re: Outsourcing Payroll... Yay or Nay?

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Yeah, those people shouldn't be CFO. It's pretty cut and dry in my mind.

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In 14 we had a record year with a million more in Sales than we have ever had. At this point, I was in Sales and managing Accounts Receivable. We had 1 salary employee retire and another quit in this time frame. I took on tasks from both of these employees during a record year and still only received a cost of living raise, the same as everyone else. I was promoted this year and named CFO in waiting, and not given a raise even though I cleaned up all of our accounts while securing discounts from vendors. No one got a raise despite having a top 3 year. I see a CFO that makes good money and I see a CEO that pockets employees salaries when they quit. We have 3 less employees than when I started and the company is pulling in 4 million more a year.

I stated earlier, if outsourcing payroll is extremely cost efficient, I hope to find the right source and save the company a ton of money. If not, I hope to keep it in house, because it would be another bargaining tool and item on my list of job duties once I negotiate salary. Our CFO is also HR, he handles insurance, is the owner's personal banker, and many other things that 2-3 other employees should be hired to do. Our CEO isn't going to hire them though. Yes I'm looking out for myself, but I would never do anything unethical in the line of this company.

We have a 45 person accounting form, and WE outsource our payroll to Paychex. Further, we reccomend to every client that has payroll, that they either outsource it, or use an assisted function like QuickBooks Assisted Payroll, up to 500 employees. After 500 employees, there are some in-house solutions that are pretty good to use because you probably have a significant HR function that can handle payroll as a regular duty.

Payroll sucks, and it's just easier for us to go online 2x a month, spend a couple of minutes entering in data, and letting someone else handle all the reporting, tax payments, deductions, etc.

Payroll is not hard but it does take some time. There are two questions you need to ask yourself.

For the amount of time you or someone else spends on payroll, can there be a more productive use of your time?

If so, is the value of what you would instead do with that time, more than the cost of outsourcing payroll? For most small companies, that time spent doing payroll can be instead used to bring in new business, work on clients, work on planning, etc.

You're going to be CFO and can't do a cost/benefit analysis?