Payroll 2021 Year End Prep and Starting 2022 the Right Way, featuring Paychex

This episode of the HR Happy Hour is brought to you by Paychex, one of the leading providers of HR, payroll, retirement, and software solutions for businesses of all sizes. 

Financial capital has long been established as a key driver of business performance, but today, business leaders are increasingly recognizing the importance of their human capital in driving success. Download Paychex’s latest guide to discover why breaking down the silos between HR and finance can result in better business strategy and growth, as well as 14 simple HR metrics your teams should be tracking, and why. 

To download the e-book, visit payx.me/FDMresearch.  

This week, we met with Tom Hammond to discuss how to successfully wrap up 2021’s payroll requirements and set a smooth foundation for the year ahead.

– Key payroll items to remember in December

– Importance of having a payroll tech partner

– PPP forgiveness update

– Informing employees about benefits to share care and concern, part of the human experience

Paychex Payroll Checklist here

Thank you, Tom, for joining the show today!  Remember to subscribe to the HR Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript follows:

Steve 0:29
Welcome to the HR Happy Hour Show with Steve and Trish. Trish, this is one of my favorite shows we have been doing. We’ve done it a couple times, it is kind of the payroll year end, and get ready for the new year show, which is really, really important to all our friends in payroll and in HR and just really for every organization. It’s been a brutal year for the second year in a row. But still, we have lots of things that we have to do in our organizations to close out the year and get ready for the new year. Just because it’s been a rough year for everyone, it doesn’t mean those things don’t need to get done right. They still do and it’s really important to stay on top of it. So our friend Tom Hammond from Paychex will join us in a minute to help walk us through all of those things Trish, but this show Trish is about to run. It’s going to run right before the end of the year. Right? So got me thinking about New Year’s Eve, which is soon, so here’s the question of the day, Trish.

Trish 1:26
Okay, I’m ready?

Steve 1:28
Are you a big New Year’s Eve person? Do you go all out? You get dressed up for the party forgetting about the COVID, rule that out for the moment? You a big New Year’s Eve person or are you kind of I’m in bed by 10:30 I leave that to the other people?

Trish 1:42
I’m a big dress up, go out, find a place to be. Definitely COVID put a damper on that, of course, but no pre-COVID, absolutely. 100%. So this year, I’m a little on the fence about I mean, I’m fully vaccinated. I’ll have a booster by then. Shot and yeah, I don’t know with this new strain that’s going around. I’m feeling actually, like, the least secure I have felt in a while so I don’t know. What about you? Are you uh, I feel like you’re a big go out and just that’s your big blowout of the year right?

Steve 2:18
No, you’re wrong about that. I will probably be in bed by 10:30, you know? Look reliving it the next morning or something. No, I’m not a big go out on New Year’s Eve person. It’s it’s been quite some time.

Trish 2:33
I always liked watching the Dick Clark special, you know, with the ball drop, but like now that he’s not there, that’s when I kind of really said, Okay, I need to go out because I’m not staying home to watch these other people do that. He’s the original and you’ve got to have the original.

Steve 2:49
I know we mentioned this on one of the WORK BREAK shows recently but in Time Square, as far as I know at the time we said they were going to reopen to tourists and people to go crowd around times square and watch the ball drop. I think that’s still the case. I don’t know, maybe it’s changed. I don’t know. But yeah, that’s not for me. I don’t know. Well, let’s welcome Tom to the show. Let me intro him. We are very excited and pleased and honored to welcome back Tom Hammond from Paychex. He’s the Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Product Management at Paychex. Tom assumed this role in January 2017. And he has more than 25 years of experience at Paychex, he leads an organization that developed strong intuitive and relevant human capital management solutions for small and midsize businesses, embracing the challenge of remaining cutting edge in an increasingly competitive market that’s for sure any also shapes and directs the execution of the company’s strategic vision. Tom, welcome back to the Happy Hour. How are you buddy?

