Thinking of Expanding Your Payroll Business? Consider Offering Benefits Administration Services

As you start evaluating your clients and current service offerings, consider ways you can provide additional services to clients, starting with existing clients. With fall around the corner, many small business owners are starting to prepare for open enrollment. Some businesses may already have everything in place and are simply waiting for the enrollment period to roll around. Others are still trying to decide between providers and plans for their employees.

This is a good time to assess your clients and see where they fall. Is this a service you can provide to your existing customers? Since payments for benefits are processed through employees’ paychecks, your clients may appreciate having a streamlined process for handling open enrollment and benefits.

As a payroll practitioner, you are the trusted advisor for your clients. You are already familiar with the laws and compliance regulations that affect their business. You understand the tricky contractor versus employee debate and can help them navigate which benefits their workers are legally entitled to.

Schedule some time with clients to discuss their benefits needs and how your payroll practice can help meet those needs. Have your clients outline their current process for enrolling employees in benefits. Identify those areas where they will benefit from having a streamlined process.

One of the things to consider is whether your practice can manage benefits administration in the same software that you use to process payroll. Not only will this save time for your staff, but it also provides a huge benefit to clients. Their employees will be able to log into one system and make changes to payroll and benefits.

In addition to offering benefit administration services to new and existing clients, consider expanding your offerings to include these other services:

Mobile Payroll Services
Employee Portals
New Hire Reporting
Workers Compensation Administration
Health Care Reform Compliance and Advisory Services
Time and Attendance Management
Retirement Services
Risk Management
Tax & Accounting Services
CFO Consulting Services

Whether or not you decide to offer benefits administration services, helping your clients prepare for open enrollment season is still a good idea. They will need to understand how the Affordable Healthcare Act will affect the upcoming open enrollment for their employees. For ideas on some steps your clients can take to prepare for open enrollment, check out ADP’s latest one-hour webinar (which can be accessed from ADP.com/backtobiz).