Business Owners Opt for Convenience and Less Expenses: Payroll Outsourcing

Handling payroll is a difficult task even to veteran business owners. It is common knowledge among business people that preparing pay slips or doing salary computations or filing tax requirements is a very daunting responsibility. In order to efficiently accomplish this task, one must need experience, meticulousness and expertise in computations and a good amount of legal knowledge. There are many aspects of payroll and all of them are exhausting to deal with. Handling your own business’ payroll can be very time-consuming and stressful especially when faced with deadlines and schedules. It would simply be too much for a working business owner to do alone.

Establishing your own internal payroll processing staff to relieve you of the stress of doing payroll yourself may look like a sound decision but there are some things to consider. Hiring full-time bookkeepers to handle your payroll may be costly in the long run. This would mean additional salaries to pay and maintain. Also some technical resources are needed like computers, printers, and payroll software and maintenance of these resources are additional again additional operational costs. Training your staff to your payroll methods could also be a hassle and may result to a lot of mistakes as they start out. When payroll staff members leave, you’d have to replace them with new employees and you will have to train and instruct them again. Hiring part-time payroll specialists is an alternative to maintaining a full-time payroll staff but may be more costly since these types of specialists usually charge big rates by the hour.

So, in seeking the solution for a more convenient and less expensive payroll process, you will arrive at the option of outsourcing your payroll. The concept of payroll outsourcing has been attracting more and more business owners because of the ease and availability of acquiring their services. Payroll service companies eliminate the need for an internal payroll staff, or part-time payroll specialists and most of all, reduce costs of handling payroll, providing you with no hassle and more time to work on other things.

Saving More, Doing Less: How Payroll Outsourcing Cuts Down Company Costs and Frees Up Your Time

Like clockwork, payroll has to be dealt with regularly by the business. It is an unavoidable area of business that generates a lot of problems for the business owner. Managing your own payroll for your own company is a grueling task. For hours on end, you may face tons of paperwork and requirements that takes too much of your time and effort, leading you away from what you should be doing – managing your business. Time is money, and with the amount of time you spend on processing payroll, you’re actually losing money. Your business needs close attention from you for it to boom and profit but most of your work all goes into payroll processing.

Hiring your own payroll processing staff may seem like a good idea but considering the added costs, it will make you think twice. As well as the rest of your employees, your own bookkeepers will require valuable resources which can be better spent in other parts of your business, concentrating more on profit. Your own staff will require their own software for their computations, another additional cost. Plus with a big possibility of errors in their work, you’d end up covering for losses, fees and penalties frequently, a situation your business will not benefit from.

Luckily for business owners, the best solution to time and cost problems is made available by the outsourcing payroll business. By outsourcing your business’ payroll functions, this greatly frees up your much valued time to focus on achieving success. Outsourced payroll also means you get the same function as having your own highly experienced payroll department but without the additional operational costs. Another thing payroll outsourcing provides is the reduced possibility of errors with their staff of experienced and specialised professionals, ensuring you of proper and prompt work. All this can greatly affect the progress of your business as well as give you peace of mind.

Outsourcing Your Payroll, Helping Your Business

Running a business is hard work. And managing payroll is one of the hardest jobs in keeping a company in top shape. Salaries must be done by pay day, payments must be made, strict compliance of payroll taxation regulations, keeping up with regularly changing regulations, and a lot more. All these to keep your business booming and your employees satisfied. And as your business grows and employees increase, you’ll end up with a lot more things to think about and do.

Why make your job harder when today, one of the best business solutions is to seek the expertise of a payroll service company. It is a business which specialises in providing other companies the services of doing payroll. All the complicated processes, the deadlines, the responsibilities, all can be shouldered by payroll service companies like Affinity Outsourcing. Payroll outsourcing companies are manned by professional experts in providing solutions to your payroll problems.

A payroll outsourcing service can provide you with the opportunity to maximize the use of your resources and people for productivity. It can eliminate the need for a staff of internal specialists to take care of your own payroll, eliminate the need for purchasing and updating expensive software for calculations, eliminate errors in the complicated payroll process, and most of all, give you the peace of mind of not having to worry about all these things and focusing your attention to more important areas of your business. You can save on the cost of sending your own personnel to trainings, and purchasing and maintaining software because you gain the services of well-trained and experienced professionals and their tools when you acquire the services of company payroll services. You can be assured of accurate and timely work and if ever necessary, you are guaranteed that penalties acquired due to inconsistencies in their work are shouldered by them. Overall, these services are designed to help you manage your business.

