Payroll Services for Fresno Small Businesses: How It Works and What It Costs
Payroll isn't something we offer as a standalone service, but rather an add-on for clients already on monthly bookkeeping. That's intentional: payroll touches the same accounts, categorization, and reporting that bookkeeping already covers, so handling both together means fewer errors and no disconnect between what's paid out and what's recorded.
How Payroll Pricing Works
Payroll is priced as a flat add-on on top of monthly bookkeeping, based on three factors:
Number of employees or contractors on payroll
Pay frequency — how often payroll runs
Platform — Intuit (QuickBooks) payroll, or an outside payroll service
For Intuit payroll, pricing starts at $50 per employee, per month, for monthly pay frequency. Bi-weekly payroll runs at $100 per employee, per month, since payroll is processed twice as often. More frequent pay schedules mean more processing, which is reflected directly in the rate.
If a business runs payroll through an outside service rather than Intuit, that carries an additional cost on top of the above, quoted based on the specific provider and setup involved.
Why Pay Frequency Changes the Price
This isn't an arbitrary markup — running payroll bi-weekly literally means the work happens twice as often as monthly payroll. The per-employee rate reflects the actual processing frequency, not just headcount.
Why Payroll Is Bookkeeping-Only, Not a Standalone Service
Payroll numbers flow directly into your books — wages, withholdings, and tax liabilities all need to be recorded and reconciled accurately. Offering payroll only to bookkeeping clients means it's handled by someone already looking at the full financial picture, not managed in isolation from the books it affects.
Already a Monthly Bookkeeping Client?
If you're on monthly bookkeeping and want payroll handled under the same roof, it's a straightforward add-on based on your employee count and pay schedule.
Comments