Will Outsourcing Payroll Make Your Life Easier?

By Michael Alter

As 2005 gets underway, you might consider eliminating your payroll pains through outsourcing. Whether you process payroll manually or use a service, the outsourcing options available to small businesses are better than ever!

If you're like most small business owners, you long for the good old days. Remember when you first started your business? Everything was about growing your business. But over time, you got bogged down with tedious, time-consuming administrative work that prevents you from focusing on your core business. Instead of growing your business, you're suffocating under a pile of mind-numbing paperwork.

The worst culprit? Payroll.

Even experienced business owners find that payroll is a pain. For starters, you've got to keep track of payroll regulations and changes in withholding tables--a time-consuming task. Calculating the actual payroll amounts and deductions is equally tedious. It's very easy to make a mistake. Then there's the arduous chore of writing checks and making all the proper quarterly and end-of-year filings for federal, state, and local payroll taxes.

It's not uncommon for small business owners to spend between two and eight hours processing each payroll if they do it manually. Mistakes are costly. Employee morale dips, and employees lose faith in management when you give an employee a check with errors. They may forgive--but they don't forget.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) never forgets and is far less forgiving than employees. File late or with an incorrect amount, and you'll have to pay a payroll penalty. When you consider these penalties and the value of your time, processing payroll internally can be a very costly proposition. Even if you've already outsourced, there may be room for improvement. If you're tired of all the headaches associated with payroll, it may be time to take a fresh look at outsourcing payroll. And, if you've already outsourced payroll, it's worthwhile to consider whether your current service is giving you everything you want.

Taking Control of Payroll

Outsourcing payroll frees you from wasting time, money, and resources on a tedious task that is ancillary to your core business. Getting started with payroll outsourcing is easy enough. You can find the payroll service that's right for you by searching on the web or by asking your colleagues for a  recommendation. In many cases, you can simply enroll online and get started immediately.

The Bottom Line

Making payroll is something that small businesses have to do. But the good news is that from a process perspective, it's getting much easier to "make" payroll. Switching to a new payroll service can alleviate pain and let you focus on what's most important: growing your business with focus and attention, just like you used to do.

By www.oandp.com