Small Business Payroll Cost: What to Expect & Why It's Worth It
SEPT 06, 2022
As an entrepreneur with a staff of your own, you have quite a few choices to make and more than your fair share of responsibilities. One of these responsibilities is making sure your staff get their paychecks on time and accurate. Failing to do so can have some rather unpleasant consequences. Business owners might try handling this task alone, but it is often worth avoiding the headaches and risk by choosing a reliable and responsive payroll solution.
Do-It-Yourself Payroll: Is It Right for Me?
If you’re thinking about taking on payroll in-house, you should consider all the small details and indirect costs to process payroll yourself. You’ll be responsible not just for the payroll processing, but also handling all employee forms, recording hours worked, recording overtime costs, calculating taxes and making government tax deposits. To handle all of this, you might even eventually need to hire someone to process the in-house payroll so you can focus on other important areas of the business.
Next, you’ll need payroll software, which often comes with a paid subscription and sometimes paid upgrades, to properly record and file all the necessary documents. In total, in-house small business payroll costs could include an in-house accountant salary, software fees, check delivery fees and tax form processing costs. All this can lead to monthly costs of several thousands of dollars.
If you decide to handle payroll yourself, you and your staff will be responsible to ensure its accuracy – accounting for every dollar you owe, including both employee compensation and taxes.
Small Business Payroll Costs and Consequences
Failing to properly file taxes associated with your payroll can lead to legal trouble with the IRS. If you have unpaid tax deposits, you could end up owing substantial penalties and interest. The federal government isn’t the only one with laws pertaining to payroll, either. State and local governments also have labor laws that deal with pay, such as paying for overtime, breaks and of course, minimum wages. These laws vary from state to state, as do the penalties; states can require an added percentage of unpaid wages, double unpaid wages or even triple.
It Pays to Outsource with Payroll Vault
If the various small business payroll costs and responsibilities of doing in-house payroll sounds like more trouble than you and your company need, then outsourcing your payroll to a service provider like Payroll Vault may be your best alternative. The National Small Business Association’s most recent tax survey shows 45% of responding small businesses outsource their payroll and 42% of them pay between $100-$500 per month; considerably less than hiring an in-house accountant and handling all the technical needs yourself. Outsourcing to a payroll service provider ensures it’s being handled by a team of professionals who keep up to date on the latest tax and legal requirements; Payroll Vault will not only process paychecks, but also W-2’s, as well as file your business payroll tax forms.
In addition to the payroll itself, some payroll services may offer additional services. Payroll Vault is one such company; it also offers human resource (HR) solutions, including access to an HR expert. Payroll Vault’s wide range of online HR tools includes, a policy library, an HR advisor newsletter, on-demand training, employee handbook tools and more.
Other popular workforce management resources include timekeeping systems, employment screening, workers’ compensation assistance and labor law poster services. All are very popular to small and mid-sized business, and all are available with Payroll Vault. These affordable payroll solutions, as well as other services are designed to ease your internal workload, ensure compliance, and let you focus on the parts of your businesses that matter most to you. Learn more about what Payroll Vault can offer your business by getting a quote today, or you can call us at (855) 816-7333.