Tom Hammond 3:47
Hey Steve and Trish, great to see both of you doing well. Kind of share the same sentiments as both of you. A little tired of COVID, lot tired of COVID, little bit on edge here with what’s happening lately but you know, living day by day, and we get through it as a family that’s how it works.

Trish 4:02
Absolutely! The real question then Tom is New Year’s Eve. What’s your go to? Are you the stay at home kind of guy with the family. Are you just are you out there like dressed up? Do you get black tie? What do you do?

Tom Hammond 4:16
I am right with Steve Boese on this, straight in my house. I have my most comfortable clothes on, I do have some of my favorite foods and will be watching some sports but I’m in bed long before that ball drops.

Steve 4:30
I’m with you. You’re up in Rochester probably be a little cold. Maybe a little snowy. Maybe put the fireplace on there, throw the fireplace, whatever you got there and stay inside. That’s probably the best advice.

Tom Hammond 4:43
There’ll be guaranteed cold. That’s one thing I can tell you for sure. But I don’t love it but it’ll be guaranteed cold.

Steve 4:49
It’ll be guaranteed cold is one thing we can guarantee. Tom and Trish, we’re coming up on year end. It’s been a rough year for HR and Payroll professionals, rough two years really right for so many reasons. But that doesn’t change the fact that, hey, we’ve got some things to prepare for, we’ve got some things to sort of wind down 2021. And get ready for 2022. And who better to talk about that, and what you need to be considering what you need to do not to forget, and maybe also share some excellent resources, because paychecks does a great job of providing those resources for payroll professionals, really no matter if you’re using Paychex or not using Paychex, they do a great job, just educate the community. So Tom, I’ll just start, we’ll start kind of wind down 2021, right, from an HR payroll, primarily payroll perspective, what are some of the key things, the key items you want people just to say, don’t forget about these things. And what’s the process you advise organizations to sort of go through in December?

Tom Hammond 5:51
Yeah, through the December month, guys, it’s really about ensuring that your house is in order as you get to 12/31. That’s the best way, my mom was great at that saying, let’s get our house in order here as we end the year and plan for the next one. And it really fits for payroll and HR as well. So when we think about that, we advise our clients to start with their own data. So start with your company level information, make sure all the latest is as simple as your addresses have those changed throughout the calendar year do you have your tax rates in, give anything that came through in the fourth quarter that needs to be modified before you run the fourth quarter taxation, make sure that you’ve got the appropriate tax payer IDs in on any contractors that you’re paying, make sure your employee data is completely up to date with their social security numbers. Best advice that we have on that is leverage your mobile application capabilities that you have, through your your HR technology stack, ensure that your employees are going in validating that their data is accurate, then number two, make sure that your payments are really up to date. So are there any miscellaneous payments that you’ve made to either employees or contractors that you’ve yet to run through your system of record. If not, on that system of record, get that done very quickly, so that you can make the appropriate withholding and payments. That would include things like third party sick pay, that might be paid through an insurance agency, any bonus checks that may not have made its way into the system yet, things of that nature.

Tom Hammond 7:31
And then lastly, I would say specifically for 2021, what a complicated year with the employee retention tax credits and what we’ve seen there, and the employee or Social Security deferral. So we have some late breaking news here, the IRS sent some guidance out on the employee retention tax credits. So as you guys are all aware, those were shut off for the fourth quarter as a result of one of the recent legislations that went into effect, beginning at the start of calendar quarter four. However, the IRS guidance now said, as long as you’ve made any payments, for any deferrals that you did do in the fourth quarter, then you will not be penalized. That was something that we advocated for very, very loudly here at Paychex with the IRS, we wanted to make sure since there wasn’t any guidance that came out if businesses neglected to stop those payments before the end of October or November that they weren’t going to be penalized. And that’s the case. That could be a financial hardship, though, for some businesses, given that they were not, they were counting on those tax deferrals. And now they can’t. So again, you need to make those payments by the end of this month. And then with the employer or Social Security tax deferral, if you remember, in the Cares Act, businesses had the opportunity to defer the 6.2% employer match and the the IRS set in motion, the ability to make those payments at the end of December of 21 50% of it. And at the end of December 2020 to 50% of it. However, do not miss that end of December payment. Because if you do, you’ll be subject to a 10% penalty. And it will be a penalty assessed on the full dollar amount, not just the 50%. So it’s a very powerful solution or opportunity. But you need to make sure that you’re handling it appropriately. So ensure you’re talking to your payroll team, your payroll technology team. If you’re working with us, we’re already well ahead of the game with that. So really complicated way to just get your house in order. But again, it starts with ensure your your data is up to date your employee data is up to date. Then my last piece of advice would be make sure you’re informing your employees of any benefits that they have that are going to end at the end of the calendar year.