The Complication of ATO Regulations- Superannuation

As an employer, you have several responsibilities towards your employees. One of which is superannuation. Superannuation refers to the arrangement which people make in Australia to ensure they have funds available for retirement. This is government-supported and minimum provisions are compulsory for employees.

The ATO has provided a check list to assure that you meet your obligations towards your workers. According to the official ATO website, the requirements are as follows:

• Determine whether the contractor is eligible for superannuation
• If the independent contractor is eligible for superannuation, work out if they are also eligible for choice of superannuation fund and which superannuation fund to use
• Check whether the superannuation fund complies
• Determine the independent contractor’s earnings base
• Determine pay contributions
• Understand the superannuation guarantee charge and how to calculate it
• Ensure you meet requirements to report superannuation contributions to your employees
• Keep the necessary superannuation guarantee and superannuation choice records

These eight items are for superannuation alone. And for a company with over a hundred employees, this evolves to be a very tedious and complicated process. Let Affinity Outsourcing do this for you.

We not only process superannuation but also Pay As You Go (PAYG) and Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT). Outsourcing payroll to us translates to accurate, efficient and fast processing that’s government compliant, preventing unnecessary fees and employee complaints.

Myths of the Outsourced Payroll

Payroll, as a function, is one that can never “win.” Either the work goes unseen (in which case, it is doing well), or it’s reviled (in which case, it is failing). The following are some typical misconceptions which deal with why going into an outsourced payroll with an external company is a long-term dedication that should never be taken gently, nor taken for granted.

Myth: I will lose control. – Many companies declare that by outsourcing their payroll, they will come unglued of it, but the opposite is true. You will actually observe a rise in control as you set assistance stage contracts and KPIs that guarantee a high supply level. With an outsourced payroll, KPIs are simpler to evaluate, where there is improved payroll information visibility. Still, getting control is entirely your sector. Without solid provider control, the connection becomes one-sided and objectives have to be handled.

Myth: I’m better off in-house. – Leading up to 2008 – 2009, far too many companies became ‘fat’ with workers that they could hardly manage to keep. Redundancies were unavoidable as divisions were full of more people than necessary. Outsourcing, as a remedy, permitted companies to bend conditions up and down. But payroll is one supply that cannot be flexed up and down, not unless the overall labor force is reduced. It’s a per month assistance that definitely has to happen and without it, your company will not operate and your people will not work. In-house groups can become over-worked by the payroll cut-off time frame and under-worked afterwards. Through payroll freelancing, however, you do not have to fear about amount of work and you do not have to fear about prospective down time brought on by absence.

Outsourced payroll is an area where misconceptions need debunking. Obtained knowledge often informs you one thing, but the truth is that how it works is up to you. Get the right payroll provider for your company, one that you can believe in and that has a reputation in your market or with identical companies and work with them on a relationship basis. Do that and you’ll make sure nobody ever notices your payroll, because it’s working!

Payroll Mistakes to Avoid

Small business owners have shared the fate of many who came before them, they had to learn and deal with payroll. It’s a very tedious task, and the fact that one error creates a bundle of problems makes it even more stressful. For those who have gone through payroll processing, these points are mistakes that are all just too familiar.

1. Missing out on the holidays. We mean this in a different sense. It’s important to take note to schedules and public holidays. The explanation that their salaries are late because you forgot it was a public holiday will not be taken lightly by your employees.
2. Not double checking on salary dates and payment periods. This may seem pretty obvious, but human errors are always possible, most especially when dealing with numbers and dates. A mistake may not be automatically felt, but inconsistencies on your accounts will be a reason for an audit, causing problems with your tax notices.  The slight possibility of your employee claiming they weren’t paid on days that they worked are also possible, just because of that “minor” date error.
3. Believing that salaries are based on pay period. This is absolutely erroneous. Pay period doesn’t determine the reported payroll but rather, the payemnt date. Misunderstanding this will cause expensive corrections when filing your year-end reports.
4. Not reviewing your payroll. Reviewing your payroll may seem like a redundancy, but as we have previously stated, human errors are always possible. Check if earnings, deductions and taxes are calculated correctly. This may be double the work, but committing a mistake and realising it only after you run the payroll and trying to fix it is the real drudgery.
5. Issuing wages outside your payroll system. It gets worse when these wages aren’t recorded in your system. Even if it were an innocent mistake, this will cause tax issues under the presumption that this error was done on purpose to evade the proper taxes.

If you thought payroll processing was as simple as handing out money you can calculate in your head, you are absolutely wrong. The most minute details are noted and part of a long process. To alleviate the situation, many companies turn to payroll outsourcing.

Acquiring the payroll service from a third party firm will not only minimize efforts but also, fees and penalties from misinformation.

