Offering Payroll Services

[Martynt74]

My wife offers payroll services as a job from home. She could do with a few more jobs as a few companies have gone under recently.

A lot of her long standing clients came from her dad who was an accountant in practice with his own firm. He's no longer with us and i'm trying to think of the most effective options.

1. Cold Call/Leaflet drop to local business - This i imagine would go straight in the bin
2. Join the local Chamber of Commerce/Local Business groups and try and network
3. Ring round local accountants to see if they could pass on any referrals
4. Post on facebook groups for local businesses

Anyone have any extra suggestions or things they would suggest?

Cheers

 

[Martynt74]

Good shout i hadn't thought of Linkedin.

I have the premium Sales Navigator which makes finding contacts quite easy. Do you think just finding local businesses and target the owners? I don't think we could compete with big companies but family businesses and the like where you can give a better customer service is definately our market.

 

[Martynt74]

not to hijack . but im considering doing the same as your wife and provide payroll services from home and go self employed (Eventually). Does she have any tips how to get started?

To be honest most of her clients came from her dad who was an accountant and passed bookkeeping/payroll work over. So she just started out that way. The advice above seems good for winning clients. I think a big thing is to focus on the main selling point which is the out of hours service. She'll get an email on a Saturday morning sometimes and can still turn it around quickly. Small firms like that along with the support she offers and you wouldn't get that from bigger payroll firms.

I would recommend Brightpay as a software package though if you do get clients. It's very easy to easy and pretty well priced compared to other packages.
https://www.brightpay.co.uk/

 

[Martynt74]

Do your firm not offer payroll services? If so i'd make sure there's nothing in your contract to stop you offering the same services.

It's definately easy work, i'd say she brings in about £400 a month or so from her various jobs and i wouldn't say she does more that 2 hours work for that. Plus i'm an accountant so can help out if needed. Sadly i'm not in practice so can't get us referrals!

Oh an don't forget you'll need to register with the money laundering agency. Think it's £130 a year. Not sure if thats needed for payroll or just bookkeeping though.

 

[Martynt74]

Not trying to hijack the thread or anything, but what qualifications and registrations are required to start offering payroll services?

My wife has no formal qualifications so i don't believe any are required. It may help you attract clients though to have something. Groupon may be useful here to get something cheap.