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00:00

This is Ted, your friend and host speaking and welcome back to the TED to business show. On today’s show. We’ll be discussing payroll issues with Charles Reed. Charles Reed is the President and CEO of get payroll, a firm that specializes in providing online payroll and Payroll Tax Compliance services in the United States for over 30 years and counting. Charles was previously appointed to the United States Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council as one of only seven members chosen nationwide to serve on the prestigous Committee in 2018 for a three year term, he is also one of the only 86 people in the last 16 years to pass the US tax code non attorney practitioners exam, which enables him to represent clients in the US Tax Court without being an attorney. In today’s episode, Charles tips include the benefits of hiring a payroll specialist the common mistakes that entrepreneurs make in relation to payroll, and how one can avoid fraud be committed against their business. Now, guys, if you have any questions as to how the applicable laws may apply to you and your business, please do consult your own legal adviser and tax advisor as the laws that apply to each country and state will differ. Now, to my listeners in the United States, Charles has been very kind and generous because it’s offered to send a free copy of his book to your address. So if you want a free copy of this book sent to you log on to tatio.com. Click on the relevant link and provide a discount code head to this t dt o to get a free book sent to you. Now remember, all shownotes tools and resources are available on my website at Ted teo.com. And if you’d like to support the show, then remember to subscribe, leave a review and share this with somebody who find this useful as well now as a way to say thank you and to show my appreciation to you guys, if you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. Now let’s dive right in. Charles, thank you so much for joining us. It’s such a pleasure to have you here today.

 

01:45

My pleasure, Ted. Thanks for having me.

 

01:47

Charles. I’m going to start with simple icebreaker so we can get to know you a little better. Could you share with us who is Charles Reed when he isn’t working?

 

01:54

Well, I’m a Midwestern boy I grew up in Iowa, went to high school there. After high school, I joined the military. I spent four years in the United States Marine Corps, served in Vietnam as a Combat Infantryman. Among other things. When I got back to the United States, I was still in service I met and married my wife. She had five children when I married her, I claim insanity. So we were married for 45 years before she passed, oh dear. After I got out, I realized that the American business did not value my military education and experience even though it was quite extensive. I was computer programmer and systems analyst systems engineer trained by IBM. But since it was military, they didn’t think it was worth anything. So I went to college, got my bachelor’s and my master’s degree sat for and passed my CPA exam, went to work for Texas Instruments after college, worked in corporate life for about 15 years and then started my own firm. Ruth and I started this 30 years ago this month. And there we are,

 

03:06

hmm. So Charles, you’re a payroll specialist and you run your own payroll firm. Could you share with us? in your own words? What exactly is it that you do and the benefits of engaging someone like you?

 

03:18

Well, what we do is we handle all the payroll processing functions. Once the client turns in the time or the salaries, we handle the rest of it, a payroll service bureau will create the checks the direct deposits, they should make all your tax deposits, create all your tax forms, file them for you, and then handle any problems that arise. And in the US with the Internal Revenue Service 200,000 people who are civil servants, and they make lots of mistakes every year, systems are old, and people are underpaid and civil servants and training budgets low so things happen. And we fix them. We’re compliance experts. Most of our competitors do a fairly good job of creating checks, direct deposits, but as the compliance that sets us apart, as a CPA and a US Tax Court practitioner, we are able to do things for our clients or our competitors just can’t or won’t do.

 

04:18

Charles, would you say it is accurate? If we engage your payroll specialist like you and the job is well done. IPO specialist can actually be a cost saving center for a business as opposed to a cost center itself.

 

04:28

Absolutely. Not only in terms of saving internal time, and people and facilities. I did a study on this and did up an app years ago on the cost of doing a payroll internally and just the cost of doing the payroll and having people on board and having them trained. Hiring replacements, retraining them, having computers having software having regulatory training seminar ongoing professional education for your payroll people is quite expensive. And frankly, we’re normally cheaper than doing it in house, let alone the cost of penalties and outside things from the government that could increase your cost. In the US 40% of small businesses get hit with a penalty every year. And that penalty average is $800. So I tell potential clients, if you weren’t hit last year or the year before, you’re probably gonna get a penalty this year. And combine that with the cost of actually doing the payroll in house. We’re not only cheap, we are a profit center.

 

05:40

So guys, when thinking about engaging a payroll specialist, don’t just think about the cost of the services itself. But think about how much you can actually save you as well. If you want to do it in house, you’ll be engaging somebody to do it for you anyway, and it costs money as well. So a possible alternative is to engage your payroll specialists to do it for you. This will help you ensure that you’re in compliance law, and you won’t have any penalties to worry about down the road. Now, back to you, Charles, could you actually share some examples where you provide a very clear value to your clients where you actually help them save money?

 

06:09

Well, we had a client who was penalised, and the penalty had risen to $95,000. It took nine years we went through after they brought it to our attention and got it into our pocket. We started working with the Internal Revenue Service, we worked with all the various appeals levels, up to the the field manager who oversees multiple districts, and he wouldn’t return my calls. So I called the Deputy Chief of appeals. And in Washington, who I had met, being on the IRS Advisory Council, and I said to her, I can’t get this guy to call me back. And she said, I’ll take care of it, he’ll call you back. He called me that afternoon. I walked through the situation with him. He agreed that we needed to have this relooked at we sent it, he sent it to a different appeals office. And 90 days later, my client got a refund for $400. And the penalty went away. It was just $95,000 he put in his pocket?

 

07:13

Well, Charles, it sounds like one of the additional benefits of engaging appear with specialists like you is that you have existing relationships with the tax offices. And it actually makes the whole process a lot easier, right? I

 

07:24

mean, if you’re, if you don’t know these people, you don’t know who to call. The IRS doesn’t easily publish tables of organizations, and so on and so forth. I have contacts in the service. And if I need to know who, who’s over this area, who runs this area, I can find out and get their phone number and call them. If I don’t already know them. spending three years on the advisory council, we met with the commissioner and all the commissioners of the various business entities and their deputies, and we were working on solving problems for the IRS is outsiders, because the IRS is very insular in the United States, and you know, is any government agency is they live within themselves. And so we were professionals from the outside that provided an outside point of view, a consumer point of view. So we’re a tax consumer point of view. So it was a fascinating, I’ve learned a lot. And I got to meet a lot of the people to service. And, frankly, most of the people, the IRS are good people, you know, their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, children of somebody else that, you know, they’re nice people, they, they they’re civil servants, which means they’re not profit oriented. But they’re good people. But budgets short and training is short. And I’ve been doing this in this area for over 30 years. And I’m far more experienced at it than they are. So in many cases, you know, I’m giving them what the lie is and explain it and going through it. And we’re very successful. But yeah, you got to know these people, and you got to work with them. So Charles formula experience,

 

09:03

what kind of mistakes do tax authorities tend to make?

