Advantages of of Online Payroll Companies

Every company that pays employees needs to ensure they have a system in place for paying their employees (and their taxes) accurately and on a regular schedule. Some small businesses have an in-house employee (usually an accountant) perform the appropriate payroll financial calculations and issue paychecks. However, many small businesses do not have a need for a full-time (or even part-time) accountant to perform payroll functions. In such a case, a small business can save time and money by contracting an outside payroll vendor to handle payroll services.

One of the most cost-effective and reliable payroll solutions for small businesses is online payroll. Online payroll creates an interactive partnership between a business and an external payroll provider, which allows businesses to stay hands-on, but ensures that the business can continue to maximize its efficiency by not having to micro-manage all aspects of payroll.

How Online Payroll Works

Web-based payroll is a payroll solution in which you take care of the initial setup and processing of paychecks, but your vendor handles all of the computations. After the initial payroll setup is complete, cutting paychecks takes just a few minutes, as you only have to enter the pay hours and review the final figures. In such a solution, the online vendor handles all of the difficult aspects of payroll.

These Web-based payroll processing companies also allows you to manage your employee payment methods easily by giving you have the ability to pay employees with printable paper paychecks or via direct deposit. Moreover, all work is handled securely online, so there is no software to install; all you need to run payroll is an Internet connection.

Advantages of Online Payroll

Utilizing a web based payroll solutions is effortless, quick, and provides you with many elements to make your job easier. Web-based payroll systems give you the advantage of having an elaborate payroll processing service without the complexity and expense involved with such a system.

Additionally, online systems help to ensure the accuracy of your payroll calculations; all of the payroll tax computations are handled for you, including difficult year-end tasks.

Online payroll systems offer interactive features that can help you stay organized and efficient. These features comprise of email reminders, free direct deposit, the ability to print paychecks locally, rapidly add or make changes to employee benefits or withholdings, and more.

You can review payroll reports anytime from anywhere by logging onto the secure server for your Internet payroll provider. Moreover, many Web-based payroll services give employees the ability to visit a dedicated employee interface to information about their payroll statistics and history.

Small & Medium Businesses are Embracing Web 2.0

According to Access Market International (AMI) Partners, more than 40% of small and medium businesses (or about 2.8 million businesses) are using Web 2.0 applications as part of their normal business practices. Web 2.0 is a term that describes interactive web features such as blogs, wikis, and social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, & Digg.

At InsideUp, we believe that the embrace of Web 2.0 by small and medium businesses will continue to grow exponentially as companies find that applying Web 2.0 applications provides a forum for communication and exchange that can lead to a competitive advantage.

Here are some other interesting stats about how businesses use Web 2.0 from the AMI survey:

• More than 400,000 small and medium businesses in the U.S. use blogs and webcasts to promote their businesses.

• 24% of small and medium businesses are using SaaS (software as a service). SaaS applications, such as Backpack, a popular small business organization tool, are hosted on a service provider's computer and offered to businesses for use. This allows businesses to utilize effective tools without having to download, install, or maintain software.

• About 20% of small and medium businesses participate in online communities and portals, such as online chat forums.

Are you using social media to grow your business?

Do you still use the Yellow Pages to advertise to prospective customers? Is this approach working for you?

How about the other traditional methods of bringing in new clients? If you’re not getting the results you once did, it’s likely a reflection of several factors:

Newspaper circulation continues to dwindle, which means no one is reading your ads. Young people continue to gravitate to the Web for online gaming, and increasingly, to view video content. So they aren’t watching commercials. Millions now listen to music and talk shows on their iPods, which means they don’t hear your radio spot. After decades of interruption marketing, consumers have learned to tune out unwelcome marketing messages via direct mail and other vehicles.

None of this is to say that marketing is dead. Far from it.

Marketing is just evolving from a broadcast model into a closer relationship between you and your existing clients -- and more of a targeted hunt for new clients.

If the scatter-shot approach of the past isn’t working well for you, you must now be smarter about how you identify, locate, connect with and engage your prospects. This means going where your prospects and clients are, and speaking to them in their own language, about the things they care about.

If you are marketing business services, you should probably be establishing a presence on LinkedIn, where there are millions of business professionals. If you are launching a hip hop act, MySpace is the place to connect with your future fans. If you want to be viewed as a trusted expert in your field, there’s nothing like the immediacy and intimacy of a blog to establish your credibility in your field.

You don’t have to be absolutely comfortable and proficient in your use of these tools – they’re going to keep changing anyway. But if you haven’t already, it’s time to dive in and get started. And it’s not difficult or expensive. For instance, this blog is hosted at Blogger.com. It’s free and you can easily launch your own blog and start connecting with your customers today.

Likewise, there’s no excuse for not being on LinkedIn. Your prospects are there now, waiting to connect with you. Get started now!

How do you select vendors?

When you're the boss, sooner or later you're going to need help from professionals. And we're not talking about that kind of professional help (although many have gone stark raving mad as a result of running their own businesses).

No, the type of help we're referring to is the kind that actually enables you to make more money. Needing it is consequence of success:
When you make enough money, you require the services of an accountant.
If you grow your business unexpectedly fast and don't know what to do next, you might benefit from the guidance of a business coach or consultant.
Once you have real assets, you really should meet with an attorney who can help you shelter them.
Or you might need someone who knows what to do about that swarm of bees that decided to build a hive just above the front door.

