Are you considering outsourcing payroll services? When you’re running a business, there is always a service that you can outsource at a lower cost and with less headache than doing yourself – payroll outsourcing offers precisely that.
If you’re thinking of bringing in another company to deal with your employee salaries and benefits, we’ve got the guide you need.
In this article, we’re going to delve deep into:
- What you get when you outsource your payroll needs
- Why you need to outsource payroll for your Hong Kong business
- The benefits of payroll outsourcing
- Our recommendation for payroll outsourcing in Hong Kong
- The businesses that can really benefit from outsourcing their payroll
So you can decide if outsourcing your payroll is going to be a savvy move for your business.
Want to be put in touch with a company that does outsourcing payroll services in Hong Kong? Contact Vinod Menon at Pinetree.
What is outsourcing payroll services, and why do I need it?
Payroll outsourcing means contracting the services of an external company to deal with all of your payroll services. It can be a company specializing in payroll or a firm that deals with various financial services like an accountant.
Do you really want to be flicking between spreadsheets and checking the detailed wording of Hong Kong labor laws when you’re getting a new business off the ground? And as your business grows the work involved in ensuring that staff are paid on time and accurately is large.
Payroll outsourcing takes that headache away from you. All you need to do is get your employees set up on the outsourced company’s systems and hand all responsibility over to them.
What does a payroll outsourcing company in Hong Kong do?
You can expect a range of services when you outsource your company payroll. Some companies will have set packages, while others will allow you to create a bespoke deal based on your needs.
Some of the tasks you can outsource are:
- Weekly or monthly salary payments
- Completing tax documents for new starters and leavers
- Creating a draft payroll report
- Running an approved payroll report for salaries to get paid
- Offering digital downloads of payslips for employees
- Tracking annual and sick leave
- Providing software for employees to request and managers to approve leave
- Reporting data related to costs, leave, and attendance
- Training for payroll software for your team
- Support for staff queries with a fast and accurate turnaround
Good payroll companies offer a deeper bench of tools and options – these services are generally available on ad hoc or on a contract basis.
Benefits of outsourcing payroll services
Now you know what payroll outsourcing is, you’re probably trying to justify it to yourself. Can I afford it? What’s the business case for bringing in a payroll provider?
We believe there are six key reasons to outsource your payroll.
Six advantages of outsourcing payroll services
1. Gives you peace of mind
By outsourcing payroll to a trusted company, you and your staff can focus on critical parts of your business all while being comfortable with the knowledge that you will have accurate monthly payroll processing and payroll that is paid on time.
Best of all, by utilizing a good quality outsourcing firm, you can get access to expert knowledge at relatively low fees.
2. Outsourcing payroll services saves you money
The benefits of outsourcing payroll include saving money on software costs, staff costs, hardware expenses, and security expenses. We explore all of these factors related to payroll outsourcing in more detail:
Software costs
Maintaining payroll software can be more expensive than you realize. If you do payroll services in-house, you will need to pay for the cost of the software and the cost of installation. In addition, you can expect there to be a learning period where staff members are getting used to the software.
One of the benefits of outsourcing payroll services is that the payroll company will use and maintain their own payroll software, and they’ll be experts at the software.
Staff costs
Your team is your most valuable resource, and you’ll have spent time and money training them to be at their best. Do you really want one of your superstars sat at a desk calculating overtime or wading through time off requests?
When you outsource your payroll services, you can keep your team focused on core business needs while your admin is done by a dedicated, efficient, and qualified workforce elsewhere.
Hardware expenses
Payroll outsourcing will save you money on computers and printers that need to be used to do the job of calculating payroll.
Security expenses
By using outsourced payroll firms, it takes away issues related to internal security risks in terms of who knows the payroll details and where payroll data is backed-up.
3. Payroll outsourcing saves you time
One of the key benefits of outsourcing payroll is that your staff won’t have to spend their time figuring out pay calculations or deductions. Instead, they can spend their time doing more value-add activities that are central to your business.
Payroll outsourcing will be done efficiently by experts, thereby saving your firm time.