 

09:07

There’s a number of things that, for instance, there was a problem with deposit period changes. And the law is relatively clear, if you dig into it, that the IRS is required to send notices to the authorized representative. Well, a lot of the people the IRS don’t think this is true. So having have been a US Tax Court practitioner, and having studied the tax law, it was obvious to me that they were mistaken. And so we filed a petition with Tax Court on a particular case. And and one and at that point in time, I have a precedent in US Tax Court to send to the various other IRS agents that say, No, we don’t have to do that. And I presented with a tax case and in many cases, I’m I’m doing tax research within the law to defend a position of a client. And if I’ve got the law on my side, we’ve got the training to do. So. It’s much, much easier if you can quote the law, and or the IRS regulations, the IRS says the IRS, internal manual, and how things are done, very involved, very detailed, very complex. It’s a great way to cure insomnia. So read it, before you go to bed, you will go to sleep, I promise you, that’s one way to put it. But if you know that, and, you know, I’ve just learned it over the years and have studied it, and know how to research it. And these are the kinds of things that a payroll service bureau should be able to do for you, they should have professionals, rather than just write checks, which is important, don’t don’t misunderstand me, getting checks, right is extremely important. But when it goes beyond that, if you don’t have somebody at the service Bureau, you’re using to be able to do that. Then you’re at sea, and you’ve got to go talk to your regular CPA. And if he was a payroll expert, he’d be doing your payroll or an attorney, and that gets expensive.

 

11:12

So Charles, what about the other side of the coin? What are the mistakes that entrepreneurs tend to make, they can actually get them into trouble a

 

11:20

couple of things, paying people under the table, just paying them in cash or writing them a check and forgetting about it. That’s that’s a huge mistake, you can’t do it. Then the next thing is you say, well, these people I’m paying, they’re independent contractors. So you’re classifying them as independent contractors, when in reality, they may be employees, and subject to withholding and tax payments, that independent contractors aren’t. There’s a whole bunch of rules, both in law and regulation, about who’s an employee and who isn’t. And if you don’t follow those rules, you’re going to get into serious trouble at some point in time. And a lot of entrepreneurs, it’s a lot of work. It’s a pain in the it’s a pain, to have employees as opposed to contractors, contractors just write a check. Once a year, you send in a 1099. employee, you’ve got to withhold taxes, you’ve got to deposit them, you’ve got to file quarterly, monthly, in many cases, your deposits may be made twice a week, if you have enough employees. So it gets a lot of complexity, which where we come in, of course, because we can do all that. And we have the software and the training and the facilities to do it. So entrepreneurs don’t like to do it. The next one is is that employee salary, or hourly? If they’re hourly? And there’s subject overtime, where you have to pay overtime. And that gets you into the Department of Labor. And that’s a whole nother ballgame. So you have the classification is one of the big problems and 75% of us businesses, misclassify employees, according to the Labor Department, that’s one of the biggest things they can mix mistakes they make. One of the other ones very early on, is picking the right entity. Do you want to be a corporation an LLC, a partnership, a sole proprietor, and what are the ramifications for payroll and payroll taxes for that entity. And if you don’t understand that, you’ll make mistakes.

 

13:26

Now, guys, of course, this would depend on the jurisdiction that you’re in, and the applicable tax law. But the issue of whether an individual is an employee or an independent contractor affects the amount of taxes that you should be paying, if you actually end up misclassifying this individual, you may be under paying taxes, and this could be an issue with your tax authority. Am I right, Charles?

 

13:44

Yes. And not only is there more taxes, because there’s employer taxes that you have to pay based on employee wages, but the complexity of it and the filings of it, with it with an independent contractor, you pay him gross pay, you report, gross pay, and you report it once a year. With an employee, you now are subject to all the withholding requirements. So you have to withhold taxes, you have to pay additional taxes, then you have to withhold and pay in the state that you’re in, then you have unemployment issues, both federal and state that you have to report on. So your level of reporting and compliance is much, much higher with employees than it is with independent contractors. But you don’t get to make the choice on whether that person is an employee or independent contractor paid analysis and entrepreneurs say well, I’m just gonna make them all independent contractors. You don’t get to make that choice. There’s there’s a whole body of law that you have to follow.

 

14:46

So guys, this is generally a largely back dependent analysis. But of course, you need to consult your relevant lawyers and tax advisers on this issue, because different countries and different states have different laws now on top of the tax obligations that comes with paying for an employee But an employee is what tends to have additional protections as compared to an independent contractor. Because an employee may also be entitled to specific protections under the applicable labor laws. So do keep that in mind as well. Now, Charles, let’s talk about a specific scenario. What advice would you have for the entrepreneur? If they find out they’ve been actually overpaying an employee for a long period of time? How can he manage this properly?

 

15:21

Well, if you’ve got a contract with them, and it’s in writing, then you can make those corrections. You can reduce their pay, you can not pay them to get it back, and so on. If you’ve done it for several years, you’re probably going to have a problem. If they don’t like it and take it to court. If it’s just I overpaid them last pay period, and you withhold it this pay period. Sit down and explain it to them, show them lay it out on paper, and, you know, get your money back. You don’t have to overpay them. If you do it consistently over a period of time, a lot of the courts are going to say no, you you you made that choice, you didn’t. It’s not a simple mistake. It’s something endemic and you’ve been paying them and they expect it. And you’ve led them to expect it. So no, you can’t get it back a single time. It’s very simple. Two or three pay periods, you know, you somebody put in a wrong raise, you put it in a 50 cent raises and have a 25 cent raise, you can do that. We’ve worked with people where that’s happened. And we may take it back out of several paychecks rather than right away, just so they don’t get inconvenienced as much because if you take somebody say, Oh, we overpaid your we’re not going to give you any money for three weeks. You know, they’ve got bills to pay, and my family just been so on. And if they’re not expected, it didn’t realize that that you’d screwed up. It could be very detrimental to the employee. And he may just say, screw you and walk away and then then try and collect that money back. Yeah. So you’ve got you’ve got a balance. Yeah, it’s owed back to me and their expectations. So you can’t just be draconian about how you get it back.

 

17:11

But yeah, if you’ve overpaid them, and you can prove it, it’s your money, not theirs. Now, Charles, when we’re talking about an issue of payroll, there must be issues of fraud detected as well. Can you share with us any relevant experience that you have on this topic?

