Not a portal you log into and hope you used correctly. A real person runs it, files the deposits and the quarterlies, and ties the payroll register to your general ledger every single month.
Payroll is $120 a month for up to 5 employees, $250 for 6 to 15, and $450 for 16 or more. That is a flat service fee. It does not change because you ran an extra check, added a bonus, or hired someone in the middle of a quarter.
Payroll is an add-on to a monthly bookkeeping engagement, which starts at $250 a month. So the smallest real engagement that includes payroll, a one person S corporation on the lowest bookkeeping band, comes to about $375 a month all in.
The payroll software subscription is separate and passed through at cost if you want us to carry it. If you already pay Intuit or Gusto directly, keep doing that and nothing is added.
One number, set by how many people you pay. Unlimited runs inside it.
| Employees on payroll | Monthly fee | What that covers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 to 5 | $120 / mo | Unlimited runs, deposits, quarterly filings, W-2s |
| 6 to 15 | $250 / mo | Same, at a headcount where onboarding and turnover are constant |
| 16 or more | $450 / mo | Same, plus multi rate and department level detail |
Contractors paid on 1099 are not employees and do not count toward these bands. Their year end filing is already included in your bookkeeping plan at no charge.
| Arrangement | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Keep your own QuickBooks Payroll or Gusto | $0 | Stays entirely out of our fee |
| QuickBooks Payroll carried by us | $50 + $6.50 per employee | Passed through at cost, one bill instead of two |
| QuickBooks Online Simple Start carried by us | $38 / mo | Only if you do not already have a subscription |
A nine person payroll on QuickBooks Payroll is $108.50 a month at cost. We do not mark that up, and we will tell you when keeping your own subscription is the cheaper option.
What is not on this page: a per employee per run charge, a setup fee, a year end fee, or a charge for filing an amended return we caused. If you want to see how payroll changes your total, the estimator adds it in about four taps, and the full fee schedule shows how the bookkeeping side is built.
These run the exact formula the estimator runs, bookkeeping and payroll together, so you can see the whole number rather than the add-on alone.
The HVAC total is $1,025 of service plus $108.50 of software at cost. We show it split because they are different kinds of money, and only one of them is ours. Run your own numbers.
All of this is inside the monthly number. None of it is billed separately.
Weekly, biweekly, semimonthly, or monthly, plus off cycle runs for a bonus, a final check, or a correction. There is no per run charge, so a busy month costs the same as a quiet one.
Federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, federal unemployment, and South Carolina withholding and unemployment. Deposits go out on your required schedule without you tracking a single date.
Form 941 each quarter, Form 940 each year, the SCDOR withholding returns, and the SC unemployment wage reports. Prepared, reviewed, and filed.
W-2s to your employees and the Social Security Administration, and 1099s to your contractors and the IRS, both by the January 31 deadline. The 1099 side is included in your bookkeeping plan whether or not you use our payroll.
W-4 and I-9 collection, direct deposit setup, and the state new hire report, which carries its own deadline and is the one most small employers have never heard of.
This is the part a standalone payroll provider does not do. Gross wages, employer taxes, and the liability accounts are posted to the right accounts, and the payroll register is agreed to the general ledger every month before the books are closed.
Most payroll platforms are very good at the thing they do, which is calculating a check and moving money. What they do not do is care whether the result landed correctly in your accounting file. That gap is where most of the payroll problems we get called about actually live.
The failure is almost never a wrong paycheck. It is an employer tax expense sitting in the wrong account, a liability that never clears because the deposit was coded as an expense a second time, or a quarter where the 941 says one number and the profit and loss says another. Nobody notices until a lender asks for statements or the return gets prepared, and by then it is nine months of unwinding.
When the same team runs the payroll and closes the books, that reconciliation is a step in the monthly close instead of a discovery. The payroll register has to agree to the general ledger before we call a month done, which means the error surfaces in the same month it happened, when it takes ten minutes to fix.
Moving payroll providers partway through a year is normal and not especially hard, but the year to date wage and tax totals have to come across correctly or your W-2s will be wrong in January. We take that history in, tie it to the returns already filed, and confirm the totals agree before your first run with us. If the prior provider left something unfiled, we would rather find it in August than in January.
Payroll problems and unclosed books usually arrive together. If your general ledger has not been closed in a while, the catch-up and cleanup page explains how that gets priced and how the two get sequenced.
Our payroll service is a flat $120 per month for up to 5 employees, $250 per month for 6 to 15, and $450 per month for 16 or more.
That is the service fee and it sits on top of your monthly bookkeeping fee, which starts at $250. The payroll software subscription is separate and passed through at cost if you want us to carry it, currently $50 per month plus $6.50 per employee for QuickBooks Payroll.
Every pay run on your schedule, direct deposit, federal and state withholding, Social Security and Medicare, federal and South Carolina tax deposits on time, quarterly Form 941 and SC withholding returns, annual Form 940, year end W-2s and 1099s, new hire reporting, and the payroll journal posted and reconciled into your books every month.
Time off accruals and multiple pay rates are handled within the same fee. There is no per run charge and no year end charge.
Only if you want to own it. If you already run QuickBooks Payroll or Gusto, we work inside what you have and your subscription stays out of our fee entirely.
If you would rather have one bill, we carry the subscription and pass it through at cost with no markup, currently $50 per month plus $6.50 per employee for QuickBooks Payroll. A nine person payroll costs $108.50 a month at cost.
We do not offer payroll as a standalone service. Payroll is where a large share of small business accounting errors start, and cleaning up a payroll we did not post is usually more work than running it correctly in the first place.
Keeping both under one roof is what lets us guarantee the payroll register and the general ledger agree at the end of every month.
Withholding is calculated on every run, tax deposits go out on your required federal and South Carolina schedule, and quarterly returns are prepared and filed for you. You never have to remember a deposit date.
If you are already registered with the SCDOR and the IRS we work from those accounts. If you are not, we get you registered before your first run rather than after.
Hours or a confirmation for salaried staff, and that is normally it. For a business on fixed salaries with no hourly time, most months need nothing from you at all.
New hires need a Form W-4, an I-9, and their direct deposit details, which we collect through the payroll system rather than by email.
Yes, and this is one of the most common reasons owners call us. An S corporation shareholder who works in the business has to take reasonable compensation through payroll, which means a real W-2, real withholding, and quarterly filings even when the owner is the only person on the payroll.
A one person S corporation payroll falls in the $120 per month tier. Setting the compensation figure itself is a tax question rather than a payroll question, and we work through it with you before the first run.
If we filed it, we fix it, we deal with the notice, and we do not bill you for the time.
Payroll penalties are among the fastest accruing in the tax code because the deposits are held in trust for employees, which is exactly why this work belongs with someone whose whole job is to watch the calendar.
Yes. W-2s are part of the payroll fee and 1099 filing is included in every bookkeeping plan at no extra cost, whether or not you use our payroll. Both are due to recipients and to the IRS by January 31.
The business tax and 1099 page covers the filing rules in more detail, including the threshold change that takes effect for payments made in 2026.
Turn payroll on in the estimator, tell it your headcount, and the price updates instantly. No email, no signup, no sales call.
See your priceHeadcount, pay frequency, and what you are running today. We will come back with a real quote, usually within one business day.
