If you’re on the hunt for a new payroll provider, it can be challenging to decide the best fit for your business. From your company culture needs, to size and software capabilities—sorting through options to find an ideal match gets overwhelming. Here are some critical steps you can take to simplify the process when evaluating a payroll provider.

Step 1: Determine A Culture Match

Organizational culture is your business’s fingerprint, and each business is entirely unique from one another. This culture, facilitated from within, is usually a major factor in all facets of decision-making—including payroll.

When hunting for the best payroll provider for your business, step one is to assess the alignment of your organizational cultures. Your payroll outsourcing partners need to promote your business’s mission and care about your employees. The shared values between organizations will create a deeper understanding of your goals and a relationship centered on mutual benefit. Whereas with larger payroll companies, your business could never hear from the same service representative twice. This lack of familiarity with your account needs could be detrimental to your own employees.

Step 2: Decide What Software Features You Need

A major step in evaluating a potential payroll provider is deciding what your software needs entail. Do you need the basics? Or more extensive payroll software? When assessing various providers and payroll software options, it’s important to factor in the ease of use, cost of the software and customer service availability. With a plethora of software options to choose from, considering implementation time can help you decide which payroll service plan to choose. Sometimes shorter implementation time is not always a good thing—you might be left with too many questions, a poor launch and little understanding of the software itself.

Your payroll software should not stop short. It should be capable of meeting all your human capital management needs! Going beyond the basics, software with features like time and attendance, benefit enrollment and employee self-service will help your organization complete payroll and human resources tasks efficiently. When it comes to picking a lean or robust package for payroll, less is not more!

Step 3: See If They Will Meet Your Post-Implementation Expectations

Understanding what post-implementation payroll operations look like is paramount during your evaluation process. Does the provider you hope to work with have a good reputation when it comes to customer service? If a payroll provider seems hands off and aloof, they will not be ready to quickly help if software problems arise. Communication between you and your payroll provider should be consistent and convenient. Ensuring you have local support with intimate knowledge of your goals and account can make a difference when you need additional assistance.

Complete and total accuracy when it comes to payroll processing should be number one on the list of post-implementation expectations. The provider you are assessing must maintain the highest standards of compliance when it comes to your payroll. It’s important to fully understand the capabilities of the payroll provider you plan to work with, how often they have failed to remain error free and how they can rectify mistakes. If your provider or their associated software have made too many errors, it should be easy to assess other options.

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