John H. Higgins, CPA
The CPA Technology Advisor
August 2004

Overview

SurePayroll Review:

"The best of times, the worst of times." That's what summertime means for a lot of accounting firms. On one hand, you're enjoying the opportunity to relax a bit from the grind of the proverbial 'busy season,' collecting payments for all those tax returns and year-end services. Generally, things are looking good for the practice.

On the other hand, you're probably starting to think about preparing for the next busy season. And you're probably seeing all that is happening in the marketplace for accountant services and wondering what you can do to better position your firm for growth and profitability in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

Determining your firm's approach to client payroll services can serve as a bell weather of your overall strategy for the future direction of your practice. Theoretically, a small accounting firm has unlimited opportunities to expand and enhance client services. However, from a practical perspective, the choices boil down to a few basic strategic options: increase the volume and profitability of traditional client tax and accounting services or develop and leverage niche expertise in a particular service, industry or market.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to do both simultaneously. This review is not about helping you make that choice, but it may enlighten you about how far payroll systems have evolved in recent years and reveal the potential they offer you to enhance and improve your client services and increase the profitability of your firm.

I encourage you to carefully consider the opportunity to embrace payroll services. Offering payroll services to your clients is an excellent example of how you can leverage technology to generate more revenue with less labor and strengthen your client relationships by offering a service that they will benefit from on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis. Take a close look at the breadth and depth of the payroll systems reviewed here to see just how far these packages have come along.

For those of you who are not interested in developing a full-service payroll offering for your entire client base, but would rather just implement a simpler solution that would allow you to offer payroll as a boutique style service for a select group of clients, we will be reviewing payroll software suited for that level of deployment in our September 2004 issue.

In an effort to provide more consistent pricing among the service bureau style payroll products reviewed here, we have defined the following prototypical firm and asked the vendors to provide pricing information should the following firm want to buy their product. An accounting firm that needs to process approximately 50 payrolls with the following demographics:

• Weekly, biweekly, semi-monthly and monthly payrolls
• An average of 2,000 to 2,500 checks per month
• The need for MICR encoding for printing checks on plain paper
• Employees in MI, OH, NY and CA
• Tax compliance & deposits handled by vendor (if available)
• Smallest payroll is 5 employees, largest is 150 employees

Review Attributes

The natural tendency when evaluating a software application is to focus on a detailed review of the features and functions. While this is an important aspect of the evaluation process, there are two other primary attributes that you should focus on in your first pass at screening potential solutions: the deployment model and the accountant's role in the vendor's solution.

The deployment options boil down to two basic strategies: a PC-based system designed to be implemented on your firm's internal systems or a web-hosted solution that allows you to outsource the required hardware, software and administration services and leverage the benefits of a web-based application, which include anytime, anywhere access. Regarding the accountant's role, the thing to look for is whether or not the vendor offers an accountant-centered model that allows the firm to be the primary face to the client while providing the payroll service. Can you privately label the system while utilizing the payroll vendor as a back office service provider? Or is the system "accountant friendly," meaning that the vendor offers the service/solution directly to the end-user payroll customer and accommodates the role of the accountant as an advisor with the ability to access reports from the system. The distinction is significant in terms of its impact on your payroll service strategy.

In order to maintain as much consistency in our reviews as practical, the payroll software solutions were rated on the following five areas: Learning Curve; Breadth & Depth of Features & Services; Reporting Capabilities; Integration/Import & Export; and Customer Service & Support.

We also looked at the vendor's history and vision in terms of the company's experience, resources (personnel and financial) and reputation in the profession and the extent to which they are focused on payroll services. We also considered how the vendor approaches the accountant's role in the payroll service delivery model.

The user interface is the primary attribute evaluated to rate the system's Learning Curve. If the software has an easy-to-follow and intuitive interface, it received the highest rating. On the other hand, if it is not readily apparent how and where to find features and functions in the system, even though the feature set may be complete, we assessed a lower rating. This is a key factor to evaluate because of the intensive interaction of the system that is required by your staff and, in some cases, your clients.

The functionality of a payroll system is a key characteristic to evaluate because it will directly influence the range of clients to which you will be able to provide payroll services, as well as the scope of the services you will be able to offer. Functionality is measured in large part by the Depth & Breadth of Features & Services. How many options does the package offer? Does it provide features that meet the needs of a growing company such as EFTPS (Electronic Federal Tax Payment System)? MICR (Magnetic Character Ink Recording) and Direct Deposit? An extended set of these types of features resulted in a very high ranking in this category.