 

17:23

Absolutely. One of the big things in companies where the owner is not in constant touch with everybody. In other words, you get more than 3040 people you get multiple locations are ghost employees, somebody has put a person on the payroll, that’s really not fair, that they’re taking the cheque and cashing it. We had an instance it was a hotel management firm. And the owner was smart. He had some concerns. So he signed all of his checks. That was uncommon. But he signed every check. Well, one week, he called me and said, Hey, john here was fired six weeks ago, why is there a check for him? And I said, Well, your girl here in Dallas, and send him the payroll with him on it. And he said, Oh, let me get back to you. She was fired that afternoon. Because she had people on the payroll, he wasn’t the only one that weren’t there. And she was then stealing the checks and cashing them. That is not uncommon. Okay? check fraud is a big deal. And this is why we push all of our clients to go with direct deposit whenever possible, because direct deposit is much much harder to commit fraud on if you’ve got a physical check that can be copied. And all the all the information that a crook needs to create fraudulent checks is on the check. Everything is their signature bank routing numbers, bank account numbers, everything and they can. With with the software that exists today, you can buy checks docket at the local office supply store, and create checks on any company you want. So if you’ve seen their check, or you have a photocopy of it, you can create checks, check frauds, a huge, huge crime in the US. And it’s something that for employers is easily preventable, you know, issue paychecks, you wish you direct deposits, or debit cards. And that way, there’s no paper out there for them to copy. And they would have to create a electronic file and send it through your bank and know your security procedures and the bank security procedures, and on and on and on. And that is much, much, much more difficult to accomplish that kind of fraud. So stay away from paper checks.

 

19:57

Yeah, on top of actually making it harder for me employees to commit fraud. actually having a digital payment system like this also makes it a lot more automatic and less time consuming in terms of payroll management, and it makes the documentation process a lot easier to manage.

 

20:12

Absolutely, it’s much easier for you, it’s easier for the employee, you don’t have paper paperwork laying around, you don’t have check copies laying around. You don’t have other people seeing who makes money, and how much they made that kind of thing. there’s far more privacy for you. And for the clients. You do it all electronically, your reports are in your computer, they’re not on your desk, they’re not there for anybody to look at. It’s quicker, they don’t have to go to the bank. This used to be a thing. Friday at noon, the banks that have lines of employees cashing their checks, of course, they’ve taken time off from work to do this. And if the lines too long, they get back late and lunch gets extended and so on. And it’s a hassle. Direct Deposit is in their account on payday. They can do with it as they please, if they don’t want to use a bank, a debit card works fine, they can take it to either a bank or financial institution, their local grocery store, use it as a debit card, and normally get cashback for whatever they need. for cash purposes. Debit Cards work very well. And a properly designed debit card pay card system should not cost the employer or the employee, anything if used within the rules that because of the laws, they’ve make allowances in the US that that can’t cost the employee to get the money off the card. If he doesn’t, once he can go to an ATM and get it out or a bank and get it out. If he uses it as a debit card over and over and over. There’s some fees just like it would be for any other debit card. But it shouldn’t cost the employee anything. And the employer shouldn’t be paying either, because the debit card company makes money off

 

21:56

the float. So Charles, let’s talk a little bit about how an employer can actually efficiently and effectively track the time and attendance of an employee. How has your position changed with the COVID crisis?

 

22:07

chair? That’s that’s a very good question. Because I’m actually developing a series of blogs right now, for remote timekeeping, which has become a huge thing and it looks like it’s going to be around for the foreseeable future. Time clocks, of course, are important. If you don’t have a time clock, particularly in a manufacturing setting, as much as 10% of your time may be wasted. There’s buddy punching, where people punch in other people and so on. So electronic biometric clocks make all the sense in the world. We had a client that it was a professional operation, she insisted she didn’t have a problem. So I suggest that she just put up a camera up above because time clocks in a in a back corridor where it’s not seen. And after a week, she fired three people for buddy punching their buddies. So it’s biometric is good on that. And remote timekeeping. You know, we’ve gotten into that with timekeeping off the phones, geo tracking, I’ve got a client that he has the software. And when that employee gets within 50 feet of the door, he’s clocked in what he’s more than 50 feet away from the door, he’s clocked out. So this it’s an automatic timekeeping. All these these all work well, the more electronic, they can be password, and you can have cards, you can do all kinds of things, biometric works, to control the time, it gets much more difficult on remote. However, for instance, for our own employees, we know if they’re on on the network, we know how long ago they touch their keyboard, and we clock them out if they haven’t touched their keyboard within a certain period of time. And they understand that. So you know, and you can do other things. We’re on a camera mounted on the top of the monitor. So you can do that and see if that person’s actually at their computer working. If they’re not well, you know, you don’t pay him. But there are some complexities and there’s some laws involved. And it’s you’ve got to write your policies very carefully. Because there’s privacy issues and other things. You know, you can’t just insist they have a camera on their computer, they have to agree to it. So there’s a lot of a lot of complexity. And I’m working through some of that now for some some my own blogs, but it’s a much more complex issue than it was two years ago.

 

24:47

Yes. Especially since the idea of booking home It seems to be here to stay. Now, Charles, can you share with us the process of how you onboard a client? How do you set to uncover the issues that they have the payroll and how do you actually solve them?

 

24:58

That’s a good question, Chad. We’re constantly improving our onboarding. For net now, for instance, all of our requests for documentation go out via file invite. And it’s all electronic, with one exception, where we do need a wet signature. So that gets a lot of the information in a lot easier than trying to send it or fax it, things that we used to do in years past. But as a payroll company, we get hit with people who want to defraud us on a regular basis. So we’re very, very cautious. We also have a number of banking regulations about knowing your client to prevent bank fraud. We’re in with third party processor, which there’s a lot of fraud in that classification, not from payroll companies per se, but other people who do consumer debits, people who collect tuition, debts, rents, all kinds of things. There’s a lot of fraud and a lot of consumer complaints and rejections and so on. Now, we don’t do any consumer debits, which we don’t draft money from, from consumers, we only draft money from from businesses. So we’re not the same problem. But there’s a lot of that in there and regulations that force us to, in bank parlance, know your client KYC. So we have a whole procedure on that. And then we have to make sure that this is a legitimate company, one of the things we do for when we set up to make their tax payments, is we have to send in their information and ID to the Internal Revenue Service. So we can make their deposits. And if they’re not on file with the IRS with that exact name and number, it gets rejected and we can’t make the deposits. So we can’t process the payroll. So there’s a lot of little things in there that we look at. And we find fraud probably several times a month, potential new client that is trying to set up a payroll fraud. We haven’t been hidden many years, but it’s not from blacker, they’re trying.

