Skip to menu
Skip to content

Supporting Your Faith with Fiscal Accountability

Testimonials

I am so much more comfortable with how our finances are now being handled. Thanks for your help!

Dr. Randy T. Hodges, Senior Pastor
Hernando Church of the Nazarene

Sign up to receive notifications of new blog posts

Call: 904-398-4747

Need help with your payroll?

We’re often asked whether a ministry or non-profit should compute and prepare its payroll checks or use an outside service to handle this important process. While no standard answer applies to all businesses, some important issues should be considered in making that decision.

Preparing payroll is:

Complicated – Payroll for the clergy is different from any other industry. We see frequent notices from the IRS due to incorrect filing or preparation of payroll returns. If you employ a volunteer bookkeeper or a staff member for whom payroll is an additional assignment, he or she may not be familiar with computing a payroll check and making the payroll tax deposits each payday, and they may be overwhelmed or confused with the percentages and rules. The various rates of withholding of the different taxes and the brackets and employer tax rates and wage caps can be daunting. Add to those challenges the various types of compensation that are tax exempt and the calculation of overtime, and you may run yourself crazy meeting all of these demands. Mistakes made in this process could impair your employees’ happy relationship with your organization!

Time consuming – Complexity equals greater preparation time. Is payroll check preparation and form completion the best use of your volunteer’s or staff member’s time, or would you be better serviced by experienced professionals? The basic data still needs to be gathered in your office, but the challenging bookkeeping and compliance does not. If you’re battling the daily challenges of ministry, you’ll want to free up some time from this “busy work.”

Prone to problems – Payroll services take on all the liability issues, relieving their clients of the risk of meeting deadlines and filing forms. We frequently see our clients’ frustrations with penalties, embezzlements, and costly fees to correct compliance errors. Often the resulting cost is more than a payroll service would have been for an entire year.

Costly – Anything related to the accounting function is generally thought of as overhead that would rather be avoided. However, if an overhead function provides timely information and efficient results, it removes the more expensive cost of managing through problems. Outsourcing payroll is an effective way to improve efficiency and remove a common headache.

Sensitive –The most confidential information in your office is likely your payroll and employment files. Few other issues can cause bad will like disagreements over compensation and benefits. If all of those files are maintained outside your office with a payroll processor, your confidential data becomes one less worry.

So, if using a payroll service is such a great solution, what would hold you back? Services are available that can be tailored to meet your specific needs.

The only decision left is how to get started—and we can help.  As a provider of ADP services, we offer a turnkey approach in which all we need from you is setup information for your company and employees. We handle all of the data entry, forms completion, direct deposit and tax payments. You can also work directly with ADP, doing your own setup, data entry, scheduling, and filing.

Bottom line: we’re ready to take this burden off of you. Give us a call at (904) 398-4747 or visit our contact page and we’ll give you a call.

Comments are closed.

« »