The following questions all relate to the rating of the software's Reporting capability. What types of reports does the system produce? What is the content? How are they designed? What flexibility is offered in the sorting, selection and design of the report contents? Integration/Import & Export assesses the packages ability to integrate with other software applications, such as client write-up, the client's accounting system, HRIS (Human Resource Information Systems) and other applications to minimize data entry and optimize the potential to leverage the information flow into and out of the payroll system.

The true measure of a software's value is not limited to the program itself, it is heavily influenced by the vendor's ability to help you use and apply it. All it takes is one frustrating afternoon of system problems on a day when multiple client payrolls need to get out the door and you can't get the help you need from the vendor to leave you with a long-lasting distaste for the entire system. We have done our best to rate the vendor's ability to deliver Customer Service & Support, but at the end of the day you need to conduct your own due diligence on this attribute and talk to a few client references about their experience with the vendor in this area. It is one thing for a vendor to say what kind of support they offer, it is quite another to deliver it. We have included the vendor's direct support of the accountant in terms of marketing and practice aids to help establish a payroll service bureau style offering in this category.

SUREPAYROLL REVIEW

SurePayroll, Inc. - SurePayroll.com

877-954-7873 www.surepayroll.com

SurePayroll provides a Custom Payroll Service designed to handle companies with 100 or fewer employees for accountants wishing to offer service bureau style payroll to clients. SurePayroll is a privately held company located in Skokie, Illinois. Their customer base has grown to over 10,000 businesses, with payroll payments totaling in excess of $2.5 billion in 2003. The company's focus is on providing payroll services for the small business marketplace through an online payroll model. One of the more attractive features of their business model is the option to link their service to your web site and offer it as a privately labeled service of your firm.

Pricing for the prototypical firm outlined on page 26 is as follows: For weekly payrolls, the charge for accountants is $16.16 per pay period and $1.12 for each employee. For biweekly or semi- monthly, the cost is $24.25 per pay period and $1.35 per employee. For monthly payrolls, the cost is $36.85 per pay period and $1.35 per employee. These prices are 10% off SurePayroll's standard pricing. Accountants are welcome to customize their own pricing. These charges include all tax filings and deposits, direct deposit for each employee, and complete online access to reports and payroll history. The program can also handle tax filings for employees in all states, including MI, OH, NY and CA.

SurePayroll enables the accountant or company to print checks off their custom payroll account. However, these would need to be on pre-printed checks. Also available is a check delivery service for the price of $2 per check and $15 for delivery. Again, direct deposit is included for no extra charge. The only additional charge is for W-2s: $27 for the company and $3.15 per employee.

LEARNING CURVE - 5 Stars

SurePayroll offers an intuitive, easy-to-follow interface with the appropriate level of prompts and reminders. They also provide an Internet enrollment system called SureStart that will walk you through every step of the process online.

BREADTH & DEPTH OF FEATURES & SERVICES - 5 Stars

SurePayroll offers numerous features and services, some of which include the following:

SureView preview system allows you to preview payrolls before deposits are made. SureReminder e-mail reminders are sent to customers two days before payroll is due with a link to directly login to the system. Employees can receive payday e-mails with a link to view and print pay stubs online. Option available to print checks and stubs from local printer and check stock. The system maintains a continuous schedule of past and future payroll dates extending out to the end of the next fiscal year. SureCheck provides the customer with a clear view of year-to-date payroll totals for each employee. W2 Preview allows customers to preview and correct discrepancies with year-to-date information for each employee before the end of the year. REPORTING CAPABILITIES - 5 Stars The system provides the ability to print reports from the current and prior calendar year. Report selection includes the following: payroll report, pay stubs, 401k, Benefits, Department Summary, Department Detail and Cash Required. You can also print W-2s, W-3s, 940s and State annual tax forms for the prior year.

INTEGRATION / IMPORT & EXPORT - 4 Stars

SurePayroll has recently announced a partnership with Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. to offer worker's compensation to its customers. As well, direct integration with QuickBooks is provided. SurePayroll will handle all tax filings and payments as part of their group.

CUSTOMER SERVICE & SUPPORT - 5 Stars

In addition to the typical technical support services, the company will customize the payroll application for your needs. A data privacy and security statement is published on the web site as well as a directory of SurePayroll Partners by state.

SUMMARY

SurePayroll provides a nice balance between leveraging state-of-the-art Internet technology with a relatively concise feature and reporting set that would appear to accommodate the majority of payroll situations for small and mid-sized businesses.

2004 OVERALL RATING -

Copyright © 2004. The CPA Technology Advisor.