PAYROLL
Payroll Processing and HR Advisory. Built on your books.
Prudent runs payroll for small and mid-sized businesses as two distinct services: Payroll Processing (paychecks, payroll taxes, year-end filings) and Payroll HR Advisory (benefits coordination, workers’ comp, classification, ACA). Both run from the same books your bookkeeping team maintains, so wage data, journal entries, and quarterly filings always agree. Multi-state. Tipped and non-tipped. In practice since 2007.
MULTI-STATE COVERAGE:
50
We file payroll taxes in every state, so your team can live anywhere and your books stay compliant.
IS THIS YOU?
If any of these sound familiar, your in the right place.
We see three kinds of payroll situations most often. Find the one that sounds like yours.
PAYROLL PROCESSING & PAYROLL HR ADVISORY
Two distinct services, both tied to your books.
Start with Payroll Processing for the recurring work that keeps employees paid and the government quiet. Add Payroll HR Advisory when the compliance side (benefits, workers’ comp, classification, ACA) gets complex enough to need a real partner. Most clients run both.
Payroll Processing
Paychecks on time. Filings on file. Year-end without the panic.
We handle the recurring work that keeps your employees paid and your compliance current. Payroll runs on your cadence (weekly, biweekly, semimonthly). Payroll tax filings federal, state, and local. Year-end W-2 and 1099 filings. Multi-state. Tipped and non-tipped. Garnishments and court-ordered withholding. Every run reconciles to your books because we run from the same source of truth.
WHAT’S INCLUDED:
- Multi-state payroll processing and payroll tax filings
- Direct deposit, digital pay stubs, and employee onboarding
- W-2 and 1099 year-end filings
- Garnishments, child support, and court-ordered withholding
- PTO accrual tracking and time-off reporting
Payroll HR Advisory
The HR side that runs alongside payroll. Set up correctly. Kept current.
Benefits eligibility. Workers’ comp audit support. Employee classification. ACA reporting. Onboarding documentation. Leave and PTO compliance. The HR work most owners do not realize is missing until something goes wrong (a misclassification penalty, a workers’ comp audit surprise, an ACA notice). Prudent’s HR Advisory team handles it ongoing, with U.S.-based advisors who already know your business.
WHAT’S INCLUDED:
- Benefits coordination and eligibility tracking
- Workers’ comp audit support and PTO/leave compliance
- Employee classification and HR compliance counsel
- Onboarding documentation, I-9, and W-4 collection
- ACA reporting for applicable employers
INTEGRATIONS
Payroll that integrates with your books, benefits, and time-tracking system.
Prudent runs payroll on the platforms most small businesses already use, integrated cleanly with the accounting system your bookkeeping team maintains. Wage data hits your books in real time. Quarterly filings tie to your P&L without a reconciliation step. Time-off, benefits, and workers’ comp all flow into the same data trail. If you are migrating off a payroll provider that does not talk to your accounting software, this is where that ends.
Accounting Platforms
Payroll Software We Run On
Time Tracking & PTO
Benefits & HR Platforms
Industry-specific
BETTER TOGETHER
What payroll makes possible when it’s part of the same team.
The reason Prudent runs payroll is not that payroll is hard. It’s that payroll lives next to bookkeeping, tax filings, and CFO-level labor planning. When the same team handles all of it, the work stops bouncing between vendors, the books reconcile the first time, and the year-end is the result of a year of planning instead of a March panic.
Payroll + Bookeeping
Every payroll run hits your books in real time. Wage data, journal entries, quarterly filings all reconcile because they share one source. No re-keying, no end-of-quarter cleanup sessions.
Payroll + Tax Advisory
W-2 and 1099 filings flow directly into your year-end business and personal returns. Multi-state payroll informs multi-state tax filings. Your tax advisor is reading the same payroll data your books carry.
Payroll + CFO Services
Labor is usually the largest line item on a small-business P&L. Your fractional CFO is reading the same payroll data your books reflect, so hiring forecasts, headcount planning, and profitability analysis all run from one source.
WHO WE SERVE
Payroll set up the way your industry actually runs.
Tip credits and Form 8027 for restaurants. Grant-funded staff for nonprofits. Direct-care employee classification for human services. Multi-state construction crews. Multi-location retail. Each industry needs payroll set up differently, and most generic providers do not. We have done this work in each.
Health & Human Services
Care for your patients. We’ll watch the books.
Professional Services
Time, billing, and profitability, finally aligned.