Steve 10:01
I’ll have to ask you Tom, what would be a couple of examples of that?

Tom Hammond 10:05
Yeah, think of it in your FSA dependent care or medical FSA reimbursement, some of those actually can move into the next calendar year. But some have hard and fast drop dates, vacation time, Steve, any holiday time for any businesses that plans are just calendar year based. That’s a real way to demoralize an employee, if they actually forget about this and think about that in a COVID year, we were all just complaining about how we haven’t been able to do the things that we want to do. There’s an awful lot of businesses that see vacation time on the books that hasn’t been leveraged. For anyone that’s on a calendar year. Plan, make sure your employees know that it’s going to be challenging for that business, given the fact that it’s hard to find employees right now. But it might be ways to think about how you provide modifications to your plan, let them roll it over. Find ways to make different ways to pay it out. Be flexible with it.

Steve 11:02
I totally agree. My head is spinning a little bit. Tom, I gotta tell you, I, you know, I’ve been around this a long time. I implemented payroll systems a number of times in my life, but boy, just trying to, I think you’re illustrating very, very clearly to me, and hopefully to the audience, like, just how important it is to stay on top of these things, but also to have the right partner to help you stay on top of these things. Because I don’t know. I mean, how can you keep this straight on your own?

Tom Hammond 11:35
Well, Steve, you know, at Paychex, we’ve got 15,000 employees who our function for payroll and HR is to help businesses navigate this complex legislative environment to try to simplify it for it with both leading tech and leading service. So no more important than having somebody on your side that actually can take that headache for you. And actually make sure that you’re there. And I’ll share with you at the end, the checklist that we have provided for all the listeners so that they have an opportunity to take advantage of what we’re thinking about here, as well.

Trish 12:10
Yeah, I was gonna say thank you specifically for mentioning those two biggest changes, right, with the employer tax deferral, and then you know, the employee retention tax credits, because I think that’s just a great example of those happen, those kinds of things can happen any time in the year, but especially at the end, when, if you’re in human resources, or even if payroll rolls up through accounting, wherever it rolls up through, you have so many other things on your plate that you are thinking about. And I have been in those positions where I’ve been trying to be the person to go through all of these things on my own, it is impossible, it’s absolutely impossible, you will miss it. So even bringing up the fact that you know, if you miss making that payment, for example, it’s such a huge impact to your business, it really does show why you have to have a partner to help you. And sometimes, I think back to working in human resources, it was sometimes hard to make a business case for certain types of technology. It is not difficult to make a business case for something like this, right? This type of partnership, because it ultimately saves your business so much money by doing it properly. The first time. Do you? Do you use that, like when you’re talking with potential customers is that I would assume that’s a huge point that you would bring up and a value that that you all add to their just to their business dealings on a day to day basis. Right?

Tom Hammond 13:37
Yeah, I’ll tell you guys, one of the the areas that I am probably most proud of as we look back on the last 18 to 20 plus months of of COVID is how we have helped businesses navigate the complexities of the COVID experience. And if you go back all the way to the beginning, it started with really complicated discussions on do i term or do I furlough? What are what is the retention tax credit? What’s the PPP loan? How do they play together?

