the eyes of the law, you’re still responsible as the employer. You need an outsourced provider that is familiar with the many payroll rules.

To find out a little bit more about what the IRS requires, have a quick look at the payroll section  on the IRS website. If nothing else, it should convince you this is one task you don’t want to take on all by yourself. Give us a call today, and we’ll be happy to have a no-obligation talk about your particular situation and how qualified outsourced payroll solutions can help—no matter how small you are today or how big you’ll be tomorrow.

“Copyright 2018”

Is This Your Situation: Concerned About Time and Attendance Tracking

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What do you do to keep track of your employees: a program, old-fashioned time cards or just a yellow legal pad and a pen? No matter what you use, do you really take the time to study the results and consider whether you’re losing money due to inefficiency? Did you ever bother to calculate how much money you may be losing just in one month? It may be time to think more strategically.

First of all, you have to become more sophisticated. An automated time and attendance system isn’t a guarantee of perfect efficiency, but it’s a start. If your employees are still filling out time cards, it could be costing your business a lot more than just the cards themselves. Are you thinking a new system might be expensive? Just think about how much such a system could save you, and you might be surprised at how it might actually more than pay for itself.

Meanwhile, no matter what method you use, consider the following headaches you may be giving yourself:

Headache #1: Too much time spent by supervisors approving time sheets. Is there a way to create a more automated system?

Headache #2: Employees who don’t always write down their true time worked. How can you fix this?

Headache #3: Hand-keying issues that lead to errors and fraud. Again, automation may be the key.

Headache #4: Managing overtime. How can you keep employees from going into overtime hours before you even know about it?

Headache #5: Perhaps the worst of all, exposure from an audit or employee complaint.

A better scenario evolves when you convert to an automated time and attendance management system — and learn how to interpret the data. Consider the benefits:

  1. Classifications, labor contracts and policies are automatically applied when processing each employee’s paycheck
  2. Easier determination of benefit eligibility under the Affordable Care Act.
  3. You’ll pay employees for their actual time worked, avoiding lawsuits and back wages.
  4. Payroll errors from manual data entry are virtually eliminated.

How much less stressful would it be to run your business knowing that you are not only saving a considerable amount of money by automating, but you are also protecting your assets from potential employee lawsuits and maybe, even worse, an IRS audit?

Give us a call. We’ll show you how to choose the right system for your particular needs and how easy it is to integrate that new system into your business. Even more, we can teach you how to interpret the results.

Source: Industry Newsletters A Division of Home Actions LLC

The Difference Between Full-Service Payroll vs. In-House Payroll

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Many small to mid-sized companies handle their payroll in-house. When budgets are tight and the employee roster is small, business owners often want to save the money they would otherwise spend on a payroll service. While this might prove to be a smart choice for some businesses, for others, the time spent on payroll matters is as good as money lost, money they might as well have spent hiring a service. Each company ultimately needs to make its own decision regarding what serves its best interests. To make such a decision regarding payroll, it is imperative to understand the most important differences between full-service and in-house payroll options. Read more