You’ll hear the phrase ‘I don’t do payroll’ from many accounting, bookkeeping, and finance firms. Why? Because it’s a time-consuming and tedious process. It is also an error-prone action that can make things tricky really quickly. To add the cherry on top, it is not really that of a great money maker for these firms either.
Then came the revolutionary advance in technology aka a payroll system. When firms started realizing that this software has indeed made the entire payroll process a lot faster and also more profitable, they decided to reconsider their thoughts about the same.
Obviously by just adding this software did not really change things for the firms. In order to really make use of the tool and derive profit from it, it is important to learn how exactly can firms make this software work for them.
There are three major steps that every firm should undertake in order to profit from the tool.
Always select an accountant-specific software
There are plenty of different types of payroll software that are available in the market. One for a different industry. Thus, it is important that you choose the one that has been designed especially for accountants and bookkeepers.
The payroll software that has been specifically designed for your industry has completely different features than the ones that are made for small businesses. A few benefits that every accountant centric software will offer you are:
- A separate portal for each client to access their documents like ROEs, paystubs, and more.
- It makes collaboration with clients easy. Also makes it convenient to share data.
- There is one administrator login and dashboard which makes it easy to manage multiple clients.
- It also offers features like calculation of holiday pays, other records of employment, e-signing features, and more.
It is basically a tool that offers a two-in-one service. Allows accountants and bookkeepers to handle the payroll of their clients as well as gives a remarkable experience to them at the same time.
Implement the right pricing model
Once you have decided on which vendor you will finally stick to, now comes the pricing. Many are under an impression that it costs a fortune to invest in software. On the contrary, the prices of digital tools and software have dropped dramatically. Which only means that this software is a lot more affordable for firms. It simply does not need a huge investment upfront.
Although, you still need to learn how to make this software profitable for you. Thus, you need to choose the pricing model that keeps your cost less than the price you are selling your services for.
To find a solution to this, identify the needs of your clients. You can ask them questions like what do they currently use for their payroll, is the current system easy to integrate with other tools, how frequently do they pay, the number of employees they have, will they need third-party payments, do they need time tracking, and more.
Since this list won’t really be exhaustive, it should be a little easy to get your answers. With these questions, you’ll understand how much of the tasks can be automated and how much work you’ll be required to do. This will help you establish a reasonable and profitable pricing model for your payroll services.
You can eventually upsell and become a one-stop financial package for your long-term clients. This will certainly improve your cash-flow.
Let the world know about it
Okay, so you have your payroll system ready and you have the pricing model ready, the only thing that is now coming between you and your extra flow of income is the lack of visibility.
Till the time you do not make plans to market that you have a new service to offer, your clients or prospects won’t know that they have you to take care of this headache. You should initially look for your clients who are already making use of a company that is dedicated to payroll services only.
This is because since you already have a good rapport with your clients, it means you already have enough trust built with them. It won’t be really difficult to sell your additional services. Start by making them learn about the benefits that they can reap when they start working with you.
Apart from that, you should also use testimonials of your clients, update your website, and announce on the various social media pages about your new services if you have them.
Conclusion
We understand that you still might be a little hesitant about offering the payroll services. However, you should know that your competitors might just already be doing it. If you wish to be the alpha in the market and also keep up with the expectations of your clients, it is time to think of payroll as your money maker.
