We identify and rank the best payroll services and software.

As businesses grow and expand, their business requirements often change. For many businesses, payroll processing may not necessarily be an aspect of the business tackled in the business plan. As a result, businesses are often searching for the most effective way to manage a growing payroll. While many businesses look for ways to do things in house, it is becoming increasingly common for a business to choose to outsource their payroll processing.

The immediate benefit is the professional handling of payroll by an experienced provider rather than having to find someone which has enough experience to handle the task. Businesses across a diverse selection of industries often outsource their payroll either from the start, or as a later decision to make it more cost effective or to ensure accuracy.

There are a number of benefits a company outsourcing their payroll processing may experience. Over the course of our research many businesses have highlighted decreased costs associated with their payroll processing as a result of their decision to outsource. Other businesses discuss the increase in productivity due to not having to redirect resources to handle matters of compensating team members and independent contractors or having to deal with the implications of being late on or having to ensure the accuracy of payments made for tax obligations at both federal and state levels.

Ultimately each company will have different reasons for outsourcing initiatives depending on their business plan, their current status, and the opportunities in their region.

Over the course of our research we have identified the payroll services we believe to be most effective at managing a client's payroll. Client satisfaction is one of the primary aspects of a business which our team investigates prior to making a recommendation. As a direct result, the companies featured in our rankings are most likely to have a positive recommendation from a client.

This graph illustrates, based on our own research, the average review ratings that both ranked and unranked providers have based on the total number of reviews from a number of different review platforms. This is indicative that companies that are often featured at the top of our rankings are able to provide a consistently positive experience to their client businesses.

Any business which has experienced a large growth period understands the challenges that businesses face in having to maintain a large workforce. As a result, many businesses make the decision to outsource their human resources to another agency or to seek consultation from an experience HR professional.

For companies in the hospitality industry the decision to outsource their HR solutions is often based on the structure of the company. However, most businesses within the industry make the decision to hire an HR management firm in order to ensure the right policies are in place to dictate behavior and daily functions. With the rise of internet-based services and software, we expect to see a larger portion of businesses outsource their human resources.

For the businesses which opt to handle their payroll through an in-house team or an experienced professional, payroll software can serve as a key means to reduce the costs and time involvement required to effectively manage payroll. Over the course of our analysis, we connected with a number of businesses which had previously done payroll manually through record-keeping which now use software to handle their payroll. Many businesses receive a large productivity boost when using payroll software to ensure accuracy of their payroll and to automate many of the internal processes.

Larger businesses will most likely see the largest benefit from payroll software due to the amount of manual work required to process payroll traditionally, but smaller businesses still see a productivity benefit.