 

Can Your Business Afford Payroll Outsourcing?

Entrepreneurs are the masters of multi-tasking. On a small or micro level, they are the epitome of jack of all trades. However, many of them who want to take the business up to a higher level often start turning over tasks they can do away with in order to focus on growing the company. One of which is payroll processing.

There may be several reasons for considering getting the services of a payroll company. It’s possible you’ve hired or will hire more employees, or you realise that your in house team are under resourced and not up to speed with new payroll laws. Whatever the reason behind the decision, the first question in mind is often, can I afford it?

Below are some things you can ask yourself to determine the cost of the payroll service you’re getting:

1. How many number of employees do you have or are you expecting in the near future?
2. How often are your salary payments?
3. Are you going to continue with your current payment method or use direct deposit?
4. Do you want them to file your taxes for you?

The answer to these 4 questions will have an effect on the cost of your payroll. With this in mind, you have to look for a service which will take care of your business’ basic needs but at a reasonable price. You should know that the two basic services of these companies are points 3 and 4 which are the direct deposit and the tax filing. You should expect these two from any payroll company. These are the two great services that will benefit your company. No more inaccurate payroll, and more time to focus on other areas of the business. Furthermore, these companies are constantly updated with tax regulations which may be overlooked at times.

If the price is too good to be true, then be sure to look out for hidden costs. Make sure that their services are laid out, including the number of employees they can process for the price and what services are inclusive for the price. Also see to it that they have an excellent customer support service available 24 hours a day in case you run into problems that need immediate response. Because you are entrusting them with your company’s money, they should be able to provide support any time you need it.

The Future of Payroll for Business

Payroll service companies have been surprising companies with new features and advanced technologies that allow businesses to just lay back, relax and feel confident that the most minute detail in their payroll is taken cared of. Obviously, these features don’t end there. In the coming years, more break-throughs and advancements are expected from them. So what’s in store for the future of payroll?

As with any outsourcing business, it is expected that more services will be hired from different parts of the globe. The key here is who has the better offer when it comes to prices, service, and security. Another upside of this is because of the distance between the payroll provider and the company, security will need to be upgraded and assurance highlighted.

Mobility is already and will even be a greater factor in the future. While companies may not do their payroll on their mobiles, but it is expected that employees look forward to the day where they can check their hours, salaries and taxes using their mobile phone. It is a feature that will work well both on the employer and on the payroll service end.

Those mentioned above aren’t the only innovations looked forward to in the coming years. More is expected in the payroll outsourcing businesses. As with any industry, payroll service companies who can offer more services, features and upgrades will be favoured. This is healthy competition for everyone, assuring the small businesses that as long as they provide good services, they can compete with established, and big brands.

Entrepreneurs, You Do Not Have to Be Afraid of Payroll

Let’s face it. When you’re a small business, it’s a struggle to expand. Funds are limited and there aren’t many investors that are willing to drop dollars on something you have been working on. Even making payroll is a bit of a scare on down seasons of the business. And it becomes even scarier when you have to look for money to cover the payroll and process the payroll at the same time.

An option is to hire a professional to do your payroll for you in-house. However, the process of searching for an expert is already a daunting task, which is why a payroll manager is one of the most difficult and in-demand employees to find. And we all know that in-demand is another way of saying very expensive.

So you have a business you can’t manage, you have employees to pay, a payroll deadline to meet and on top of that, accounting to do and taxes to pay.

If this sounds familiar, then outsourcing may be the only way to avoid this nightmare. Not needing to process all the accounting, tax and checks mean you have more time to put your energy on your business and regain your focus.

Payroll outsourcing will give you the benefit of a ready payroll system without spending to hire a specialist to do it full time.

It Is Time To Outsource Payroll

Payroll is the totality of all financial records for salaries including bonuses and deductions for every employee. Although this sensitive job is easy it will require an enormous time to complete. That’s the reason outsourcing is one of your best option to carry out this job efficiently. There are missed opportunities if you don’t outsource payroll job. You need to be informed a bit about the basic function of payroll outsourcing. There are several ways to get the best service offer if you really want to adopt this technique. You need to seriously reconsider your options to do it effectively.

Firstly, if you never try to contract out this particular chunk of your operation, your company definitely missed valuable opportunities that could have made the organisation more profitable. By outsourcing your payroll, your company can focus on projects which will generate revenues. It will even make your staff become more productive. This scheme will also greatly increase your company’s savings in payroll related expenditure because usually the service provider that will be handling your payroll work will offer a financially viable package. Reducing cost and saving valuable time are two big chunks of bonuses you can realise by adopting this strategy.