Steve 14:08
I think we did a whole show talking about this way back then, Tom, and I forget the number. Maybe you remember that number, the millions of dollars number that you guys helped your clients access?

Tom Hammond 14:18
It’s 65 billion. Yeah, and the retention tax credit has is now up over 6 billion. So these are just astronomical numbers. I have to say, say what you want. The government did a great job of identifying ways to provide small and medium sized businesses with availability of stimulus. And 65 billion here at Paychex within our client base is about 9% of the total. And I just saw the stats yesterday. We have also through the tools that we introduced for forgiveness. Our forgiveness is now over 92%, s again PPP came out in two different steps. Step one and then about three months later, there was a second tranche of money that was injected into the US economy, we had 65 billion between the two and 92% of our base has now leveraged our tool to get access to the PPP, and then leveraged our tool to get forgiveness for turning it into a grant. And then now it’s all about the ERTC, 6 billion of that we created a service for that. So a great example of having a partner to go to we created a service for customers that are with us, or for businesses that haven’t joined us yet. And we’ll do a free evaluation of your business. Did you use PPP? Are you eligible for ERTC retro actively. So that’s the key here, retro actively so we’re looking back at calendar year 20, and 21. For the first three quarters for businesses to say, a you have availability of funds, if we amend your returns, we can send in these 9401x returns, and you have access to stimulus. And the numbers are pretty astronomical. On average we’re about $100,000 per client that we’re finding per client.

Steve 16:09
So that is money to a small business. Yeah, yes. It’s so funny, you know, this COVID experience, as you said Tom, is going to be going on for so long. Yes, the PPP conversations that we had, I feel like it was 100 years ago, so to speak? Until you brought it up and mentioned it. I was like, oh, yeah, the PPP thing that was a really big deal. And it feels like the ages ago, and it really wasn’t. But that I guess that’s just apropos.

Tom Hammond 16:38
Exactly, and I think really important for the listeners to understand as well, ERTC has been shut down moving forward, except for businesses that were recovery startups. So businesses that started through what we call a recovery period, existing businesses can’t take advantage of it moving forward. You can go back and retroactively redo your tax returns. And that’s really where we’re spending our time. How can we help a business look at this and say, You know what, let’s make sure you’re not leaving money on the table. Because it’s, it’s still available to go back and actually implement? Yeah, as we launch into Calendar 22. It’s hard to believe, calendar 22.

Trish 17:19
You know, one thing that when you were kind of going through the list of things to be thinking about Tom, that struck me was the last, the third one you mentioned, which is informing the employees about benefits? Yes, it’s such a caring gesture to go through. And I know just having worked in payroll myself for many years, people don’t always think of payroll is caring, right? They don’t necessarily think of someone a vendor who handles payroll and compliance and other other HR services as well. But they don’t necessarily think of that as a caring kind of technology. And yet, that’s one of the things I think I come back to especially every time we talk with you, it’s always about sort of infusing care into how you handle your business. Can you maybe just talk a little bit about I think that’s, that’s a little bit not just payroll, it’s sort of the way that Paychex culture works? Could you maybe just talk a little bit about how you all view, caring for employees, and how you can take something that might seem just very routine. And you turn that into something where they actually are, are showing care and concern for their employees?

Tom Hammond 18:30
Yeah, I think the the essence of HR is starts with human. And I think that’s one of the things that we’re most focused on is the human experience, how they can access what really is data in facts and data and facts through a technology. But how can we do it in a very human way? And how can we provide them with access to insights that will help them run a business or to participate in a business and everything that we do and everything, how we design our systems, and our service model is really centered around that. providing insights things like okay, you, if you think about the way that we attack our time, and attendance applications and our scheduling applications, we’ve designed it in a way that says to an individual, hey, if I want to apply for time off in December, so that I am home for the holidays with my family, I’m probably going to be doing that early. I might be doing that in I might do it in July or June or May. So design that system in a way that creates a forward look of how much vacation time you would have if you take none between May and December. Do I have enough?

