18 Questions to Ask When Seeking a Payroll Service

When you publish a request for proposal (RFP), you’ve officially started an active search for a vendor or supplier that can provide the best solution at the right price.

That’s no easy feat regardless of your needs, but it’s especially tough when it comes to finding a payroll service. A payroll service is responsible for distributing income to your contingent workforce and sometimes even your permanent workforce. It goes without saying that the responsibility for your workers’ livelihood is a big job. Imagine your workers not receiving their paychecks on time – you’d have a disgruntled workforce and a stressed payroll team trying to correct it, setting off a domino effect of productivity loss in the workplace. That’s just one of the reasons why you need to thoroughly vet potential partners before making your selection. This begins when you craft your RFP for payroll services.

As you create your RFP, you want to include questions that will provide you with unbiased responses, allowing you to make an objective selection among applicants. You also want to consult with other stakeholders to ensure any information they need can be collected from the questions you incorporate. The following questions have been selected from our extensive library of payroll service RFPs and compiled as the top eighteen questions to ask to ensure all your payroll service needs are covered.

Financial Stability/Serviceability

What You Need to Know: Can the vendor financially support the payroll of your organization’s contingent labor payroll?

  1. Provide company financials.
  2. Has your organization filed bankruptcy in the fast 5 years?
  3. Do you have any pending lawsuits that could affect your ability to support our organization?

Compliance

What You Need to Know: Does the vendor have the infrastructure, resources and processes to ensure compliance to employment law?

  1. Describe your organization’s support structure.
  2. How does your company ensure compliance?
  3. Describe your process for vetting Independent Contractors/Consultants (IC’s).

Risk Mitigation

What You Need to Know: Can the vendor protect your organization from errors in employment law, co-employment and resource misclassification?

  1. How does your company protect its clients from associated risks with engaging contingent talent?
  2. Does the company indemnify for their services?
  3. Does this include co-employment or resource misclassification claims?
  4. Please share your reporting and audit capabilities.

Service & Solution Expectations

What You Need to Know: Does the vendor specialize in Employer/Agency of Record services? Do they have the ability to meet the enterprises’ expectations for service levels and client/candidate experience?

  1. Please provide a solution overview.
  2. Please provide a detailed composition of your service lines including what portion of your business is represented by EOR/AOR services.
  3. How does your company measure performance?
  4. Does your company utilize any technology to support?

Experience

What You Need to Know: Does this vendor properly align with your contingent labor program based on experiences, size and scalability, solution offerings, and upcoming strategic roadmap? Do they have the ability to continually provide value and drive the program’s success, future program goals and strategic roadmap/ offerings?

  1. Please describe your experience with different contingent labor program structures. (MSP/VMO/VMS, etc.)
  2. What additional value or solutions could your company offer to continually aid in the progression of the program YOY?
  3. What is your current resource headcount and please identify the composition amongst labor categories?
  4. Please share your experience in the client-specific industry vertical.