A Conversation With … Krystal Russell

How did you get started with Payroll Vault?
We were doing consulting in our office at that time [through Spectrum Accounting], trying to help small businesses find a balance of outsourcing and in-house. Larger employers, it makes more sense to hire someone in-house. For most of Springfield, they need someone outside. The most cost-effective way for a business to get the resource it needed was to outsource payroll. We were recommending it over and over again. That’s when we began researching and decided to join the Payroll Vault franchise brand.

Your office now processes $28 million in annual payroll for 76 local clients. What’s the benefit of having a payroll service over doing it yourself?
When you are preparing payroll, there are many pieces of the puzzle. There are reports to file, payments to make and different times for each of them. You’re also dealing with different federal and state level agencies. To track all of that by timing is a really easy way for a business owner to get tripped up. Being able to help manage the timeline and time frame is essential. Payroll is an ever-changing world; to keep a business compliant is what we do.

What happens if you make an error and get a number wrong?
I’m knocking on wood because that has not happened yet. If there was an error, we would correct it. We are insured if something terrible went wrong. We have a procedure in place where one person enters and another person checks. Being accountants, we have checklists for our checklists.

What’s the most frequent mistake you see employers make?
There are many. Of course there is the timeline, but also payment. Sometimes employers are intentionally slow to pay the tax and get themselves behind. We have procedures in place that don’t allow that to happen. Another common mistake would be related to overtime pay and time tracking. There are (human resources) issues there.

Payroll tax penalties have averaged over $1,100 per employer annually, according to the National Payroll Reporting Consortium. Why are they being fined?
It’s usually from people not filing on time, filing the wrong amounts or paying the wrong amounts. Meeting those deadlines and doing it accurately is difficult. They don’t realize they are doing it; it’s unintentional.

Have you ever uncovered fraud? What should employers be watching for?
We are very careful on our side. An IRS article just came out this week about this specific issue. We have not run across that directly because we have processes and procedures in place to keep that from happening. I would say, nothing is 100 percent, but we require our employers to provide so much information it would be really difficult to happen. It provides a safety net, a segregation of duties and an extra set of eyes to help. Even within our company, it takes two people to get a payroll out because of the controls in place. We are dealing with other people’s money, and we take that very seriously.

IRS laws are always changing. How do you keep up with something so big?
We are always researching and constantly going to continuing education classes. We are members of associations for payroll only. Our franchise is our largest resource. Daily we get updates, and we are part of a forum of almost 30 offices across the country.