“We went from dreading tax season to barely thinking about it. Prudent doesn’t just close our books, they tell us what to do next.”
John T
Restaurants & Hospitality
Tip credits, COGS, and weekly P&Ls dialed in.
Retail
Inventory, sales tax, and seasonality, handled.
WHY PRUDENT
What you get that you can’t get from a generic payroll vendor.
Built on the books your team already maintains
Your payroll runs from the same set of books your bookkeeping team maintains. Wage data, journal entries, and quarterly filings always agree. No re-keying, no reconciliation surprises, no end-of-quarter cleanup.
Payroll Processing and HR Advisory under one roof
Most providers run payroll and leave the HR compliance to you (or to a separate vendor). Prudent runs both. Benefits, classification, workers’ comp, ACA, all handled by the same team that runs the paychecks.
U.S.-based review on every filing
Every payroll filing, every tax submission, every HR advisory deliverable is reviewed and signed off by U.S.-based CPAs and EAs on secure U.S.-based systems.
In practice since 2007
We have been running small-business payroll since the year QuickBooks Online launched. We have onboarded businesses mid-quarter, mid-audit, mid-acquisition, and during state nexus reviews. There is no payroll situation we have not seen before.
What's the difference between Payroll Processing and Payroll HR Advisory?
Payroll Processing is the recurring work: paychecks, payroll tax filings, year-end W-2s and 1099s, garnishments, PTO tracking. Payroll HR Advisory is the compliance work alongside it: benefits eligibility, workers’ comp audits, employee classification, ACA reporting, onboarding documentation. Most clients start with Processing and add HR Advisory when the compliance side gets complex.
Do you support multi-state payroll?
Yes. We file federal, state, and local payroll taxes in all 48 contiguous states. Multi-state is one of the most common reasons clients consolidate to us. We handle withholding registrations, state unemployment, reciprocal agreements, and the nexus tracking that comes with remote teams.
How do you handle tip credits for restaurants?
Tip credit handling is set up at onboarding and applied consistently across all your locations. We track tipped versus non-tipped staff, apply the FICA tip credit on year-end filings, and prepare Form 8027 for restaurants over the IRS threshold. Tip pooling structures integrate with your POS where supported.
Can you take over our existing payroll mid-year?
Yes. We coordinate the transition with your current provider, retrieve historical year-to-date data, file the necessary state registrations, and pick up the next payroll run with no gap. Most mid-year transitions wrap up in two weeks, with the W-2 and quarterly filings flowing through correctly at year-end.
What payroll software do you use?
We run payroll on Gusto, ADP, Paychex, QuickBooks Payroll, or Xero Payroll, depending on what fits your business and what your accounting platform supports. The visitor-facing platform is whichever your team uses to view paychecks, time off, and benefits. The work is run by a U.S.-based Prudent team.
Do you handle workers' comp audits?
Yes. Workers’ comp audit support is included in our Payroll HR Advisory tier. We pull the wage data your auditor requests, walk through classification, and represent your position when discrepancies come up. Most of our clients now treat the workers’ comp audit as a non-event.
How quickly can you onboard our payroll?
Most onboarding is completed within two weeks for a single-state employer and three to four weeks for multi-state employers with state registrations to file. We do the heavy lifting (data migration, registrations, system setup, employee communication), so onboarding does not become a project for you.
What is included in Payroll HR Advisory specifically?
Benefits coordination and eligibility tracking. Workers’ comp audit support. Employee classification (W-2 vs. 1099). ACA reporting for applicable employers. Onboarding documentation, including I-9 and W-4 collection. Leave and PTO compliance counsel. Ongoing access to your dedicated HR advisor for compliance questions.
How does pricing work?
Fixed monthly pricing based on scope, not hourly billing. Payroll Processing scales with headcount and states. Payroll HR Advisory scales with the level of HR support your business actually needs. We quote after a discovery call, so the number reflects your actual business, not a generic tier.
Will I have one person I can call?
Yes. Every Prudent client is matched with a single dedicated point of contact who knows your business, your team, and your payroll setup. The Payroll and HR Advisory teams behind them keep the work moving. You always call one person.
Whether you are running your first payroll, adding a second state, or finally consolidating payroll and HR under one team, the next step is the same: a 30-minute conversation.
Tell us where things stand, and we will send back a real number, a plan, and a transition timeline that gets you to your first clean Prudent payroll run inside two weeks.