 

27:10

Well, Charles, I’m actually surprised that your client is you try to commit fraud against you as well.

 

27:14

Yeah, it happens regularly that there’s fraud artists and think they can defraud a payroll company. Because if they get a set of a payroll setup, send out direct deposits, or checks. And then the draft that we drafted on them gets rejected. Well, if checks are direct deposits have already been taken out and cleared. And we have no way to recover it if we don’t know who they are. So there’s there’s a lag in how we do that we don’t insist is say a PEO does, where they get a wire in advance. We just don’t do that with our clients. But we we check out our potential clients very carefully. Make sure they’re legitimate. Make sure they are you know, they are real. And they’re doing they’re paying people that are real people. So it’s you got to know your client.

 

28:05

Now Charles, I can tell from our conversations that you’re very meticulous person, Charles, previously you associate with me there your clients tend to stay with you for very long periods of time. Could you share with us how you achieve this fee?

 

28:16

Yeah, we have clients who’ve been with been with us the entire time, 30 years, some of our initial clients are still with us. Some of them retired, and some of them gone out of business. But we tend to keep clients for a very long time. And if they sell out, we tend to get whoever they sold to, because they recommend us highly. And the trick to that is his service. We provide personal service, we bend over backwards for our clients, we do whatever it’s necessary to make things work and work, right. We’re very high on customer service. And, and we do good work. But beyond that, if there’s a problem, they can talk to me. They they can call up. And if they’re talking to one of my customer service people, and they say, you know, no, I need a better answer. You know, I don’t understand that. Let me talk to Charles, they’ll connect me. I’ll just pick up the phone and talk to him. I don’t have any problem with that. They’re my clients, they that they’re how I make a living. So I care about him. I care about all of them. So we work very hard at taking care of our clients. And one of my favorite phrases St. is there’s never a traffic jam on the extra mile. We go the extra mile for our clients because our competitors don’t. And our retention is very high. And they last for a long time. As I said we’ve got clients who’ve been with us 30 years, so it can’t do much better than that when you only been in business 30 years. Oh, Chelsea

 

29:52

mentioned very curious about this point. How has technology impacted your industry over the years? How has your firm kept up to date?

 

29:59

Oh, wow. I mean, going back 30 years, everything was paper, we made deposits at the bank physically, with with paper deposit slips. It was it was very, very paper intensive. Then fax machines came in. That was great, that alleviated the paper, it alleviated the transfer paper, they could put the machine in and appeared on our desk, then email came in, and then electronic entry. Right now, probably over 95% of our clients submit their payroll electronically, they put it into their computer, or their time clock integrates with our software, and they check it and they approve it and they send it it’s so much quicker for everybody. It cuts down the number of errors immensely. I mean, is that is that a four is that a seven is that you know, what’s that scribble, and so on and so forth. It cuts down on the errors, frankly, at this point, if it’s an electronic file, if it’s wrong, just the clients fault. And we’ll fix it, of course, we’ll do whatever we can to fix it. But we’re not having to argue about, you know, well, this is how we read the hours. And they say, well, that’s not what I wrote, and so on and so forth. So that’s gotten much, much, much better and faster and quicker and easier. computers, printers, electronics, direct deposit, app security, these things have just improved leaps and bounds and continue to, we actually do a great deal more payroll, with fewer people, and less time than we’ve ever done. We’re far more efficient, which allows us to keep our prices down. software has gotten a lot more expensive. But computers have come down in cost I remember very well when a megabyte of Ram was $1,000. Now you buy computers with 16 Giga ram for less than $1,000. So it’s the world has changed and changed in many ways for the better released system wise and, and technology wise to make life easier for all of us.

 

32:22

Now, Charles, what advice would you have for a new entrepreneur who may not be at a stage where you can afford a payroll specialist like you, you have any tips or resources that you can share to help him along the way

 

32:32

nice you asked. This is my most recent book, the payroll book a guide for small businesses and startups. It’s designed for the new business, the small business, the entrepreneur, to understand payroll and keep him out of trouble. It’s designed for us payroll, of course. But it’s available on Amazon and Ted, if for your listeners, if they’d like a free copy, and we’ll pick up the postage handling. if they’ll go to the payroll book.com on the web and in the discount code, enter 10 to will send them a free book.

 

33:10

Thanks, Charles, this issue very generous. Now, Charles, if our listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation, what would you like it to be Who?

 

33:19

Wow. Besides the book, payroll is a complex subject. It’s far more than just getting a paycheck, and you got to be on top of it. You’ve got to be on top of all your business. But one other thing, one of the things I live by I stole this one from Bill Gates years ago, people tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in a year. And underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade. Business is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Understand, things aren’t going to be perfect today or tomorrow or this year. But over time you can get to where you want to go. You can achieve the results you want to achieve. But they don’t happen overnight. Those those unicorns are are rare. And if you expect to be one, you’re in for disappointment, businesses, the long haul. We’ve been at it 30 years, and we’re still learning and still growing and still accomplishing more things every year and getting toward where we want to be, which we’ll never get to but we keep trying. So the long term guys,

 

34:41

thank you for your weisswurst Charles. Now how can our listeners get in contact with you if they need your help?

 

34:48

www get payroll comm is our website. We’ve got a lot of material out there of all of our blogs and all of our podcasts so you can see above Get a lot of information there. My email cjR Charles J. Reed at get payroll calm, and I’ll respond. So if you got a problem, you got a question. I, you know, I like to teach. I like to answer questions. I like to help people, so, holler at me.

 

35:18

respond. All right, Charles, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. guys. Thank you so much for joining me and Charles today, I hope you’ve learned something about managing a company’s payroll because I certainly have now for my listeners in the United States, if you’d like a free copy of Charles book sent to you, they log on to my website, click on a relevant link and put in the following discount code t d. T o to get a free copy. Now, as always, all shownotes tools and resources available online and my website at Ted Teo calm, St. EDT o.com. So log on now for all your latest updates. If you’d like to support the show, the best way you can do this is to subscribe, leave a review and share the show with someone who find it useful as well. And don’t forget about the Amazon gift voucher giveaway. If you do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.

 

[This transcript has been automatically generated by a digital software and will therefore  contain errors and typos. Please kindly take note of this and only rely on the digital transcript for reference.]

