paychex-iconToday I am putting together my Paychex Review.

Below you will find pros and cons of using Paychex and my brutally honest, unbiased review. As a Google Local City Guide and a Yelp Elite reviewer I take pride in my reviews. Sometimes I like them so much they go right on my own website. 🙂

Why use a payroll company?

I have been employing people for 20yrs. Prior to using Paychex I used to use Paycycle, and when I sold my last company the new owner went with Paychex.

When I began employing people at Telapost, I went to sign up with Paycycle and discovered that they were purchased by Intuit. I have no problem with Intuit and use Quickbooks Online. Although, I needed a new processor and went with Paychex. My final decision was via word of mouth. I called a few other business owners and everyone who had Paychex was happy. The main competition to Paychex is ADP. I know very little about ADP other than a friend who owns a restaurant has gone from Paychex to ADP and back to Paychex. I guess the grass is always greener on the other side for him.

Some people have told me that Paychex is more expensive that others but that they did practically everything for you. It took me many years to finally bang this through my thick skull but I now realize that time is money.

Time is money

Being a completely honest, elite SEO and content creation company has its benefits. We are fully booked and have a staff of employees. We are in high demand.

My mathematical formula is simple: If Paychex is going to handle everything at a cheaper rate than I charge my clients for my own services then I must hire them to handle my payroll for me. End of story.

Paychex does it all

I used to sign checks. I took great pride in being able to hand someone their check and tell them thank you. But, it was time consuming. I now ONLY use direct deposit. Every other Friday money goes into people’s bank accounts.

Paychex also handles quarterly and annual “stuff”. They either send me a form to sign and an address to mail it to or submit it all digitally for me.

Paychex offer bookkeeper and accountant access. My bookkeeper logs in to Paychex through her own limited permission account and types in whatever she needs to into Quickbooks online. Configuring the permissions is terribly difficult and practically impossible without a rep walking you through the process. So, I called and had a rep walk me through the process.

Paychex handles deductions for 401K, IRAs, and other types of benefits management.

Paychex also offers training, mobile apps, employee access, W2s, and more. They are the complete package.

Pricing

I honestly have no idea what Paychex costs. I think I pay $80 every 2 weeks. The fee is minimal. If I could go back in time 10yrs I would slap myself for ever doing my own payroll.

I DO remember at the initial sign up I discovered that the less often you pay people the cheaper the processing fees are. I personally went with bi-weekly.

Paychex Cons

Without elaborating I have heard that once you are no longer a client getting information from an account rep is difficult. I do not have experience with this personally. So let’s say you sell your business in October 2016 and then in January 2017 you need to get information and W2s and what not – it could be difficult. To be fair, nobody likes doing work for free, or maybe the entrepreneur I know simply had a bad rep or was exaggerating. But, it is something to keep in mind with any payroll company, although you would think that they’d be used to this.

I had once inquired about a 401k and a salesperson came out. This individual was obviously highly dependent on her commission as she badgered me to get a 401k. I told her I’d need to research it. She mentioned a benefit of one of the packages is keeping employees on board for 2 years because if they leave early, you get their 401k money back. I personally would not want to hold that over an employee’s head and thought it was a bit ridiculous, but I’ve been self employed so long I have a hard time comprehending what some people put up with. Anyways, when I finally told this salesperson to leave me alone, they keep calling. In fact, they called me 20 minutes ago, 2 months after declining their service. Thankfully I programmed them into my phone as “Z Paychex 401k Sales Ignore”. Sorry Tammy. In Paychex’ defense, they could have a wonderful Simple IRA or 401k plan, but any time someone tries to push something on me I run away terrified. I have people trying to sell me stuff 20+ times a day, and, I hate it, especially if it is marked up so much there is someone making a living off of the residual commission. Chances are if it isn’t on Amazon Prime I’m not going to buy it.

Paychex Review Recap

Call them today. When you call a local rep will come out. I found the initial rep to be very friendly. My rep is Samantha. After you’re up and running, don’t expect to hear from the rep again for a long time (this is good).

Len

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