Here are the steps that you will need to follow to choose a payroll processing company.

Step one:
Find a payroll processing company that specializes in home businesses. There are many different payroll-processing firms out there for you to choose from and they all offer a wide range of products that you can use with their services. Some of the things that they offer are payroll tax administration, 401(k) plans, Section 125 plans, COBRA administration and Workers' Comp just to name a few. Here are some of the more popular payroll processing firms to choose from:

• Paychex - http://www.paychex.com/


• Advantage Payroll - http://www.advantagepayroll.com/home.asp


• CompuPay - http://www.compupay.com/solution_finder_sm.cfm

Step two:
You will need to decide if you plan to manage your payroll in part with an online payroll processing service. Helping the payroll processing service out with part of your payroll is a great way for your home business to save money because you will not be charged as much as doing your entire payroll process. If you are willing to invest just a small amount of time your home business can manage majority of its payroll with the online services that the payroll processing company offers.

Step three:
If the smaller payroll processing companies are not working out for your home business because they do not have the experience that you need, you will need to look into the larger payroll processing companies. Even though these larger companies usually process payroll for larger companies that does not mean that they will not do it for smaller companies, they can even offer great prices or extra services that smaller payroll processing companies do not include.

Step four:
If you are already using QuickBooks than you should look to their parent company, which is Intuit to see what it, is that they have to offer when it comes to payroll processing services. They offer a wide variety of solutions for all aspects of payroll in addition to QuickBooks Payroll Solutions, which only costs about $17 per month for a basic in-house solution; it goes up according to your needs.

Step five:
You also need to see what it is that your business bank can offer you. The reason for this is that in order to attract and keep more business banks have started offering even more services and many have ventured into payroll processing. Some of the banks even offer payroll processing for free as long as you choose to use direct deposit and your employees all have accounts with the bank. The best bet that you have for banks processing your payroll is Wells Fargo because they have been the most prolific small business payroll processors.

Other tips/resources:

• Because many small businesses do not have proper knowledge of payroll tax, rules and procedures they choose to use a payroll processing service so that they can avoid making mistakes. It is a known fact that if you do not know what you are doing it is very easy and quite common to make mistakes.


• They are highly competitive. Their basic processing typically costs between $2 and $3 per check in addition to a base fee. If you are looking for a complete solution, you can expect to pay $3 to $5 per check that is issued.