Payroll is an integral part of every company, no matter the size. And the recurring, constant demand for payroll typically requires a dedicated team. Small business owners leading growing companies are likely to already find themselves saddled with more than enough responsibility long before arriving at the tedious, repetitive nature of payroll.
Outsourcing to professionals is one of the best ways to have payroll done promptly and correctly.
Amongst other, more highly-touted perks, lies an under-represented benefit of outsourcing payroll: utilizing an outside payroll processing company boosts security.
Improved data security
When you opt to do your own payroll, your employees’ data is your responsibility to be protected. For smaller businesses, this can be an expensive and complex issue. Data security is only as strong as its weakest link.
In-house payroll may expose employee data in the office, potentially revealing sensitive information to coworkers and constituting a breach of trust, or worse. On top of that, issues of identity theft and even fraud can be very difficult to prevent without the proper systems in place.
Payroll processing companies have these systems in place and typically store data on expensive, highly secure servers. These companies also use highly sophisticated encryption technology and run frequent backups.
Outsourcing your payroll also decreases the change for data or documents to become lost – something that can easily happen in a small department with fewer resources or a less sophisticated system. Backups on CD’s or USBs can go missing or be corrupted and end up irrecoverable.
Government compliance
When it comes to taxes and labor laws, government compliance regulations can be a complex, tangled web of difficulty for those who are not already dedicated to staying familiar with the intricacies. Regulators are not likely to overlook even simple mistakes.
Coupled with the responsibilities of running a business, this can be a lot for an employer to understand. From the legalese, surrounding hours worked to overtime pay and beyond, even an honest mistake could come back to haunt you.
A payroll company maintains an expert staff to prevent these honest mistakes and ensure that all government compliance requirements are met in a timely manner.
Payroll processing professionals are well-versed in labor laws. They catch and eliminate mistakes you may have made with a careful system of checks and balances. This enables their team to implement the appropriate corrections. This is hands-down the safest way to keep your payroll by the book.
Conclusion
Security is more than a good password and a careful concern for data protection. Just as you wouldn’t keep your life savings under your mattress, you shouldn’t keep your payroll in-house without a dedicated team. In-house payroll by anyone lacking payroll expertise is an accident waiting to happen. An outside payroll processing company constitutes the safest way to protect your company from all types of breaches and regulatory troubles while shifting the burden of maintenance to professionals, giving you and your employees more time and the peace of mind to focus on what your business does best.
