By the time small business owners discover us, they’ve usually already researched or worked with the large, national payroll providers. These aren’t traditional payroll services, but a hands-off software as a service that makes you manually input your payroll data.
Since we’re a more traditional client-facing service, prospective clients may wonder why they still need to input their payroll data. Why isn’t this something we do for them? What does CSI do?
At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we’ve worked with small business finances for over 50 years. That means we’ve gotten a lot of questions about the differences between us and the big guys, including:
- Why do I need to input my payroll data?
- What does CSI’s payroll service do for me?
- What are the benefits of working with a small payroll company vs. the large providers?
Why Clients Input Their Own Payroll Data
First, let’s address what data we’re talking about. To run your payroll, you need to let your payroll specialist know these details for each employee:
- Hours worked
- Commissions and bonuses earned
- Reimbursements needed
- Deduction amount changes or additions
- Other data for unique situations, if needed
You keep track of these things as a business owner regardless – you just need to input them for your payroll specialist to ensure they’re working with accurate data.
After all, you’re not paying a payroll service to do simple calculations like adding up a time card or figuring out a commission amount. Let them handle the more advanced details!
What CSI Handles for You
The focus of what a payroll specialist does is find the right amount of tax (based on your pay items and deduction items) so we can pay employees accurately, then make tax payments and handle tax filings for you. We move money where it needs to go, all while keeping you in compliance on federal, state, and local levels.
That’s just what a payroll run looks like! Payroll specialists are also critical to successful onboarding and setup, plus making a variety of changes and managing features.
Even a client-facing payroll service has advanced software these days. The software, when used correctly under the guidance of a payroll specialist, can handle additional things like tracking paid time off (PTO) and timekeeping.
Differences Between Large and Small Payroll Companies
As we mentioned in the introduction, the biggest difference between a large provider and a small provider like CSI Accounting & Payroll is that they’re a software as a service, and we’re a more traditional client-facing service.
Let’s discuss what those mean.
Large Providers: Software as a Service
When you work with the big guys, you’re just leasing their software with a tax engine in it. They start by giving you a demo – a brief training on how to use their software to process your own payroll – and then they’re hands-off.
First, you may need to set up your own pay items and deduction items. Then, when you input your payroll data, it automatically handles paying your taxes and employees.
Here’s where the problems can start. That automation is ruined if the system isn’t set up correctly; garbage in is garbage out. Taxes won’t be calculated correctly. Pay amounts won’t be right. You will have a mess on your hands, especially if the issue isn’t caught right away.
So, what happens when you encounter this issue – or any issue? You don’t have a direct contact, so you call the support center and wait in a phone queue. When someone answers, it will be a representative who can only help objectively because they’re not familiar with your business.
There’s nothing wrong with working with a large provider; you just need to make sure you know exactly what you’re doing. Many small businesses do work with large providers! However, once they encounter an issue, they start to value the hands-on customer service that only small providers can offer.
Small Providers: Traditional Client-Facing Service
As a small payroll provider, a majority of our clients start working with us after poor experiences with the large providers.
When you work with CSI, we’re familiar with your account and you will have a dedicated specialist with longevity in our company. Our goal is to be a consultant for you – not just tech support!
We prioritize understanding your payroll before setting up your account for you since we want things to run smoothly. Once, we had a client come from a large provider who had incorrectly set up some deductions. They cloned one and didn’t adjust how the duplicates were taxed. Over time, this resulted in major issues. That’s why it’s important to have someone to call, text, or email for help if you’re not sure something is completely correct.
At CSI, we want to set up any new pay or deduction categories to ensure the tax treatment is done properly. This will give you peace of mind knowing the onus is on us to make sure there are no tax discrepancies.
That’s not all! Learn more about the differences in customer service, reputation, pricing, services, and local law expertise between large and small payroll providers here.
Partner With a Client-Facing Payroll Service!
Now that you know why you need to input your payroll data, what CSI handles for you, and the benefits of working with a small service like CSI, are you ready to check out our services?
To see if we can be a good fit for your business, click the button below for a free consultation:
Not ready to talk? That’s okay! First, learn more about our payroll pricing, which is comparable to the big guys.
