Save Your Client Money: Now is the Time to Switch your Client to a New Online Payroll Service 1

Hi there, Linda Artisani from the Accountants Law Lab. Today I wanna talk about saving your clients some money and why now is a good time to switch your client to a new online payroll service. It's one of the things we look at and we do data migrations and we try not to change the world on our clients, but then as they become your client and you work with them a little longer, we start to look at the little pieces that can be changed and maybe improved. And payroll is definitely one of them. You think about payroll with your client attorneys, that's usually their biggest or largest expense. And it's also an area when you start to have the conversations, they're very nervous over, they are afraid of falling out of compliance, making sure they wanna make sure that their taxes are done and done properly. They get really nervous about making sure they're paid on time. And with the payroll service, it's cheaper than us doing the work. Let's just start there. Also, in the world we live in today, remote workers— a lot of these firms have a lot of remote workers in different states. So you want to look at that. And we can't know every rule of every state, which is another reason why you want to look at a good payroll service. My personal preference, because we have clients that are using big firms, they're, they're using Advanced But this also works for the smaller firm is QuickBooks Online Payroll. Why? It's integrated. It's right inside the product. That's my favorite feature about it. You don't have to tell the client, oh, you got to go out to this website and then it's going to push a journal entry in, which really is confusing to the client. You put it right inside. It's right in QuickBooks, right in the left-hand navbar, Payroll. A lot of our clients will do their own payroll and they'll run their own payroll. It's usually a lot of salaried people and then a few people that are on hourly. So it's great that they can just go right in the product. I also love that you can pay your, your contractors through it as well. So it's another great feature, saves your client time, but it also can save your client money. Another reason we love QuickBooks Online Payroll, and we like the Elite version for a lot of reasons, for the HR dedicated person. One of the other reasons we really love QuickBooks Online Payroll is because besides it being in product, If you use the Elite version, you're getting all the bells and whistles. We've already gone through a few payroll runs. Most likely your clients run some payrolls, they're gonna marry that up. And if you switch from one product to another, they're gonna do all that back work for you. You don't have to do it. It's like, yes, set it, let them do it, and they make sure it's compliant and it's accurate. And as far as compliance goes, there's a feature in the Elite level that is a protection for any penalties and fines. Intuit will actually reimburse the client if there's a mistake on the payroll and and then you have to— and they have to pay a fine. They don't have to pay the fine. It's up to $25,000. It's a pretty big number. And that's included. And that's one of the benefits, I think, for using payroll for small businesses. This is one of the benefits of having that payroll service. It's the peace of mind. This is a selling feature. When you're talking to your client, find out how nervous they are about payroll, and then you can let them know that you have an option for them that's gonna give them that peace of mind. I think that's the most important thing. Outsourcing payroll. A lot of firms are so used to having the payroll inside, and especially if they came up with like a desktop product. If you outsource the payroll to a good payroll provider, it's gonna have that peace of mind that the payroll will be run on time. You're gonna run it for them, and then you're going to make sure that the taxes are paid in there and the forms are filed, so the client doesn't ever have to worry or lose a night's sleep over this. The data is— the data is more secure if you use a payroll service, especially an online one. It's more secure. That money's been invested in that product to make sure that that data is kept in a proper place and in the, all the numbers are protected and masked properly. And you have that expert knowledge to help them set it up. But then if you are using Elite, it will be set up for you. And then the cost to the client. So the cost can be different when you start to compare them. It's not apples to apples, it's apples to oranges. You wanna look at, is the payroll service charged per payroll run or is it charged per month? Is there extra fees at the end of the year? Those are things that you can find that something seems like it's such an affordable plan and then you look at it and it's really not. You want them to understand that this is the fee per month. That's how QuickBooks Online works, set fee. And you, you don't have to worry about inflated, more cost at the end of the year when there's extra taxes that need to be filed. So you want to look at that. You want to look at the fee per employee. You want to understand what's included in the service. So with Elite, you have the benefits included— so you— not included in the service, but you