These are all good problems to have (any sighting of live bees has to be considered a plus now) and they're the kinds of issues that require strategic action – based on more than your own hunches and the advice of your friends, neighbors and in-laws. When your future earnings are on the line, you want to make the best decisions you can.

So, how do you identify your best options when you are seeking professional help for your business? (This is not a rhetorical question, we really want to know.) Do you:
- Talk to others in the business?
- Comb through Google search results and hope for the best?
- Drive around looking for a sign?
- Riffle through the Yellow Pages?
- Try to remember the ad you saw?

So much has changed in how businesses market themselves to each other.

When you are shopping for a business-to-business vendor, what works for you?

Word-of-mouth recommendations: they're a win / win / win

Last week we asked about how you select vendors for your business.

When it comes to identifying and selecting business-to-business vendors, it seems that most business owners rely on word of mouth more than any other method. And that makes sense.

Word-of-mouth recommendations typically come from people you know and trust. Someone you know is sharing their experience with you, directly and in a way that meets your specific needs. By doing so, they are helping you avoid mistakes, which, when you're running a business, can be costly. (They are also adding value to your relationship, for which you may want to reciprocate by offering your recommendations in the future.)

So everybody wins with word-of-mouth recommendations: You get the right help; the referrer earns your good will; and solid companies get more business.

But what do you do when:

• You don't have time to ask people for recommendations
• The people you know have no experience with the type of vendor you're seeking
• You're not aware of all the choices that are available to you
• You're not even sure what you need

Wouldn't it be great to have a huge database of B2B business performance and recommendation data, searchable by your specific criteria?

That's exactly what we're assembling here at Inside Up.

We've developed a sophisticated but easy way to track businesses' reputations, and deliver bits of that data to you, so you can confidently find the vendors who are the best choice for your growing business.

Think of it as a word-of-mouth recommendation engine, on steroids. With a lot more features added to help you get the information you need to grow your business faster.

By the way, check out this nice third-part validation we received this week.

Word is getting out – Inside Up is the place to go to find trusted vendors for your business!

The Inspiration Behind InsideUp

What inspired us to start InsideUp? It's simple: our team of Internet business veterans saw a tremendous need among small businesses to be able to find reliable business service providers efficiently, and for business services firms to use online communities to educate and connect with business prospects, especially with small businesses.

According to a 2007 report published by Visa International, small businesses (businesses with less than 100 employees or less than $25 million in sales) in the U.S. spend $1.68 trillion yearly on business services, or nearly 35% of their total business expenditures.

Our own research at InsideUp has been centered on trying to understand how small businesses find business service vendors. Our research indicates that it takes a tremendous amount of work and time to find reliable and reputable business service providers. A business service provider, mind you, can be anyone from a recruiting company that helps you find staff to the marketing company that implements a direct marketing campaign for you.

InsideUp has taken on the challenge of helping to solve these problems for small businesses and the firms that want to provide business services to them. The Beta release of our community platform is a step forward on an ambitious road to provide a comprehensive online platform where small businesses can connect with business service providers. Lots more to come, so stay tuned…

BizNik: Business Networking that Doesn’t Suck

We've recently been watching an up-and-coming business networking organization called BizNik - and we're not the only ones. In the past year alone, BizNik has been an Official Honoree for the 2008 Webby Awards, Best in Class winner of the 2008 Interactive Media Awards, and Silver Winner of the 2007 W3 Awards.

BizNik believes, as we do at InsideUp, that when you're small, collaboration is a much surer path to success than competition. After all, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there are more than 23.3 million small businesses in the U.S. that have just one employee. Networking, therefore, is an essential tool that businesses can use to make connections with clients and vendors.

We especially love BizNik because it combines the power of online networking with local events that are occurring in cities across the country; you get the best of both worlds! With BizNik’s growing membership in cities and towns across the U.S. and around the world, now is a great time to jump in and try business networking.

BizNik makes a point to distinguish itself from other popular online business networking tools, such as LinkedIn and Namyz. BizNik explains that it's "not a place for job seekers. It's about sharing ideas, not for posting resumes. And it's where conversations about business and entrepreneurship are taking place." Plus, as we mentioned, BizNik provides online and offline opportunities to meet and greet fellow small business people.

Keep in mind that whether you network online or in person, there are some networking dos and don'ts that you should be aware of in order to increase your chances of success. According to Mark McGregor, author of "The 10 Commandments of Networking", one of the most important things that you can do when networking is to "drop the 'what's in it for me’ attitude”. For effective networking, including participation in online communities, we at InsideUp feel you have to participate, share, and give; the collective participation will eventually provide rich benefits to all.

Looking for some networking opportunities in your town? In addition to BizNik, check out these sure-fire national resources to get started (if you haven't done so already):

• Chamber of Commerce
• MeetUp
• Business Networking International
  

Finally, don't leave home without reading these networking tips from the U.S. Small Business Administration, which include tips on how to improve your appearance (get a haircut) and behavior (don't huddle up with co-workers and friends) while networking.