00:00

This is Ted, your friend and host speaking and welcome back to the TED to business show. On today’s show. We’ll be discussing payroll issues with Charles Reed. Charles Reed is the President and CEO of get payroll, a firm that specializes in providing online payroll and Payroll Tax Compliance services in the United States for over 30 years and counting. Charles was previously appointed to the United States Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council as one of only seven members chosen nationwide to serve on the prestigous Committee in 2018 for a three year term, he is also one of the only 86 people in the last 16 years to pass the US tax code non attorney practitioners exam, which enables him to represent clients in the US Tax Court without being an attorney. In today’s episode, Charles tips include the benefits of hiring a payroll specialist the common mistakes that entrepreneurs make in relation to payroll, and how one can avoid fraud be committed against their business. Now, guys, if you have any questions as to how the applicable laws may apply to you and your business, please do consult your own legal adviser and tax advisor as the laws that apply to each country and state will differ. Now, to my listeners in the United States, Charles has been very kind and generous because it’s offered to send a free copy of his book to your address. So if you want a free copy of this book sent to you log on to tatio.com. Click on the relevant link and provide a discount code head to this t dt o to get a free book sent to you. Now remember, all shownotes tools and resources are available on my website at Ted teo.com. And if you’d like to support the show, then remember to subscribe, leave a review and share this with somebody who find this useful as well now as a way to say thank you and to show my appreciation to you guys, if you actually do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. Now let’s dive right in. Charles, thank you so much for joining us. It’s such a pleasure to have you here today.

 

01:45

My pleasure, Ted. Thanks for having me.

 

01:47

Charles. I’m going to start with simple icebreaker so we can get to know you a little better. Could you share with us who is Charles Reed when he isn’t working?

 

01:54

Well, I’m a Midwestern boy I grew up in Iowa, went to high school there. After high school, I joined the military. I spent four years in the United States Marine Corps, served in Vietnam as a Combat Infantryman. Among other things. When I got back to the United States, I was still in service I met and married my wife. She had five children when I married her, I claim insanity. So we were married for 45 years before she passed, oh dear. After I got out, I realized that the American business did not value my military education and experience even though it was quite extensive. I was computer programmer and systems analyst systems engineer trained by IBM. But since it was military, they didn’t think it was worth anything. So I went to college, got my bachelor’s and my master’s degree sat for and passed my CPA exam, went to work for Texas Instruments after college, worked in corporate life for about 15 years and then started my own firm. Ruth and I started this 30 years ago this month. And there we are,

 

03:06

hmm. So Charles, you’re a payroll specialist and you run your own payroll firm. Could you share with us? in your own words? What exactly is it that you do and the benefits of engaging someone like you?

 

03:18

Well, what we do is we handle all the payroll processing functions. Once the client turns in the time or the salaries, we handle the rest of it, a payroll service bureau will create the checks the direct deposits, they should make all your tax deposits, create all your tax forms, file them for you, and then handle any problems that arise. And in the US with the Internal Revenue Service 200,000 people who are civil servants, and they make lots of mistakes every year, systems are old, and people are underpaid and civil servants and training budgets low so things happen. And we fix them. We’re compliance experts. Most of our competitors do a fairly good job of creating checks, direct deposits, but as the compliance that sets us apart, as a CPA and a US Tax Court practitioner, we are able to do things for our clients or our competitors just can’t or won’t do.

 

04:18

Charles, would you say it is accurate? If we engage your payroll specialist like you and the job is well done. IPO specialist can actually be a cost saving center for a business as opposed to a cost center itself.

 

04:28

Absolutely. Not only in terms of saving internal time, and people and facilities. I did a study on this and did up an app years ago on the cost of doing a payroll internally and just the cost of doing the payroll and having people on board and having them trained. Hiring replacements, retraining them, having computers having software having regulatory training seminar ongoing professional education for your payroll people is quite expensive. And frankly, we’re normally cheaper than doing it in house, let alone the cost of penalties and outside things from the government that could increase your cost. In the US 40% of small businesses get hit with a penalty every year. And that penalty average is $800. So I tell potential clients, if you weren’t hit last year or the year before, you’re probably gonna get a penalty this year. And combine that with the cost of actually doing the payroll in house. We’re not only cheap, we are a profit center.

 

05:40

So guys, when thinking about engaging a payroll specialist, don’t just think about the cost of the services itself. But think about how much you can actually save you as well. If you want to do it in house, you’ll be engaging somebody to do it for you anyway, and it costs money as well. So a possible alternative is to engage your payroll specialists to do it for you. This will help you ensure that you’re in compliance law, and you won’t have any penalties to worry about down the road. Now, back to you, Charles, could you actually share some examples where you provide a very clear value to your clients where you actually help them save money?

 

06:09

Well, we had a client who was penalised, and the penalty had risen to $95,000. It took nine years we went through after they brought it to our attention and got it into our pocket. We started working with the Internal Revenue Service, we worked with all the various appeals levels, up to the the field manager who oversees multiple districts, and he wouldn’t return my calls. So I called the Deputy Chief of appeals. And in Washington, who I had met, being on the IRS Advisory Council, and I said to her, I can’t get this guy to call me back. And she said, I’ll take care of it, he’ll call you back. He called me that afternoon. I walked through the situation with him. He agreed that we needed to have this relooked at we sent it, he sent it to a different appeals office. And 90 days later, my client got a refund for $400. And the penalty went away. It was just $95,000 he put in his pocket?

 

07:13

Well, Charles, it sounds like one of the additional benefits of engaging appear with specialists like you is that you have existing relationships with the tax offices. And it actually makes the whole process a lot easier, right? I

 

07:24

mean, if you’re, if you don’t know these people, you don’t know who to call. The IRS doesn’t easily publish tables of organizations, and so on and so forth. I have contacts in the service. And if I need to know who, who’s over this area, who runs this area, I can find out and get their phone number and call them. If I don’t already know them. spending three years on the advisory council, we met with the commissioner and all the commissioners of the various business entities and their deputies, and we were working on solving problems for the IRS is outsiders, because the IRS is very insular in the United States, and you know, is any government agency is they live within themselves. And so we were professionals from the outside that provided an outside point of view, a consumer point of view. So we’re a tax consumer point of view. So it was a fascinating, I’ve learned a lot. And I got to meet a lot of the people to service. And, frankly, most of the people, the IRS are good people, you know, their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, children of somebody else that, you know, they’re nice people, they, they they’re civil servants, which means they’re not profit oriented. But they’re good people. But budgets short and training is short. And I’ve been doing this in this area for over 30 years. And I’m far more experienced at it than they are. So in many cases, you know, I’m giving them what the lie is and explain it and going through it. And we’re very successful. But yeah, you got to know these people, and you got to work with them. So Charles formula experience,

 

09:03

what kind of mistakes do tax authorities tend to make?