Tom Hammond 19:46
And make sure that we’re putting alerts in front of an employee through our mobile first technology that tell you a you’ve got 20 hours left and it’s only going to last until or it’s going to automatically roll over those problems? To the most simplistic example stretch, and then making it simple for folks to actually get access to their net pay our latest technology won that we won our HR tech award that we’re really proud of, with our paychecks precheck really allows an employee to get an access, get access to their check before processes so that they have the human opportunity to look at it and say, You know what, something doesn’t look right here. Would you rather do that proactively? Or would you rather have all of the mess that comes with how I didn’t get the same dollar amount that I should have. And unfortunately, I wrote a lot of bills off what I expected would come into my account. And now I have all kinds of overdraft. And I have, basically are going to create a whole day’s worth of mass. So those are probably the two best examples of how we go about it with empathy, but also with some vision towards how can we make it simple.

Trish 20:59
Thank you. I think that’s just so important to really make that connection between data and make it very personal. So I think you all are doing a great job of doing that. And I’m sure that you’re sharing that.

Steve 21:10
So Tom, we sort of ran through a number of items and kind of reminders for folks as they get ready to close out 2021 and want to want to get into some of the things for going forward kind of opening thing to in a second. Before we do that Trish, we mentioned Paychex is always providing lots of great resources for their for both for their customers and for the community at large. I want to mention one other resource today, from our friends at Paychex, Trish. Financial capital has long been established as a key driver of business performance. But today, business leaders are increasingly recognizing the importance of their human capital driving success, just what we’ve been talking about, download Paychex latest guide to discover what breaking down the silos between HR and finance can result in better business strategy and growth, as well as 14 Simple HR metrics your team should be tracking and why I’ve downloaded this report. By the way, it’s really good to download this eBook itself, visit payx.me. That’s payx.me/fdm research, we’ll put that link in the show notes as well. Highly recommend you check that out. 14 Simple HR metrics, but I had to do I had to do a conference to have a conversation with somebody on some like HR metrics that I literally went to this report something that’s great resource.

Trish 22:28
And you know, what, that report, what I really like is that, that if if someone had to say Trish in your, you know, 20 years working in HR, what was the one thing you wish that like someone would have told you do from day one, it was get that relationship strong with the finance department. I did it. And I will say the reason I learned to do it was because I happen to be working at PricewaterhouseCoopers at the time, or PwC now, and I had no choice, right, but to understand the financial implications of everything we did. But for a lot of companies, HR and finance are very separate entities and silos. And so yes, I think if you do nothing else, the sheer, if you don’t have that connection, build that connection, because it makes makes your job easier. And it makes their job easier. Just again, data and caring can go together. And they don’t have to be separate silos.

Steve 23:22
So yeah, and finance people can are humans too, even though they don’t seem like it all the time?

Trish 23:29
You need to write a book on that, finance people are humans too. I love it.

Steve 23:33
Alright, Tom, let’s talk about 2022. You know, what are some of the things that you recommend and Paychex, you know, recommends that their customers do as well as just anybody? Right? Good. Okay, we got a lot of things we need to do close up the year, but then boom, it’s the new year, all of a sudden, right now, what are some of the things you’d like to mention for just getting ready for you know, 2022, if you will?

Tom Hammond 23:55
Yeah, just a handful of quick things here. Guys, I would say first and foremost, make sure that you’re up to date on any minimum wage changes. So this is really incredible for me to thank 30 plus years in the in the industry, there’s 19 states and 38 cities, 19 states and 38 cities are making changes to their minimum wage effective one, one. Okay, so if you think about that, from an HR professional, that opens up a full box of analysis that really needs to be in plan and in progress right now, what does that do to your budget? What does that do to wage compression? Are you introducing wage compression? How do you want to handle that? Do you want to handle that only for a subset? You really need a strategy for that and our HR professionals, that team with our clients are really focused on that right now. So first and foremost, wage compression, minimum wage, 19 states 38 cities and the budget impact of that. Second is is going back to getting your house in order for 21 Open Enrollment is An activity that many businesses complete from October to December, depending on the technology you’re using, how powerful or how efficient it is, there’s a lot of businesses that don’t have a real strong bent admin platform. So they’re doing a lot of manual work across the board, or it’s not fully integrated with your platform.

