As business owners in Canada, you wear too many hats and take too many responsibilities. When it comes to a monthly/bi-weekly accounting exercise, payroll process becomes a huge burden. Dealing with timesheets, the CRA as well as your banks, you are getting exhausted at the end.
Today we are going to do some comparisons on the traditional payroll services as well as online payroll service in the market.
Big banks with big payroll processing companies
Traditionally, all big chartered banks are associated with either Ceridian Canada or ADP provide payroll outsourcing solutions for their business clients.
- TD/CIBC/Scotia Bank associated with Ceridian；
- RBC/BMO associated with ADP;
- National bank associated with Nethris;
What those payroll processing companies do is to manage tax remittance to the government as well as direct-deposit to employee’s bank accounts. They streamline the entire payroll process for you, but with a big price tag for small businesses. Because their services are targeted large corporations.
Payroll outsourcing companies
Accountants/payroll outsourcing companies also provide their customized payroll solution for clients. What makes them special is that they manage the entire payroll process for business owners. From manual payroll data input to remit taxes/WSIB to government bodies, from managing employee records to producing ROEs, they handle them all. Well, the service is not cheap as they need to hire specialists to run the process and do the troubleshooting when issues are raised.
Some of them runs on a online platform as well.
Online payroll service, where technology is making a difference
Technology like cloud computing has transformed payroll administration to an easier and more efficient process as compared to before. There are a number of online payroll applications available in the Canadian market.
Are they good? As technology evolves, the online payroll applications are getting better from both user experience and functionality perspectives. Generally you expect the following features from those applications:
- Direct deposits
- CRA remittances
- Access to paystubs by employees
- T4/T4A as well as Record of employment
- Online/offline support
Those features are sufficient for your general payroll needs.In additon, some offers add-on applications as well. SimplePay can integrate with other scheduling applications as well as invoicing applications like Freshbooks.Since Wave Payroll as well as Quickbooks Payroll are part of their accounting software family, they can integrates with their own accounting software seamlessly. If you are using Wave or QuickBooks, it is very convenient to have the payroll module handy.
In terms of pricing, they are all in similar price range. Let’s say, your business needs to run 20 employees payroll:
- Wagepoint costs $60 per payroll based on $20 base fee, plus $2 per employee;(best value)
- Wave Payroll costs $70 per payroll based on $10 base fee, plus $4 for the first 10 employees;
- SimplePay costs $45 per payroll but additional charges apply to remittance, record of employment,etc.(different pricing strategy!)
- QuickBooks payroll comboed with the accounting software, which costs $50 per month, also charges additional fees for direct deposit
Other than the price, another factor to consider is the service or support. An interesting story overheard about Wagepoint is that,a couple years ago, Wagepoint noticed a glitch when they first launched their application. Unfortunately some employees were mispaid on one of the clients.Wagepoint decided to pay those employees of the affected client out of its own pocket.Customer service is critical in this competitive market. Addressing the client’s concern right away is a strong selling point for Wagepoint.
Conclusion
There is no clear-cut on whether online payroll applications are good or bad. And the price difference in various online payroll applications is not huge, either(but compared to traditional service providers, it is huge.) Depending on the size of the business and the number of benefits you business manages, you will find one suitable for your needs. And don’t forget to download the demo and make sure the process is clear and the experience is simple to you as it should be.
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