Looking for online payroll service solutions

July 30, 2009 10:08 PM

Looking for an online payroll services solution for myself and two part time employees.

I am self employed, a great deal of my income comes from one client in particular, but I have trickles of money coming in from multiple areas. I have two part time employees. I'm finding it really stressful budgeting for taxes, and would like to just incorporate, get a business bank account where all the incoming would go, and just have a payroll service cut myself and my two part time employees a check once a month, while taking out all local, state, federal taxes.

My questions:

1) Does anyone have a recommendation for who to use here? Google results are tough/spammy, I've been looking at surepayroll.com and will probably contact them with my situation, but would love to here other recommendations. I really want a solution where I could manage things entirely online if possible.

2) My part time employees are definitely independent contractors (they set their own hours, how much they work, etc. they meet all the qualifications), would a payroll services company issue them a check every month without taking out taxes? How much of a burden on me would it be to have the payroll service deduct their taxes? These are family members so I wouldn't mind making their lives easier if it wasn't crazy expensive.

3) Do I have the chain of events correct on what I need to do? Am I missing anything? (i.e. Incorporate so I have an EID, open business bank account, switch all incoming payments to business bank account, set up payroll services, relax as life gets way easier)

Thanks for any help you can give!

posted by imabanana to work & money (6 comments total)

I'm a general proponent of keeping things simple. It might be easier to just figure out a fool-proof way to budget for taxes?
posted by beingresourceful at 3:05 AM on July 31

We have a domestic employee. We use Breedlove and have absolutely zero complaints. We found them via word of mouth.
posted by plinth at 3:22 AM on July 31

beingresourceful: Budgeting has always been a weakness of mine, so I'm just being realistic here and looking to keep myself from future pain. If I can pay $x a month and not have to think about it I'd be thrilled.
posted by imabanana at 3:26 AM on July 31

I used PayCycle in the past and loved it. Dead simple. Just setup the contractors/employees and enter hours. Direct deposit is available along with emailed paystubs. IIRC, it was like $10/employee/month.
posted by cdmwebs at 5:23 AM on July 31

You don't need to incorporate to get an EID or Fed tax number. You just have to have a licensed business. There are lots of reasons to incorporate, but is it not required to get those IDs.

I used surepayroll for a couple of years, it did everything i needed, full time, part time, contractor, DD, advances, holiday/sick, 1099s, expenses, mulitple pay rates, etc. Back then it was $17/mo flat rate.
posted by buzzv at 7:28 PM on July 31

I work for a small business and we also use PayCycle. It works out really well for us.
posted by girlstyle at 10:03 PM on July 31