Tom Hammond 25:21
So make sure that those open enrollments are there, make sure the effective date is set appropriately for payrolls dated one 1/22. Or after. So big key there, because again, that’s something that could cause complete chaos in your checks, if that is not appropriate. And last thing you want is anybody that drops coverage in this environment, even more so than ever before. Then the last thing are you have any policy changes? So there is so much happening? I don’t even want to open Pandora’s box here, in terms of HR policies, from vaccine mandates, what’s happening with those? Do you have a policy for that? Are there any other HR policies that you’re thinking about? And kind of drawing a hard line effective one, one and beyond? How are you communicating those? Do you have an employee handbook, which is really the cookbook or recipe for a great HR experiences? Have you updated your handbook? Are you keeping it updated? So those would be the top ones in my book, guys, just really get your house in order thinking strategically about what’s happening here in the next 20 plus days, so that you’re prepared to start the new year on on solid footing?

Steve 26:28
Yeah, I’d even put just just wage adjustments and salary adjustments that some organizations do annually, right? Only, they’ll start off with your new rate of pay or your new salary, right. Exactly. And the key is, you mentioned, Tom, the effective day, you know, getting that correct. And because last thing you want to is, you know, you told somebody their new wage, or their new rate is x, right? You’ve told them in a meeting or performance review or something, and then that first check runs of January, and it’s not there. Right, you screwed it up somehow.

Tom Hammond 27:01
And that’s, that’s exactly. So nothing worse than that. But it’s easy to do, it’s easy to get wrong?

Steve 27:06
If you don’t have that integration, you know, between say, you know, whatever you’re using to calculate those wage adjustments or salary increases, etc, etc, you don’t have that integration to the payroll system. If you’re relying on manual entry, you know, which many organizations do, it’s easy to have to have challenges in that area, too.

Tom Hammond 27:25
No doubt, certainly no shortage of work going on here, guys, I have the utmost respect for the HR profession. And the last 20 plus months have been the most trying in my history in the industry. So again, trying to find and introduce technology, tools, resources, and then services from here from Paychex that can make it simple, try to take some of the burden off, and to really take some of the responsibility that is becoming more and more complicated by the hour.

Trish 27:59
Yeah, I think too, I like that you mentioned the handbook thing, because I don’t know that I ever thought of reviewing that at the end of the year. But that’s a really good tip, I think to right now, what I’ve kind of seen over my career is that handbooks are something that get added to and you never take anything away, I would also just add, it’s a really good time to think about what policies are in there that really aren’t necessary. And whenever you go through, I think about the last HR job I had, I worked with a really great attorney at the time, who kind of helped me review the entire handbook, which was, like over 100 pages, it was ridiculously huge, right? We scaled it way back, but we tried to go through and rewrite it in a very positive way of what you should do versus what you shouldn’t do. And I think too, it goes back to a time of caring if you know some of these things, if you’re writing in policies on vaccination mandates, or whatever it is you’re doing, you know, in these last two years with regard to COVID policies, definitely be thinking with more of that carrying hat on and telling people what to do to maintain safety and why it’s a good idea versus don’t do this. Don’t do that.

Trish 29:14
You can always throw that in the very last sentence, right what the consequences might be. But so many times I think people resent HR because they think we’re the policy police. Because we’ve written all of these horrible policies. It’s like, don’t wear this, don’t do that. Don’t say this. Don’t say that. Right? And instead, I think that’s a really good opportunity to take at this time of year and then promote it that way. Right? We have caring policies based on data that we have with our our partners. The last thing I’d say to you, I think Tom and what you were talking about is there are a lot of resources. I mean, we’ve mentioned a couple just in this conversation, but one thing I think Paychex does really good for the entire business community is you offer a lot of free resources on your website. So where can people You know, go and check that out. I’m assuming there’s, you know, just for everything from webinars to ebooks, right?

