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Contractor Payroll – In house or Outsource…?

By 28 January 2021No Comments

Companies of all sizes and scopes depend on payroll to pay their employees/contractors plus comply with federal and state regulations. Payroll is one important function that cannot be ignored.

But do you know how do you go about planning the payroll for your company? And what’s involved? To understand more about the same, read below:

What’s Payroll?

Payroll refers to all the steps a company has to take in order to pay contractors/freelancers. As we know, no two companies are the same, therefore payroll varies greatly depending on the size and the nature of the business.

However, payroll accuracy and compliance are of utmost importance. Even a single error in calculating your contractor/freelancer’s pay or tax payments can result in a bad impression with them or even fines or penalties from the government agencies. Payroll has to account for monthly, fortnightly or hourly payment of each and every contractor/freelancer.

Additionally, payroll also has to include overtime pay, withholdings, deductions, sick time and paid holidays.

In-house Payroll Processing:

As the name suggests; in-house payroll refers to keeping your payroll within your company. This includes hosting and maintaining the chosen payroll system on company servers. The person responsible for payroll must have complete knowledge about data security, back-ups and tax laws as well as managing processing the payroll.

In-house payroll is an arrangement where the company has to use a payroll application installed and hosted locally on a private cloud server. Such applications are usually leased from bigger software development companies which are also responsible for tax and security updates. This might come with an additional cost. Often there are set up costs and your payroll team need to be well informed of the latest changes to awards to ensure compliant payroll processing. While there are labour costs associated and running an in-house operation, your business has full control of the pay process. Although this can be expensive for your company, thankfully, there’s a great middle way solution for this expense – Outsourcing.

Outsourcing Payroll:

It’s the 21st Century and we live in a gig economy. There are companies that provide outsourced payroll services. These companies would take care of all your contractor/freelancer’s payroll needs from start to finish for a nominal fee. Service providers like Pendragon and similar payroll service providers in Australia offer specialised payroll services that take care of the payroll as well as the regulatory and compliance requirements.

Calculating payroll is a tedious and time-consuming job and outsourcing would allow you and your employees to focus on your core business and develop strategies, that will help your business grow, instead of spending valuable time calculating payroll each week.

To know more about the benefits of outsourcing payroll and assistance with the same, don’t hesitate to talk to us… 02 9407 8700 or reach us at [email protected] and we will make sure we provide you with a cost-benefit analysis for your organisation.

Purnima Kabra