 

09:07

There’s a number of things that, for instance, there was a problem with deposit period changes. And the law is relatively clear, if you dig into it, that the IRS is required to send notices to the authorized representative. Well, a lot of the people the IRS don’t think this is true. So having have been a US Tax Court practitioner, and having studied the tax law, it was obvious to me that they were mistaken. And so we filed a petition with Tax Court on a particular case. And and one and at that point in time, I have a precedent in US Tax Court to send to the various other IRS agents that say, No, we don’t have to do that. And I presented with a tax case and in many cases, I’m I’m doing tax research within the law to defend a position of a client. And if I’ve got the law on my side, we’ve got the training to do. So. It’s much, much easier if you can quote the law, and or the IRS regulations, the IRS says the IRS, internal manual, and how things are done, very involved, very detailed, very complex. It’s a great way to cure insomnia. So read it, before you go to bed, you will go to sleep, I promise you, that’s one way to put it. But if you know that, and, you know, I’ve just learned it over the years and have studied it, and know how to research it. And these are the kinds of things that a payroll service bureau should be able to do for you, they should have professionals, rather than just write checks, which is important, don’t don’t misunderstand me, getting checks, right is extremely important. But when it goes beyond that, if you don’t have somebody at the service Bureau, you’re using to be able to do that. Then you’re at sea, and you’ve got to go talk to your regular CPA. And if he was a payroll expert, he’d be doing your payroll or an attorney, and that gets expensive.

 

11:12

So Charles, what about the other side of the coin? What are the mistakes that entrepreneurs tend to make, they can actually get them into trouble a

 

11:20

couple of things, paying people under the table, just paying them in cash or writing them a check and forgetting about it. That’s that’s a huge mistake, you can’t do it. Then the next thing is you say, well, these people I’m paying, they’re independent contractors. So you’re classifying them as independent contractors, when in reality, they may be employees, and subject to withholding and tax payments, that independent contractors aren’t. There’s a whole bunch of rules, both in law and regulation, about who’s an employee and who isn’t. And if you don’t follow those rules, you’re going to get into serious trouble at some point in time. And a lot of entrepreneurs, it’s a lot of work. It’s a pain in the it’s a pain, to have employees as opposed to contractors, contractors just write a check. Once a year, you send in a 1099. employee, you’ve got to withhold taxes, you’ve got to deposit them, you’ve got to file quarterly, monthly, in many cases, your deposits may be made twice a week, if you have enough employees. So it gets a lot of complexity, which where we come in, of course, because we can do all that. And we have the software and the training and the facilities to do it. So entrepreneurs don’t like to do it. The next one is is that employee salary, or hourly? If they’re hourly? And there’s subject overtime, where you have to pay overtime. And that gets you into the Department of Labor. And that’s a whole nother ballgame. So you have the classification is one of the big problems and 75% of us businesses, misclassify employees, according to the Labor Department, that’s one of the biggest things they can mix mistakes they make. One of the other ones very early on, is picking the right entity. Do you want to be a corporation an LLC, a partnership, a sole proprietor, and what are the ramifications for payroll and payroll taxes for that entity. And if you don’t understand that, you’ll make mistakes.

 

13:26

Now, guys, of course, this would depend on the jurisdiction that you’re in, and the applicable tax law. But the issue of whether an individual is an employee or an independent contractor affects the amount of taxes that you should be paying, if you actually end up misclassifying this individual, you may be under paying taxes, and this could be an issue with your tax authority. Am I right, Charles?

 

13:44

Yes. And not only is there more taxes, because there’s employer taxes that you have to pay based on employee wages, but the complexity of it and the filings of it, with it with an independent contractor, you pay him gross pay, you report, gross pay, and you report it once a year. With an employee, you now are subject to all the withholding requirements. So you have to withhold taxes, you have to pay additional taxes, then you have to withhold and pay in the state that you’re in, then you have unemployment issues, both federal and state that you have to report on. So your level of reporting and compliance is much, much higher with employees than it is with independent contractors. But you don’t get to make the choice on whether that person is an employee or independent contractor paid analysis and entrepreneurs say well, I’m just gonna make them all independent contractors. You don’t get to make that choice. There’s there’s a whole body of law that you have to follow.

 

14:46

So guys, this is generally a largely back dependent analysis. But of course, you need to consult your relevant lawyers and tax advisers on this issue, because different countries and different states have different laws now on top of the tax obligations that comes with paying for an employee But an employee is what tends to have additional protections as compared to an independent contractor. Because an employee may also be entitled to specific protections under the applicable labor laws. So do keep that in mind as well. Now, Charles, let’s talk about a specific scenario. What advice would you have for the entrepreneur? If they find out they’ve been actually overpaying an employee for a long period of time? How can he manage this properly?

 

15:21

Well, if you’ve got a contract with them, and it’s in writing, then you can make those corrections. You can reduce their pay, you can not pay them to get it back, and so on. If you’ve done it for several years, you’re probably going to have a problem. If they don’t like it and take it to court. If it’s just I overpaid them last pay period, and you withhold it this pay period. Sit down and explain it to them, show them lay it out on paper, and, you know, get your money back. You don’t have to overpay them. If you do it consistently over a period of time, a lot of the courts are going to say no, you you you made that choice, you didn’t. It’s not a simple mistake. It’s something endemic and you’ve been paying them and they expect it. And you’ve led them to expect it. So no, you can’t get it back a single time. It’s very simple. Two or three pay periods, you know, you somebody put in a wrong raise, you put it in a 50 cent raises and have a 25 cent raise, you can do that. We’ve worked with people where that’s happened. And we may take it back out of several paychecks rather than right away, just so they don’t get inconvenienced as much because if you take somebody say, Oh, we overpaid your we’re not going to give you any money for three weeks. You know, they’ve got bills to pay, and my family just been so on. And if they’re not expected, it didn’t realize that that you’d screwed up. It could be very detrimental to the employee. And he may just say, screw you and walk away and then then try and collect that money back. Yeah. So you’ve got you’ve got a balance. Yeah, it’s owed back to me and their expectations. So you can’t just be draconian about how you get it back.

 

17:11

But yeah, if you’ve overpaid them, and you can prove it, it’s your money, not theirs. Now, Charles, when we’re talking about an issue of payroll, there must be issues of fraud detected as well. Can you share with us any relevant experience that you have on this topic?