4. Reduces the risk of your business receiving a fine, penalty, or inspection.
It can be challenging for firms to ensure they have sufficient training and knowledge to keep up with various labor laws and requirements. Outsourcing payroll services should help to ensure you are keeping compliant with Hong Kong governance.
The labor laws and requirements in Hong Kong are essential to understand, the following issues all need to be considered:
Rather than having someone scratching your head in the office spending hours trying to get the correct answers, by outsourcing your payroll you make it a concern for someone else.
You can be sure your employees are getting the right contributions and deductions and you can also ask your outsourced payroll company for regular reports on these issues for your accounting and auditing.
5. Ensures your staff is paid correctly and on time.
Payroll is a sensitive issue, with your employees wanting to be sure you’ve got everything right to secure their now and their future. Using a dedicated and professional service will give you confidence that payroll calculations are done accurately and that payments are made on time.
If you use a payroll outsourcing company, you will get the chance to sign off on each payroll run and can build a checking process into your business. Plus, you can be sure that errors are unlikely and any problems will be dealt with by your chosen outsourcing company, rather than taking up your time.
6. Ensures your staff is managed seamlessly.
One of the key benefits of outsourcing payroll is that it can help you to better manage your flow of staff.
Managing staff can be time-consuming. Invariably, you will need to onboard new staff. You can also expect some people to retire as well as some employees to leave the firm. Keeping accurate track of leave and attendance is critical and making sure that staff is paid accurately is very important.
By using payroll outsourcing you can be sure that payroll is calculated accurately, efficiently, and on time.
What is the best payroll outsourcing company in Hong Kong?
When it comes to financial matters for business in Hong Kong, we don’t hesitate to send you in the direction of Pinetree Accounting Services.
With offices based right in the middle of Kowloon, this team knows all about business in Hong Kong and how to get your payroll working efficiently and accurately.
They offer the full suite of services you’d expect from a payroll outsourcing company, such as:
- New employee onboarding to get taxes and MPF contributions set up correctly
- Leaving and retiring employees receiving the correct tax forms and calculations completed
- Calculations of leave and attendance with reports available in your package
- An app and online portal for employee self-service to request holidays
- Draft reports of payroll for you before the final run is made
- Downloadable payslips for all employees to save printing whenever possible
Outsourcing payroll serivies software
As well as being on point with the technology – Pinetree uses Workstem, an all-inclusive 100% cloud-based payroll HRM platform – we’ve tried out the Pinetree payroll app, and it’s super intuitive and easy to use.
Something you need that’s not here? Have a chat with Vinod and his team over at Pinetree to see if your needs can be met.
How does outsourced payroll work in Hong Kong?
We can’t talk about all the companies in Hong Kong providing outsourced payroll services, but we can provide a summary of how outsourced payroll works at Pinetree:
- They’ll take all your salary information and do all the calculations needed in terms of MPF or ORSO contributions, tax, and any pro-rata or hourly contracts and produce a draft payroll report.
- This draft payroll support will be sent either to you as the CEO or the person you delegate the task to for the report to be checked for any errant details.
- Once you confirm the report with them, you can give them the go-ahead to get the report moving, depending on how you have your business bank accounts set up.
The exact cost that you pay will depend on a range of factors, such as:
- Your employee headcount
- The reporting that you want produced each period
- Additional services such as onboarding
- Onsite visits and workshops
Pinetree Accounting work on a “per user, per month” basis. This means that you pay a regular amount depending on how many you have on your team, with onboarding or leaving employees covered in this base rate that you pay.
You’re obviously paying for a professional service, so you’re not cutting corners, but you can expect to be paying something around what you’d be paying for one person to do the processing – but getting a team of professionals dealing with the various stages of the process.
Pros and cons of outsourcing payroll services
Feeling convinced yet? There’s a good chance you’ve got this far because outsourcing your payroll makes a lot of sense for you.
We’re all about giving your a balanced view on anything – especially when your money is involved, so we’ve got the pros and cons of outsourcing payroll all laid out for you.
