How to offer payroll as an easy add-on service

posted in Uncategorized

Guest author: David Hassall of DH Business Support runs 150 business payrolls in Xero and operates payroll services on behalf of other accountants. In this blog, he explains how Payroll in Xero has helped his practice create an easy add-on service for clients

Payroll: it’s a service every business needs whether they employ one person or 1,000. Although it’s an important aspect of running a business, there’s still a stigma surrounding it. For us, payroll is a great add-on service that generates extra revenue and helps us develop a deeper and more long-term relationship with our clients.

Our clients don’t want to get employee wages wrong – they want reassurance from an expert that the correct amount will be paid. In reality, by putting the right payroll and accounting software together you can get 99 percent of the job done for you.

If your clients haven’t asked about payroll, here are my top five reasons why you should start the conversation.

1) Help your clients generate more accurate information with the Xero Me app

Xero Me is an employee app that works with Xero Payroll. Using their mobile or tablet, employees or administrators can track time using timesheets, mark holidays on a calendar and generate payslips.

The app means Xero is not a hard sell to our clients – not only does it look cool, but they gain the satisfaction of having all their important information in one place. It also means employees and employers benefit from more detailed reporting of their day-to-day activities. Businesses know that the information is going to be more accurate and there’s less chance of employees being under or overpaid.

Although it’s a time investment to get business owners and their staff used to keeping timesheets and monitoring their holidays and sick leave using an app, ultimately, it means less manual data entry. Without using Payroll in Xero, you have to input data from other spreadsheets which means more time, more inefficiencies.

By getting clients to do the data entry themselves, when it comes to running payroll, our role is more about verifying information, which is far better from an accountant’s point of view.

2) Create a better customer experience by offering Payroll in Xero alongside accountancy, bookkeeping and tax services

Payroll is an extra service that clients always need, along with bookkeeping, accounts and tax. We’ve found that most companies we work with will need it as an additional service, even if it’s just for a single director.

With all these services under one roof and one point of contact, it keeps things simple. Your client doesn’t need to go to third-party service providers, you get more fees and can offer a better client experience. If you’ve got a good system in place, payroll is an easy add on service to offer.

3) Achieve greater cost efficiencies for your clients

If your client is concerned about outlay, it’s worth taking a look at the facts and figures first. Xero Payroll may cost £5 per month but in reality it will generate much more than this in cost efficiencies through the amount of time it saves – even more if both the practice and client use Payroll in Xero.

4) Help your clients make better business decisions with real-time information

Once payroll has been processed, you know that you’re working with the most up-to-date information.

We run regular management reports for our clients and knowing that the reports, facts and figures are based on real-time information has a real knock on effect for decision making. With everything up-to-date, it’s far easier for our clients to make decisions using the information in the reports, rather than waiting around for someone to manually input payroll figures.

5) Talk to your clients about switching to Payroll in Xero for the new financial year

With just a couple of days before the new UK financial year starts, now’s a good time to talk to clients about switching over to use Payroll in Xero. First and foremost we do an initial assessment for every client – switching over to the new system means a fresh start for the new financial year.

The post How to offer payroll as an easy add-on service appeared first on Xero Blog.