 

17:23

Absolutely. One of the big things in companies where the owner is not in constant touch with everybody. In other words, you get more than 3040 people you get multiple locations are ghost employees, somebody has put a person on the payroll, that’s really not fair, that they’re taking the cheque and cashing it. We had an instance it was a hotel management firm. And the owner was smart. He had some concerns. So he signed all of his checks. That was uncommon. But he signed every check. Well, one week, he called me and said, Hey, john here was fired six weeks ago, why is there a check for him? And I said, Well, your girl here in Dallas, and send him the payroll with him on it. And he said, Oh, let me get back to you. She was fired that afternoon. Because she had people on the payroll, he wasn’t the only one that weren’t there. And she was then stealing the checks and cashing them. That is not uncommon. Okay? check fraud is a big deal. And this is why we push all of our clients to go with direct deposit whenever possible, because direct deposit is much much harder to commit fraud on if you’ve got a physical check that can be copied. And all the all the information that a crook needs to create fraudulent checks is on the check. Everything is their signature bank routing numbers, bank account numbers, everything and they can. With with the software that exists today, you can buy checks docket at the local office supply store, and create checks on any company you want. So if you’ve seen their check, or you have a photocopy of it, you can create checks, check frauds, a huge, huge crime in the US. And it’s something that for employers is easily preventable, you know, issue paychecks, you wish you direct deposits, or debit cards. And that way, there’s no paper out there for them to copy. And they would have to create a electronic file and send it through your bank and know your security procedures and the bank security procedures, and on and on and on. And that is much, much, much more difficult to accomplish that kind of fraud. So stay away from paper checks.

 

19:57

Yeah, on top of actually making it harder for me employees to commit fraud. actually having a digital payment system like this also makes it a lot more automatic and less time consuming in terms of payroll management, and it makes the documentation process a lot easier to manage.

 

20:12

Absolutely, it’s much easier for you, it’s easier for the employee, you don’t have paper paperwork laying around, you don’t have check copies laying around. You don’t have other people seeing who makes money, and how much they made that kind of thing. there’s far more privacy for you. And for the clients. You do it all electronically, your reports are in your computer, they’re not on your desk, they’re not there for anybody to look at. It’s quicker, they don’t have to go to the bank. This used to be a thing. Friday at noon, the banks that have lines of employees cashing their checks, of course, they’ve taken time off from work to do this. And if the lines too long, they get back late and lunch gets extended and so on. And it’s a hassle. Direct Deposit is in their account on payday. They can do with it as they please, if they don’t want to use a bank, a debit card works fine, they can take it to either a bank or financial institution, their local grocery store, use it as a debit card, and normally get cashback for whatever they need. for cash purposes. Debit Cards work very well. And a properly designed debit card pay card system should not cost the employer or the employee, anything if used within the rules that because of the laws, they’ve make allowances in the US that that can’t cost the employee to get the money off the card. If he doesn’t, once he can go to an ATM and get it out or a bank and get it out. If he uses it as a debit card over and over and over. There’s some fees just like it would be for any other debit card. But it shouldn’t cost the employee anything. And the employer shouldn’t be paying either, because the debit card company makes money off

 

21:56

the float. So Charles, let’s talk a little bit about how an employer can actually efficiently and effectively track the time and attendance of an employee. How has your position changed with the COVID crisis?

 

22:07

chair? That’s that’s a very good question. Because I’m actually developing a series of blogs right now, for remote timekeeping, which has become a huge thing and it looks like it’s going to be around for the foreseeable future. Time clocks, of course, are important. If you don’t have a time clock, particularly in a manufacturing setting, as much as 10% of your time may be wasted. There’s buddy punching, where people punch in other people and so on. So electronic biometric clocks make all the sense in the world. We had a client that it was a professional operation, she insisted she didn’t have a problem. So I suggest that she just put up a camera up above because time clocks in a in a back corridor where it’s not seen. And after a week, she fired three people for buddy punching their buddies. So it’s biometric is good on that. And remote timekeeping. You know, we’ve gotten into that with timekeeping off the phones, geo tracking, I’ve got a client that he has the software. And when that employee gets within 50 feet of the door, he’s clocked in what he’s more than 50 feet away from the door, he’s clocked out. So this it’s an automatic timekeeping. All these these all work well, the more electronic, they can be password, and you can have cards, you can do all kinds of things, biometric works, to control the time, it gets much more difficult on remote. However, for instance, for our own employees, we know if they’re on on the network, we know how long ago they touch their keyboard, and we clock them out if they haven’t touched their keyboard within a certain period of time. And they understand that. So you know, and you can do other things. We’re on a camera mounted on the top of the monitor. So you can do that and see if that person’s actually at their computer working. If they’re not well, you know, you don’t pay him. But there are some complexities and there’s some laws involved. And it’s you’ve got to write your policies very carefully. Because there’s privacy issues and other things. You know, you can’t just insist they have a camera on their computer, they have to agree to it. So there’s a lot of a lot of complexity. And I’m working through some of that now for some some my own blogs, but it’s a much more complex issue than it was two years ago.

 

24:47

Yes. Especially since the idea of booking home It seems to be here to stay. Now, Charles, can you share with us the process of how you onboard a client? How do you set to uncover the issues that they have the payroll and how do you actually solve them?

 

24:58

That’s a good question, Chad. We’re constantly improving our onboarding. For net now, for instance, all of our requests for documentation go out via file invite. And it’s all electronic, with one exception, where we do need a wet signature. So that gets a lot of the information in a lot easier than trying to send it or fax it, things that we used to do in years past. But as a payroll company, we get hit with people who want to defraud us on a regular basis. So we’re very, very cautious. We also have a number of banking regulations about knowing your client to prevent bank fraud. We’re in with third party processor, which there’s a lot of fraud in that classification, not from payroll companies per se, but other people who do consumer debits, people who collect tuition, debts, rents, all kinds of things. There’s a lot of fraud and a lot of consumer complaints and rejections and so on. Now, we don’t do any consumer debits, which we don’t draft money from, from consumers, we only draft money from from businesses. So we’re not the same problem. But there’s a lot of that in there and regulations that force us to, in bank parlance, know your client KYC. So we have a whole procedure on that. And then we have to make sure that this is a legitimate company, one of the things we do for when we set up to make their tax payments, is we have to send in their information and ID to the Internal Revenue Service. So we can make their deposits. And if they’re not on file with the IRS with that exact name and number, it gets rejected and we can’t make the deposits. So we can’t process the payroll. So there’s a lot of little things in there that we look at. And we find fraud probably several times a month, potential new client that is trying to set up a payroll fraud. We haven’t been hidden many years, but it’s not from blacker, they’re trying.

