The days of selling “just payroll” are over.

The Affordable Care Act has fused payroll, benefits, time keeping and HR records into one big clump of data. Employers expect you to deliver integrated HCM services that tie everything together: payroll, HRIS, timekeeping, benefits administration, time clocks and more.

Trouble is, before you can deliver these integrated services, you have to price them out and deliver a quote. You have to understand the cost of each element, know what the customer is willing to pay, and tie it all together in a profitable package. And your quote has to be simple enough that it doesn’t confuse the person who reads it.

So what goes into the quote?

A lot – Payroll and HCM services are a mix of one-time and recurring services, plus products. Some companies simplify their quotes by offering “base fee + per employee” pricing. But one-size-fits-all pricing hurts profitability, because the mega-billion dollar client can afford to pay more than the shoestring nonprofit. One-size pricing also tends to work only for smaller, simple companies who don’t need many services.

Once a company has more than, say, 100 employees, they usually need a mix of weekly/biweekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly services. They also might need hardware, setup fees, training, support contracts, and blocks of consulting hours. Each of these products and services probably has its own pricing formula. So to make a quote, most people turn to Excel.

You could quote in Excel, but that’s risky

You can put all of your pricing formulas into Excel. But the more formulas that you add, the more fragile the Sacred Quoting Spreadsheet becomes.

PayrollCRM is a configure-price-quote software platform that’s designed for quoting payroll and HR services—and then using that information to speed up implementation.

A few things that can go wrong when you quote in Excel:

  • Somebody deletes a formula, or a reference cell, and “breaks” the sheet.
  • Somebody quotes using an outdated sheet, and you have to backpedal on your promise to the customer and increase your pricing.
  • Four different versions of the quote float through email, quote.xlsx, quote1b.xlsx, quote1b-final.xlsx, quote-2-use-this-one.xlsx – which one is the right one again?
  • You get fed up with complex spreadsheets and water down your pricing, quote everybody a simple “$x per employee per month”, and leave piles of money on the table.

PayrollCRM makes it easy to quote any mix of payroll and HR services—fast.

PayrollCRM gives you a point-and-click, “shopping cart” quoting engine. It speeds up experienced sales people, and it reduces training time for new recruits.

We talk to employers about the importance of a “single employee record” and a single database underpinning all of their Human Capital Management. PayrollCRM is the same thing for your pricing—it is your single pricing database that feeds the sales channels you choose: inside/outside sales, referral sources, web pricing and quoting, and other distribution channels like PayrollMart.com.

What’s the first step?

After we talk, all you have to do is send us your pricing materials – imagine we’re a new salesperson on the first day of work. For most companies, this is a set of pricing spreadsheets and PDFs. (We always sign NDAs, by the way.)

It usually takes us a day or two to load your pricing into your secure PayrollCRM instance. It will be in the form of: https://yourcompany.payrollcrm.com.

Next, we ask you a few questions about your team, create your users, and set their permissions. This takes another couple of days.

Once you’re set up in PayrollCRM, your salespeople and your referral sources (CPAs, brokers, etc.) can sell faster and easier. The hand-off from sales to implementation is more efficient, and management has 100% transparent insight into the sales pipeline.

Send us a note here to find out how PayrollCRM can help your payroll/HCM company.