have the option to add the benefits, and you have the option to have somebody there, an HR person that can help you decide. That's so confusing, even for us. It's not what we really do for our specialty. So you'll have somebody that you can lean on and talk to. You can also do that research for your client as well. We've helped our clients look at how much they should be paying an employee, what services or what extra benefits are there, 401(k), 401(k), health insurance. But then they can help guide you through all that and navigate the waters of that, which can be very confusing. And then it's in the product, workers' comp insurance. You know, you need it. How do you get it? You can get it with a pay-as-you-go plan where their product will actually help you kind of work through cash flow if you're paying as the payroll happens. And it actually helps at audit time. It makes the audits a lot easier because they're using the data inside of QuickBooks. That's really big and helpful. Payroll taxes. As an employer, you are responsible for withholding the correct payroll taxes. And so as the advisor, we're helping with this. And with these products using a payroll service, you don't have to worry about that. That's there. So if a payroll rate changes at a state, that you're not, you know, that familiar with. This is part of the service you're buying. It's actually cheaper to use a payroll service than then do your payroll yourself. And I, I try to explain that. They'll help you with, you know, you're really responsible for garnishments. If there's any employees that have a garnishment or a court-ordered garnishment, they— this can happen. And child support, if the client's, you know, your client's employee is behind on child support, it's another debt that Or another debt that the court's ordered you to pay. If you receive an earnings withholding order, you have to act quickly. These are things you have to do for your client. This is part of that upper level service you're providing. So this is something that you have to have conversations with. They have to be able to give you those things. You want to have a portal that you could upload tax changes. It's super simple with QuickBooks Online. And then you change the rate. They have the ability for you to be able to change the rate. You don't have to wait on hold. And this is another big piece that I think is lost. And this is something that Intuit worked really hard to improve is the customer service. And you wanna know, is this service you wanna put your client in 24/7? Is it got set hours? I remember one time we had a payroll company that I worked with, with a client, and the payroll provider wasn't available at a very late time of the day on a Friday. And the client was very upset because they needed to run payroll. They were gonna have very upset client, very upset employees. So you wanna make sure that that payroll service is good. And I can tell you honestly, I have had great service from Intuit with payroll, with the payroll support. It's been great. I've had a good, good amount of times I've had to reach out for different reasons with different clients and they've been great. You can have 'em call you back, you can set an appointment, you can go with the chat. That flexibility in my schedule has really helped. I love the callback feature. I'm, I'm so glad they've added that. So my recommendation is QuickBooks Online Payroll. And for our clients, definitely Elite is where you wanna go. There's just, it's got competitive pricing. You don't wanna nickel and dime and just look at the things that are important. My last tip on this as I'm going through this, and I've got a detailed article that this is attached to, and with everything that's been going on with LastPass and everything else, you wanna make sure your payroll product has multi-factor authentication. It's a big mouthful. Acronym is MFA. Any product that you're using, you wanna make sure you have that to keep the product safe from hackers. It's just an extra level of security if it's ever offered. I know it takes time out of your day to get a code, but it's well worth it for peace of mind to make sure that you are protected. Your client's payroll is protected. And the client's Social Security numbers, all that's got that protection. You really want a product that has that extra layer of security. And that's really most of the high-level things I wanted to talk about in the video. Like I said, more detail is in the article. I think the last thing I wanted to mention is, if you are a pro advisor, you can get special pricing for your client that you can either pass along to them, or you can get a little stipend for yourself. It's a little perk if you want to, you know, you sell it at a different price, and then you— they send you back a little bit, a little piece of it. And that's another perk that you can, you can offer to your— you, that you get for yourself for the work that you have to do. So it's something to think about. You know, there's a lot of errors in, in, inside of payroll that can happen. It's something your, your, your client's very nervous about. So put their mind at ease as that trusted advisor. I hope that helped. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. And on that note, I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful week. Bye now. Bye.