 

27:10

Well, Charles, I’m actually surprised that your client is you try to commit fraud against you as well.

 

27:14

Yeah, it happens regularly that there’s fraud artists and think they can defraud a payroll company. Because if they get a set of a payroll setup, send out direct deposits, or checks. And then the draft that we drafted on them gets rejected. Well, if checks are direct deposits have already been taken out and cleared. And we have no way to recover it if we don’t know who they are. So there’s there’s a lag in how we do that we don’t insist is say a PEO does, where they get a wire in advance. We just don’t do that with our clients. But we we check out our potential clients very carefully. Make sure they’re legitimate. Make sure they are you know, they are real. And they’re doing they’re paying people that are real people. So it’s you got to know your client.

 

28:05

Now Charles, I can tell from our conversations that you’re very meticulous person, Charles, previously you associate with me there your clients tend to stay with you for very long periods of time. Could you share with us how you achieve this fee?

 

28:16

Yeah, we have clients who’ve been with been with us the entire time, 30 years, some of our initial clients are still with us. Some of them retired, and some of them gone out of business. But we tend to keep clients for a very long time. And if they sell out, we tend to get whoever they sold to, because they recommend us highly. And the trick to that is his service. We provide personal service, we bend over backwards for our clients, we do whatever it’s necessary to make things work and work, right. We’re very high on customer service. And, and we do good work. But beyond that, if there’s a problem, they can talk to me. They they can call up. And if they’re talking to one of my customer service people, and they say, you know, no, I need a better answer. You know, I don’t understand that. Let me talk to Charles, they’ll connect me. I’ll just pick up the phone and talk to him. I don’t have any problem with that. They’re my clients, they that they’re how I make a living. So I care about him. I care about all of them. So we work very hard at taking care of our clients. And one of my favorite phrases St. is there’s never a traffic jam on the extra mile. We go the extra mile for our clients because our competitors don’t. And our retention is very high. And they last for a long time. As I said we’ve got clients who’ve been with us 30 years, so it can’t do much better than that when you only been in business 30 years. Oh, Chelsea

 

29:52

mentioned very curious about this point. How has technology impacted your industry over the years? How has your firm kept up to date?

 

29:59

Oh, wow. I mean, going back 30 years, everything was paper, we made deposits at the bank physically, with with paper deposit slips. It was it was very, very paper intensive. Then fax machines came in. That was great, that alleviated the paper, it alleviated the transfer paper, they could put the machine in and appeared on our desk, then email came in, and then electronic entry. Right now, probably over 95% of our clients submit their payroll electronically, they put it into their computer, or their time clock integrates with our software, and they check it and they approve it and they send it it’s so much quicker for everybody. It cuts down the number of errors immensely. I mean, is that is that a four is that a seven is that you know, what’s that scribble, and so on and so forth. It cuts down on the errors, frankly, at this point, if it’s an electronic file, if it’s wrong, just the clients fault. And we’ll fix it, of course, we’ll do whatever we can to fix it. But we’re not having to argue about, you know, well, this is how we read the hours. And they say, well, that’s not what I wrote, and so on and so forth. So that’s gotten much, much, much better and faster and quicker and easier. computers, printers, electronics, direct deposit, app security, these things have just improved leaps and bounds and continue to, we actually do a great deal more payroll, with fewer people, and less time than we’ve ever done. We’re far more efficient, which allows us to keep our prices down. software has gotten a lot more expensive. But computers have come down in cost I remember very well when a megabyte of Ram was $1,000. Now you buy computers with 16 Giga ram for less than $1,000. So it’s the world has changed and changed in many ways for the better released system wise and, and technology wise to make life easier for all of us.

 

32:22

Now, Charles, what advice would you have for a new entrepreneur who may not be at a stage where you can afford a payroll specialist like you, you have any tips or resources that you can share to help him along the way

 

32:32

nice you asked. This is my most recent book, the payroll book a guide for small businesses and startups. It’s designed for the new business, the small business, the entrepreneur, to understand payroll and keep him out of trouble. It’s designed for us payroll, of course. But it’s available on Amazon and Ted, if for your listeners, if they’d like a free copy, and we’ll pick up the postage handling. if they’ll go to the payroll book.com on the web and in the discount code, enter 10 to will send them a free book.

 

33:10

Thanks, Charles, this issue very generous. Now, Charles, if our listeners only remember one thing from today’s conversation, what would you like it to be Who?

 

33:19

Wow. Besides the book, payroll is a complex subject. It’s far more than just getting a paycheck, and you got to be on top of it. You’ve got to be on top of all your business. But one other thing, one of the things I live by I stole this one from Bill Gates years ago, people tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in a year. And underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade. Business is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Understand, things aren’t going to be perfect today or tomorrow or this year. But over time you can get to where you want to go. You can achieve the results you want to achieve. But they don’t happen overnight. Those those unicorns are are rare. And if you expect to be one, you’re in for disappointment, businesses, the long haul. We’ve been at it 30 years, and we’re still learning and still growing and still accomplishing more things every year and getting toward where we want to be, which we’ll never get to but we keep trying. So the long term guys,

 

34:41

thank you for your weisswurst Charles. Now how can our listeners get in contact with you if they need your help?

 

34:48

www get payroll comm is our website. We’ve got a lot of material out there of all of our blogs and all of our podcasts so you can see above Get a lot of information there. My email cjR Charles J. Reed at get payroll calm, and I’ll respond. So if you got a problem, you got a question. I, you know, I like to teach. I like to answer questions. I like to help people, so, holler at me.

 

35:18

respond. All right, Charles, thank you so much for joining us today. It’s been such a pleasure. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. guys. Thank you so much for joining me and Charles today, I hope you’ve learned something about managing a company’s payroll because I certainly have now for my listeners in the United States, if you’d like a free copy of Charles book sent to you, they log on to my website, click on a relevant link and put in the following discount code t d. T o to get a free copy. Now, as always, all shownotes tools and resources available online and my website at Ted Teo calm, St. EDT o.com. So log on now for all your latest updates. If you’d like to support the show, the best way you can do this is to subscribe, leave a review and share the show with someone who find it useful as well. And don’t forget about the Amazon gift voucher giveaway. If you do subscribe and leave a review on Apple iTunes by the end of September, then you stand a chance to win $50 worth of gift vouchers from Amazon. That’s all for me today. I’ll see you next time.