Tom Hammond 30:07
Yes, I’ll give you two places for the listeners. First, the payroll checklist that I alluded to it’s two to three pages. We think it’s very detailed. And it gives just a good framework of things to be considering, many of which I’ve talked about this morning, but I left several out, you can find that at payx.me/payroll-checklist-2021, that’s payx.me/payroll-checklist-2021. That’s the 2021 piece. While you’re there, you’re going to be in you can navigate around to Paychex works, you will see articles, you will see videos, you will see videos from industry leaders and the concept of something called Thrive. Thrive is what we have branded for our business community, to provide them with resources to do just that, to help them thrive. There are a number of podcasts that are out there on numerous set of topics, from best practices in HR, to the value of different product lines, how to build a great benefits package, what a great retirement plan looks like, in anything in between.

Steve 31:26
Yeah, great stuff.

Trish 31:27
One way to use that, too, is, you know, I think a lot of times human resource departments struggle with not having enough funding for learning for their paychecks, employees, or the or they’re just HR employees. And so I think that’s a good way, you know, if you’re an HR leader, you could go out there and every month, take a different podcast that the team needs to listen to, and then discuss it or, you know, the next month, maybe it’s a webinar that they could go and watch independently, and then come together and discuss what was learned. So I think it’s also a good, free training resource for these HR teams to not only prepare them for what’s coming, but to prepare their teams as well.

Steve 32:08
Great, great stuff. Tom, this was so much fun, it’s great to see you. Virtually, if you will, right. As we wind down year two of COVID, we wind down 2021. Get ready for 2022. Thanks to you and the team, both for all the support you provide to your customers and to the community at large, but also to us. You’re a great partner to us on the show. And we do appreciate that and we love our partnership with Paychex, of course, and I tell the story I’ve told her many times, Trish, years and years ago, my first independent company, my first consulting company, my company one just just me, my payroll provider and compliance partner was Paychex.

Trish 32:51
You go way back Steve!

Steve 32:54
And it was like, it must have been like in 1998, or something like that. Or 97. It was a really, long time ago, it was great. And every month my rep, I don’t know what their title was. They called me on the phone. This is like 100 years ago, I get a call on the phone, they check in with me. Okay, what’s going on with payroll this month? Steve, anybody need to add and it was up to no, it was just me. Any changes to the payroll, there usually wasn’t. But sometimes there was maybe like I had a good month or something. I hadn’t got a bonus or something. It was awesome. Like, what was awesome about it is like, everything was done. It was done on time, all the reporting was done, all the filings were done all the remittances were done. It cost me almost nothing. I hate to say this, you know, you guys have a great business, but it was very, very inexpensive. And it was great. And I will never forget that. There you go. There’s my story.

Tom Hammond 33:45
I’ll take it. That’s a great testimonial. And what you described is what we do for 700,000 now.

Steve 33:52
The company is much, much larger than just me of one, but you still do a company one right? Like if I needed that?

Steve 33:58
We’ll take companies of one up to companies of 1000s. And that’s the great part of the flex technology. It will grow with you. And you can leverage it at any size with anything that you need and add retirement benefits along the way. Happy holidays to both of you. Thank you for what you’re doing for the HR community. It’s really great to spend a few minutes with you.

Steve 34:16
Great stuff. Okay, so links to the resources we mentioned will be in the show notes of course. Thanks once again to our friends at Paychex. Thank you Tom Hammond. Good to see you once again. For Tom, for Trish McFarlane. My name is Steve Boese, thank you so much for listening to the HR Happy Hour Show. Catch all the show archives at HRHappyHour.net. Have a wonderful end of the year and we will see you next time. And bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai