Growing Pains or Gains? 4 Services to help your firm grow.

When hiring your first employee finally becomes an option, it’s easy to get overwhelmed or lost in the details. To be frank, it’s never as simple as it seems. From determining pay rate, fringe benefits, and work hours it’s easy to miss things (like taxes or filing deadlines) which can land you in hot water with the department of labor. Luckily, I’ve been able to navigate the process with the help of some essential tools. Below are 4 services to help your firm grow.

The road to success is always under construction.

Lily Tomlin

This past December I realized that I was in a stable enough position to bring on a part-time employee. I decided to start with part-time to ensure that the firm had enough business to keep the new employee busy. While I was fortunate enough to have the work available, the struggles came from other aspects of becoming an employer. Navigating the proper forms for Washington State Labor and Industries, the tax bracket and getting a payroll system set up was no easy feat! I did discover, however, that there are programs available to streamline the process. I’ve included 4 services that I use most frequently to help grow my practice.

1. Gusto Core

Gusto Payroll for small businesses is a lifesaver. The platform is easy to navigate, allows you to complete all onboarding documents online and is very affordable. The Gusto Core program is $39 per month and offers payroll for smaller firms. The program also offers benefits for employees, so long as you meet certain requirements. 

Employee hours are calculated in the platform, where employees can effectively “log on” and “log off”, manage overtime and time-off requests. One of the best features is the ability of Gusto to calculate all taxes and automatically pay those taxes to the state for your employees. It takes the guesswork out of payroll and ensures employees are paid on time. 

2. Cashbook

Everyone knows that I am a Cashbook fanatic. I use it for all three of my businesses because it is simple to understand, easy to use and best of all it auto calculates the profit/loss statement. Cashbook is also incredibly affordable. In comparison, I attempted to use quickbooks for the business and while I think quickbooks has a lot to offer, I found that a combo of Cashbook and Gusto covered all the same needs, with a lot less effort. 

Cashbook is like an excel sheet on steroids. It’s pre-populated with income, expenses, owner draw etc to allow the user to quickly input information and see balance in realtime. I often cross reference this with my business checking to ensure they balance – and at the end of the year, i send it to my accountant to file my taxes. #easypeasy

3. An Accountant

Many accountants can handle payroll, billing, etc for your firm, but it can get quite expensive. That said, I do highly recommend an accountant to handle year end taxes for a couple of reasons. 1) assurance that taxes are done properly and on time; and 2) recommendations for limiting tax liability for the following years. 

This past tax season, my accountant and I sat down to discuss my tax liability and how to reduce that liability for the next season. This included converting my business from an LLC to an S Corp – something that I never would have thought to do. He also provided tips on how to save money, how to write off a lot of business expenses and how to prepare for hiring employees. Side note* Gusto allows members to add their accountant to oversee and ensure everything is running smoothly.

That $400 is worth it in the end. 

4. Financial Advisor

This last one is more of an overall business benefit that is not necessarily specific to hiring employees. However, I would highly recommend it for peace of mind. I speak to my financial advisor frequently. We discuss business planning, home planning and future planning. Why is that relevant or important? Because the scariest part of hiring an employee is the financial aspect. I was terrified that if I had a bad month, I wouldn’t be able to pay my assistant. With the help of my financial advisor, I have less of a fear of that happening. We set up a financial plan where money is invested every month into an accessible mutual fund. This ensures that should something happen, an emergency fund can be accessed to cover the expenses until the business gets back on the straight and narrow. 

I would recommend Northwestern Mutual Financial Advisors, because that is who I use and I’ve had good luck. 

Hiring my first employee was not an easy task. However, we got there in the end, many thanks to the aforementioned products/services. If you have any suggestions, questions or concerns, please shoot me an email.