As a small business owner I know that there are many choices out there for business services. It seems that there are new vendors popping up each month, all touting how their product or service is superior. I recently was browsing the internet for a small business payroll service. I saw the big players in the market: Intuit, Microsoft and ADP. I also saw a handful of smaller companies I hadn't heard of like Paychex, PayCycle and CheckPoint. I wasn't sure how best to choose the right small business payroll service for my business. It would be nice to go with the trusted provider, but did I really need to be spending all that money? And if I went with one of the unknown companies would I regret it later? After all, this is part of my business and I want it to be in good hands. I ended up doing research and putting together some decision-making criteria on how to find the best small business payroll software.

Should I Use an Offline or Online Solution?

If your business has fewer than 50 employees, go with an online service. You'll get a good service at a much better rate than you would with enterprise software or by hiring an outside firm. Online small business payroll services make administration much easier because they have built-in tools and calculators that do much of the paperwork for you. Larger companies should stick with offline software packages because they likely need more functionality and support.

Can I Do it Myself?

Most small business owners are looking for ways to cut costs. Doing your own payroll used to be hard to do because there weren't many easy to use services. Nowadays pretty much every service is tailored so that you can do the job yourself using self-explanatory explanations. The best option for "do-it-yourselfers" is online payroll software because of the speed and cost savings.

Do They Offer a Free Trial?

Most of the small business payroll services offer some type of free trial, whether it is online or from a software demo. Try out a few of them and see which best fits your needs.


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