
What is Payroll Outsourcing?
It is transferring the routine operational matters, regarding payroll management, to external experts who specialize in these areas. Outsourcing the payroll function ensures that the statutory compliance and basic procedural matters are taken care of. According to smallbusinesstrends: 'There are the obvious legal requirements, such as tax reporting and remittance. There are requirements around withholding taxes from the employee’s pay, and also calculating the employer’s portion of taxes. In some cases there are electronic filing requirements. You need to also know when to file — at the federal, state and local levels.' This clearly brings about the importance of payroll outsourcing.Why Outsource the Payroll Function?
- Routine hiring tasks like advertising vacancies, getting applications, sorting candidate profiles, and conducting interviews and tests are time-consuming. Once you outsource the payroll function, your agency takes care of these tasks.
- The payroll agency you engage takes care of hiring, compensation packages, maintaining attendance records, legal and statutory obligations, tax deductions etc.
- Outsourcing payroll can also help cutting costs and limiting risks. Today, businesses with a minimum number of employees can outsource payroll at minimal cost.
- To ensure that you are up-to-date with the current technology and can access employee records anytime.
Some FAQs About Payroll Outsourcing
-> What Are the Major Headaches of Workforce Management?
Payroll management is one of the key operational aspects of a business. Computing payroll involves multiple activities including monthly payroll processing, compliance management - PF/ P.TAX./ ESIS/ Taxation returns filing, other activities like Full & Final settlement, Investment proof checking and auditing, Form 16 generation, Default notice management received from the Income-tax department etc. According to a survey conducted by Deloitte, North American companies "noted time and attendance systems as the primary component of their workforce management strategy. Labor scheduling was a distant second followed by budgeting, forecasting and productivity systems." Further,year-end processing, defining withholding responsibilities, and reporting income locally were the greatest challenges or risks facing organizations with a mobile global workforce.
-> What Percentage of Companies Outsource Payroll Globally?
The Deloitte Survey observes that 60% of respondents had a Payroll Shared Service Center with 91% having one located in North America. 33% of respondents manage responsibility for global payroll processing regionally while 27% manage by country. 50% of respondents outsourced tax reporting to help mitigate the risks associated with global mobility payroll processing. These statistics show that outsourcing the payroll function is definitely a wise decision.-> As a Medium or Small Business Owner, Do I Need to Outsource Payroll?
Large organizations, with number of employees running into thousands, would obviously benefit from having a part of their workforce on external payroll. The cost differential between companies that outsourced payroll versus those using in-house payroll was 9% for mid-size organizations (100-1,000 employees) rising to an impressive 27% for larger organizations (1,000+ employees).