r/PayrollHub

I have about 3 years of payroll experience. I started in-house and have now been in a service bureau environment for a little over a year, and I’m honestly exhausted.

I never felt this burned out doing in-house payroll. Managing multiple clients, different setups, random requests, system configurations, and constantly running into things I’ve never dealt with before is getting to me. Lately I’ve also had some older setup issues come back that I didn’t realize were wrong at the time, and it’s really shaken my confidence.

I recently got promoted and passed my CPP, but somehow I feel like I know less than ever. I’ve been asking my supervisor a ton of questions because I’d rather ask than make another mistake, but it makes me feel like I should know more by now.

At this point I dread getting emails because I assume it’s another issue I have to figure out.
For anyone who’s worked both in-house and service bureau, is this just the reality of service bureau payroll? Did you feel less burned out when you went back in-house? I can’t tell if I’m overwhelmed, if I need more experience, or if this model just isn’t for me.

I run a small restaurant here in Chicago with about 18 people, and we’re at the point where payroll is outgrowing how I’ve been handling it. It’s taking up more of my week than it should, and I’d rather get something in place now than wait until we’re bigger and it’s more of a pain to switch everything over.
I actually started out on Gusto, but it didn’t really click for me, so I’ve been looking around. A friend who also runs a restaurant brought up Homebase as an option, so that’s on my list now along with whatever else people here are using.
If you’re running a place with less than 20 people, how’d you end up setting yours up

We’ve been looking into adding payroll to our platform and most of the initial conversation was around the technical side.

The more we dig into it though, the API doesn’t seem like the part that worries me anymore. It’s everything that comes after launch. Tax filings, notices, compliance changes, support issues and figuring out who owns what when something goes wrong.

For people who’ve been through this already, what ended up taking more work than you expected?