Payroll duties can be a drain on a business’s management, time, and resources. Accounting firms often take responsibility for the payroll duties of their clients, and clients are willing to pay big money for this service. But your accounting firm cannot simply begin advertising payroll services to clients without any of the skills or technology needed to complete those tasks.
If you’d like your accounting firm to offer payroll services, but aren’t sure where to start, we’re here to help. Read on to find out what you need to do to start offering payroll services, and why you must have the latest technology to back it up.
What are Payroll Services?
Payroll tasks relate to the internal administrative duties of a business concerning its employees. Things such as providing employees with pay slips and relevant documentation when they are leaving their position, enrolling employees in pension or medical insurance schemes, as well as calculating your employees’ total tax, and other general HR activities are all considered payroll tasks.
Payroll services are offered by accountants to take the stresses from internal coordinators, while they complete the relevant payroll activities. Your accounting firm may offer full-service payroll completion, or simply complete a portion of the total tasks that need to be done. There are many reasons why businesses of any size might want to outsource their payroll duties, some of which are listed below.
What Are the Advantages of Payroll Services…
As an accountant or manager of an accounting firm, offering payroll services is a win-win situation for you and your clients. There are multiple benefits for both parties that play a big role in why so many accounting firms offer payroll services in the first place.
Here are some of the pros of payroll for both businesses and accountants.
For Business Owners
Save Time (and stress) - Most payroll duties eat into the time higher-ups would prefer to be spending on other tasks. Not to mention, they’re incredibly tedious and any documentation must be proofread multiple times to make sure everything is up to standard. Just by outsourcing payroll tasks, business owners and managers can dedicate their attention to other, more pressing matters.
Eradicate Errors - As above, errors in payroll documents can lead to some big repercussions. Employees not receiving the correct pay, for example, creates another task that’s going to eat up time and peace of mind. By outsourcing to accountants’ payroll services, the risk of errors is greatly diminished. Accountants will also be fully up to date on regulations, meaning compliance will be all but guaranteed.
Data Management - By outsourcing payroll activities to accounting firms with the right technology and duties of care, managers can be safe in the knowledge that their employee data is not only stored correctly and safely but is fully accessible whenever they need it, without taking up space on the internal filing system.
For Accountants
Marketing - Offering state-of-the-art payroll services can be a great way to attract potential clients. As well as this, larger clients who subsequently have to deal with a large number of employees will be eager to outsource their payroll. If you offer it alongside your regular services, you’ll be much more likely to hook customers in with your offerings.
Partnerships - Options for clients to outsource payroll services aren’t just great for attracting new clients. You can offer payroll services to your existing clients to build and consolidate long-term partnerships. They’ll appreciate your proactive attitude to their business, and as they already trust in your skills and services, will be much more likely to take you up on your offer.
Revenue - Of course, offering payroll services to clients means an extra service in general. This means more money from your clients and the chance to increase in value against your competition. Clients will be willing to pay for payroll services for the advantages mentioned above, as well as the fact that you’ll save them money on potential fines for uncompleted duties.
How to Implement the Right Payroll Technology…
Now that you know why clients might outsource their payroll duties, let’s take a look at how you can complete those duties accurately and efficiently.
Most accounting firms will use dedicated payroll software. This software will have everything they need to generate and store relevant documents, as well as send this data to the right places. For example, payroll software gives accountants the capability to work out an employee’s salary based on their attendance and taxes, without leaving their desks and rifling through timesheets.
There are many types of payroll service software available to accountants, each with a slightly different user interface and functions. While it’s beneficial to try a few and see which works for your accounting firm this throws up more problems than it does solutions. Mostly because if these software providers don’t offer free trials, it’ll be relatively expensive and time-consuming to switch out one for another every month.
So, since you can’t try every payroll software, how do you find the best one for your firm? To find the best payroll software for your accounting firm, you’ll first need to investigate your existing clients who may need payroll services, and what they might require your firm to do for them. Remember, to complete payroll services your client will need to alter how they do things on their end too, so it’s best to at least discuss with your client their plans and hopes for outsourcing these duties.
What to Discuss with Potential Payroll Clients
- How many employees do they have?
Obviously, more employees mean a larger payroll, which in turn means more work for you and your staff. Be sure to find out whether your accounting firm can handle the potential workload, to give you a better idea of what payroll services you can offer to any one client.