Pros of payroll outsourcing
- Your employee onboarding process is taken care of in terms of tax and pensions.
- You can dedicate you or your HR staff to pursuits that add value to your business.
- Scales with your business without needing to hire new staff
- Reports vital information to you such as holidays used and changes in costs
- Allows you to bring in new tech like online portals and apps without investment
Cons of outsourcing payroll
- You need to stick within the frameworks that have been laid out without room for innovation.
- The package you choose may include some services that you don’t need
Who needs payroll outsourcing in Hong Kong?
A lot of different types of companies can benefit from payroll outsourcing, including:
- SMEs – outsourcing payroll requirements will free up limited resources.
- Start-ups – outsourcing payroll can help the company focus on getting a new business off the ground and scaling fast.
- Overseas representative offices – rather than hiring an HR professional as soon as you get going, outsource your payroll so you can keep your eye on the prize of company expansion into this exciting market.
- Big businesses based in Hong Kong will have lots of people starting and leaving roles and potentially complicated leave allowances based on long service. Outsourcing your payroll can ensure your business reduces dependency on one person’s skills and can reduce business costs during expansions and mergers.
FAQs outsourcing payroll services.
How much does it cost to outsource payroll?
Payroll outsourcing should cost roughly the same as hiring a payroll officer in your business.
How does payroll outsourcing work?
When you outsource your payroll, you hand over your company salary calculations to another company on a contract basis. Rather than having your HR or accounting department work your payroll, attendance, and holiday reports, you pay another company to deal with that admin for you.
Is outsourcing payroll a good idea?
Outsourcing payroll can be a good idea. The key benefits are:
– Saving money
– Saving time
– Avoiding mistakes
– Peace of mind
Is payroll outsourcing risky?
Some risks of payroll outsourcing include:
– Not transferring complete data over to your new payroll partner, resulting in incorrect payments. Double-check all your data before sending it over to prevent this issue.
– Not planning for reports you need, such as end-of-year reports for accounting or not tracking holidays. Be sure to consider everything you’ll need and sign a detailed contract outlining tasks to mitigate this potential pitfall.
– Mistakes can happen, even with professionals, and payments can go to the wrong place or be made late, for example. By having one of the top team members check out the draft report, significant issues can be caught before escalating to something unmanageable.
– You’ll never have a team member developing payroll skills, so you become reliant on outsourcing as your business grows. You can choose to train someone in payroll at any time, but working with outsourced payroll as your business gets bigger doesn’t have to be a problem.
Who do we recommend for outsourced payroll services?
We recommend Pinetree – they offer payroll outsourcing amongst many other services, including CFO services.
How do I find a reliable payroll outsourcing company in Hong Kong?
We’ve found one for you! We reckon that the services you’ll get from Pinetree Accounting will work well for you. Whether you want someone to deal with paying your home staff or taking on the payroll in your developing business, this company has the people and systems to support your needs.
What is outsourcing payroll services?
Payroll outsourcing involves using the services of an external service provider to handle the administrative and compliance aspects of paying employees. i.e., having an external company deal with all payroll-related duties of a company.
In Conclusion
Payroll is a critical business function that can negatively impact the overall business if not carried out on time and efficiently. Using payroll outsourcing can help to get your payrolls dealt with quickly and simply can alleviate all manner of admin headaches.
Use the limited resources of your office wisely and use outsourced payroll rather than using valuable time to do the required tasks yourself.
We believe the main benefit of using Pinetree payroll services is their knowledge, expertise, and reliability. The owner of the firm, Vinod Menon, has built up a strong reputation within Hong Kong for delivering a myriad of services to Hong Kong business owners, including CFO services.
Got some tips or personal experiences you’d like to share on outsourcing payroll services in Hong Kong? Please leave them in the comments below.
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Vinod is extremely patient and absolutely a pleasure to work and interact with. Even for a non-numbers person, you walk away feeling confident that you fully understand what he and his team are doing for your business, and he will advise you on what you can actually do yourself. Highly recommend Pinetree for your accounting needs!
Hi Sarah, thanks so much for sharing your experience!