The Business sCOOP – Why do I need a payroll provider?
Allyson Brainson: Hi, I’m Allyson Brains with The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod, and I’m here with Julia from Complete Payroll Solutions. And this is the Business sCOOP. Julia, can you tell me about Complete Payroll Solutions.
Julia Furtado-Lavoie: I’m excited to talk about Complete Payroll Solutions today. We offer, of course, payroll solutions and human resource solutions for small, medium, and large businesses throughout New England, Cape Cod, and we service all 50 states actually.
Brainson: That’s great. How do you differ from other providers?
Furtado-Lavoie: Oh, this is my favorite question. What makes Complete Payroll Solutions different? We are the largest of the privately held payroll companies, so we are responsible and report to our clients versus a board of directors like many of the national payroll companies. We put our money into service and customer relations, which is something that our clients value.
Brainson: Julia, why is it relevant for a small business owner to use a payroll provider?
Furtado-Lavoie: That’s a great question, Allyson. I think a lot of people think, “oh, I only have one employee so I don’t need payroll solutions” or “I have a hundred employees with an in-house accounting department, I don’t need a payroll service.” Well, there’s a lot of different reasons why either of those scenarios would need a payroll provider. First, let’s start with the small business. We have many of those here on Cape Cod, whether you have one, 5, 10, 20, 50, you get the message, you do need a payroll provider. One is you can keep it outside of your office, and that does keep things more secure. We can provide solutions such as time and labor, we can provide direct deposit all of these different things. Outside of your office takes up less time for the office staff or if you’re the person doing payroll, giving you more time to take care of your business. However, the most important thing for having a payroll service regardless of your size is that we are responsible for the payment and filing of your payroll taxes and payroll tax returns.
Brainson: Tell me more about the advantages in regards to taxes.
Furtado-Lavoie: Sure, so by having a payroll company act as your third-party administrator, the person that’s actually filing and paying your payroll taxes, you can rest assured that your taxes will be paid accurately and on time. And your quarterly returns will be filed accurately and on time. Many business owners don’t realize that the deadlines of the 15th or the 30th or wherever your tax returns are due for the quarter, are actually very hard and fast deadlines, and they need to be paid by those dates. We get busy. Business owners especially are very busy, so they sometimes forget. Also, we do everything electronically. And now as you know with the IRS, you can’t even make manual tax deposits. Everything is done electronically. You have a record the payroll company is there for you and is actually making those payments for you, and we are responsible for those payments.
Brainson: Other than payroll, how does Complete Payroll Solutions help business owners?
Furtado-Lavoie: That’s a great question, Allyson. Thanks for asking. So, one of the things that’s really popular right now is human resources. We have an HR hotline that employers can subscribe to. It’s part of some of our most popular bundles, and that allows an employer who may be having a question regarding Covid, regarding paid family medical leave, whatever it may be, to call our HR hotline and get an answer to their questions. We also help with handbooks. Every employer, whether they have one employee or a hundred thousand, doesn’t matter, should have a handbook. Because in many cases, anything that happens or is decided with the company the lawyer, the judge, or your employees will revert back to the handbook. So, that’s really important to have to protect the business owner as well. So, that’s important. We also do workers comp on a pay-as-you-go basis. And the most popular thing for construction right now is mobile time and attendance systems. So, this is great when you have employees in the field, they can actually clock in and out at a job. They don’t have to be in the office. Gone are the big kiosks that many employers used in the past. Now they can actually use time and labor on their smartphones. The mobile application offers a lot of flexibility for business owners. For example, two industries that use it quite often are your construction or landscapers as well as cleaning companies. This allows the employees to actually punch in and punch out while they are in the field and what’s really beautiful about this is that it inserts a pin so we can see where the employees are clocking in from. Are they clocking in at the actual job site or are they at the donut shop getting coffees? So, it’s kind of a fun thing to have. It also is great for employee safety and it is really easy to keep track of your employees’ hours. And it feeds into the payroll system.
Brainson: Thank you for joining us today, Julia, and thank you for watching the Business sCOOP brought to you by The Cooperative Bank of Cape Cod.