payroll : outsource, commercial software, or DIY spreadsheet ?

[Randall_Oelerich]

EDIT: Spent half a day looking into DIY, looks like a gawd damn nightmare of forms and bureaucracy. Payroll service pretty much needed, so I emailed one to get a rough estimate for ten 'employees', one pay period (10-14 day shoot). If anybody has an idea what they charge, what is reasonable, I would surely be interested.

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Thinking on payroll for a micro budget indie I want to produce-- how to handle that? Six actors, 3-4 crew/DP/AD, a single paycheck as it would be shot over 10-14 days. Seems like with one paycheck it might be overkill to outsource to one of those online payroll services (anybody have a guess what i would pay to such a service to deal with the 8-10 one-time employee paychecks?). Learning curve hours to figure out Quicken/other plus the $300 that software costs,? Versus just using a spreadsheet template and manually entering the hours, calculated witholdings, printing paystubs right from the spreadsheet, sending in whatever federal and state forms once for those paychecks with the withheld taxes, unemployment? Sure would be alot easier if actors were considered independent contractors, using 1099-MISC, but my understanding is that does not work, IRS considers actors to be employees.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

Payroll will cost you around $95 for them to run payroll (maybe 2x as much as those are rates for small shoots 1-5 people) + 23% of what the rate of those people are (those are taxes you pay).

So your $100/day PA will cost you $123 + portion of that $95 fee.

BTW, if you pay less than $100 than technically you are breaking the labor laws as there is no way to split less than $100 into 12 hours without ending up paying below minimum wage.

 

[Chris Adler]

I used PayReel on a $65K short film I shot 2 years ago and it was a godsend. Since we had a SAG actress they handled all of that paperwork as well. The fee was 5% per cast/crew per pay period.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

@ Chris, @ Patryk:
That sounds wonderful if I understand it right. I was guessing I might have to pay a payroll service $500 to handle the payroll/paychecks/withholding for 10 "employees", beyond the obvious paycheck withholdings for fed/state/fica/futa. Heck i would pay that extra $500, but if it is less than that all the better. I just can't deal with the payroll on my own, it looked like a fracking nightmarish hell, far worse than the horror in my story. Yes I would be budgeting $100/day for the talent and crew, maybe more for DP/Director/AD depending.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

Payroll will cost you around $95 for them to run payroll (maybe 2x as much as those are rates for small shoots 1-5 people) + 23% of what the rate of those people are (those are taxes you pay).

So your $100/day PA will cost you $123 + portion of that $95 fee.

BTW, if you pay less than $100 than technically you are breaking the labor laws as there is no way to split less than $100 into 12 hours without ending up paying below minimum wage.

Patryk what payroll service did you use? I just got an email back from Argent Payroll (argentpayroll.com) estimating it would cost me $900 for their services to handle non-union non-SAG paychecks (one per actor/crew, ten actors/crew total)-- seems pretty high compared to your figure of $95.

 

[Chris Adler]

Quicken QuickBooks has a monthly web version and you can add payroll to that for much cheaper than they quoted you as well.

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

Patryk what payroll service did you use? I just got an email back from Argent Payroll (argentpayroll.com) estimating it would cost me $900 for their services to handle non-union non-SAG paychecks (one per actor/crew, ten actors/crew total)-- seems pretty high compared to your figure of $95.

ABS payroll.

My quote was for up to 5 crew so maybe that has something to do with it.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

ABS payroll. My quote was for up to 5 crew so maybe that has something to do with it.

Okay I am going to see what ABS says. $900 from that other company seems a bit excessive.

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

I used PayReel on a $65K short film I shot 2 years ago and it was a godsend. Since we had a SAG actress they handled all of that paperwork as well. The fee was 5% per cast/crew per pay period.

Just got an email back from payreel, "Unfortunately we are no longer processing payroll for TV and Films and doing more work with corporate media. Unfortunately over the last few years our workers comp rates have increased significantly that it is no longer cost effective for us to process payroll for the TV and Film industry."

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

ABS payroll.....

EDIT: never mind, i just heard back from the .net
abspayroll.net or abspayroll.com ?

 

[Randall_Oelerich]

Okay I am going to see what ABS says. $900 form that other company seems a bit excessive, almost 5% of a preliminary budget ($20k).

Just heard back from ABS (.net), unofficial preliminary quote of $625 for their payroll services to deal with ten employees, one paycheck each, and indeed they mentioned adding about 23% to the bottom line pay to allow for all the extra stuff like FICA, worker's comp. Sure is a lot better than $900.