- How do they record staff attendance?
If a client is still using paper, payroll services will help them move to the modern world with digital attendance tracking. Otherwise, there’ll be a lot of timesheets to look through. That doesn’t mean this isn’t a big move for some businesses though, so making sure they’re up to speed on what outsourcing their payroll services means will make the transition a little easier.
- What benefits are their employees are receiving?
If a potential client’s employees have pension funds, insurance, or student loans, this will affect their final pay often on an individual basis, and this will influence how you complete your payroll duties. While this isn’t a deciding factor in what clients to offer payroll services to, it can be useful to know the ins and outs of the tasks you’ll be completing.
- Do they have requirements for staff interface?
A great way to attract clients with your payroll services is to give them the option to show their employees’ personalized attendance and pay data through an app or staff interface. Some payroll software offers this opportunity, and it’s often a big selling point for any firm wanting to attract larger clients. However, as stated above, this will affect the scope of the changes your clients will have to make when outsourcing to you, so you’ll need to account for the time and resources they’ll require to do this.
A Note on Due Diligence and What’s Best for Your Firm
Just because your accounting firm now offers payroll services, does not mean that you have to offer them to every single client, especially if that might put a drain on your firm. If during a discussion with a client, you find that your accounting firm doesn’t yet have the capabilities to complete such many payroll duties, you should hold off on offering that client the full package.
While payroll services remain a fantastic way for accountants to attract and solidify partnerships, instead you can offer clients and potential clients a smaller range of payroll services for the time being. Or, suggest to them your thoughts about their requirements, and point them in the right direction for what exactly they’ll need. This is perfect for existing clients who you don’t want to disappoint, as they’ll appreciate your continuing care for their operations.
In general, if your accounting firm can handle regular services for a business, you’re more than likely to be able to handle their payroll responsibilities, too.
Why Is it Important to Keep Up to Date with Payroll Technology?
- Keep Up with Competition - falling behind on technology means someone else is going to take your spot, and now they not only offer more than you but are so familiar with new technology they’ll be ready to jump to the next advancement when it’s released. Not keeping up with technology is a problem that quickly becomes compounded, leaving your firm far behind your counterparts and struggling to catch up.
- Marketing Advantage - following on from the above, if your firm boasts the latest in payroll technology, as well as all the benefits listed by your chosen software, you can use this in your marketing materials. Every added function your new payroll software offers your firm is another benefit you can offer to your customers. This can also help you manage the budget for and potential profit from certain payroll software.
- Take Advantage of Improvements - updates to payroll software usually include general improvements, alongside more efficient methods to complete manual processes. This will give you and your employees the chance to streamline duties even more, as well as focus on creative ways to complete and display payroll information for your clients.
- Maximum Protection - using aging payroll software may hinder or completely halt operations because it’ll be more likely to come up against issues. This can put your communication with your client and their employees at risk, as well as jeopardize the security of their data. To make sure you’re on top of both integration and data protection, up-to-date payroll software is a must.
Conclusion
Offering the latest in payroll services is one of the easiest and most scalable ways to enhance your accounting firm. By offering payroll services to your existing clients, you can consolidate partnerships and offer much more than the general forecasts and tax returns. By providing clients with accurate and helpful data, they can better manage their human resources and finance departments.
If you’re looking to expand your accounting service, the latest in payroll technology can also help your firm attract new clients. By selecting the correct payroll software for both your firm and clients, you can build upon the initial functions and services you might choose to offer by advertising larger packages to more valuable clients.
Whatever your aims with using payroll software, it’s vitally important that to get the most benefits for your firm and your clients, you keep up to date with new advancements in this area. This will benefit your firm’s growth by keeping you ahead of your competitors and prepared to take on any new technology that’s released. It will also benefit your clients by providing them with the latest data insights in real-time, and giving their employees increased agency when it comes to their pay.
Sources
https://www.sage.com/en-gb/blog/payroll-services-practice-provide/
https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/accounting/payroll-accounting/
https://www.adp.com/resources/articles-and-insights/articles/o/outsourcing-payroll.aspx
https://www.xero.com/uk/accountant-bookkeeper-guides/payroll-services/
https://immedis.com/blog/using-technology-to-increase-the-power-of-payroll/
https://narrasoft.com/accounting-technology/
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