QuickBooks Payroll ServiceHow to choose the provider you will run.

Three homes for the work, and you pick

You can run payroll inside the bookkeeping software, you can hire a payroll company, or you can use a professional employer organization that handles administration for a fee based on payroll cost. A CPEO is one the IRS has accepted under section 7705. The IRS page describes that arrangement and also says a payroll firm and the client can both have responsible persons for trust-fund tax. Handing the work to a firm does not hand away the duty if you still control the money. Read that sentence twice before you pick a logo because a friend likes it.

We help you choose and we help you connect the choice to the books. We do not process the payroll, we do not become the provider, and we do not keep the only copy of the login. If a sales pitch requires that we be the ones who press pay, it is the wrong pitch for this practice.

Questions worth asking before anyone is paid

Who files Form 941 and Form 940, by name of company, and where will you see the confirmation. What day does the draft hit, and can you move it when cash is thin. What happens to a late deposit, and whose penalty is it. Can you export a summary after you leave them. What does the fee do when you add a third person. Does the price include the new-hire report, or is that a separate button you did not notice. Those questions decide more than a feature grid. Feature grids are written by people who are not the ones opening the letter.

Direct deposit, the tax taken out of pay, and the login stay in your name even when a firm is helping. If a contract puts the employer number into a structure you do not understand, stop and ask what the W-2 will show as the employer. Surprise employers are a miserable January.

Moving, if the first choice was wrong

A provider that does not fit can be left. The move is another setup. Roster, YTD wages if the year is underway, tax deposits already made, and the logins you must not lose in the gap. We will help with that setup. The paydays during the move are still run by a provider, not by us. A gap week with no provider is a week people should be warned about, not a week of handwritten checks from a personal account. Personal checks feel human. They are also how a year loses its W-2s.

If you are choosing for the first time, two written quotes and the answers to the questions above are enough. Bring them. We will say which one leaves you able to see your own filings, which is the trait we care about more than a lower monthly fee. A cheap login you cannot audit is an expensive mystery.

Price is allowed to matter. It is not allowed to be the only sentence. The other sentence is who owns the confirmation when a quarter ends.

The login after you have signed

On the day the contract starts, sign in yourself and find the screen that shows filings. If you cannot find it without the salesperson, you do not have the login you think you have. Ask for the path in writing before the first employee is added. A path you only hear described on a call will be gone the week that person leaves the provider. Your folder should contain the path, the draft day, and the name of the company that files the quarter.