Payroll runs on time. Taxes get filed on time. You stop thinking about it.
Payroll is the service we build the whole firm around. Renee has run payroll for over ten years and supervises every cycle personally. You approve hours. We handle pay, withholdings, deposits, filings and year-end forms.
Payroll is the service we are built around
Most accounting firms treat payroll as a favor they do for tax clients. We run it the other way. Renee Bremer supervises payroll as her primary role, with more than ten years of payroll operations behind her, and the rest of the firm is organized around getting the pay structure right first. That order matters, because how you pay your people and yourself drives more of your total tax outcome than almost anything you do on the return.
For a West Michigan business with employees, payroll is also the highest-consequence recurring task on the calendar. Miss a federal deposit deadline and the penalty starts at 2 percent and climbs to 15. Misclassify a worker and you are exposed for back taxes on every dollar. File a 941 late and the notice follows you for a year. None of that is theoretical, and none of it is worth the risk of a spreadsheet and a calendar reminder.
What a cycle looks like with us
You send hours, or your team enters them. We calculate gross to net, apply federal, Michigan and any applicable city withholding, fund direct deposits, and make the tax deposits on schedule. You get a register you can actually read before anything hits the bank, so a mistyped hour gets caught before it becomes a correction.
Quarterly, we file the 941, the Michigan withholding return and the UIA unemployment filing. At year end, W-2s and 1099s go out on time and reconcile to the quarterly filings, because the same people who ran the cycles are preparing the forms. If a notice arrives from any agency, you forward it and we respond directly. You are not the middleman between two systems.
Owner pay is part of the job
For S corporation owners, the payroll conversation and the tax conversation are the same conversation. Your reasonable salary sets your payroll tax, your retirement plan capacity and your qualified business income position all at once. Most owners set that figure once at formation and never touch it again, which is how a company outgrows a paycheck that no longer reflects the work.
We revisit that number as part of running your payroll, not as a separate engagement you have to remember to buy. That is what the firm means when it says the specialty is managing your payroll and pay structure to maximize the net tax effect.
Switching providers
Nearly every payroll client we take on is leaving somebody. ADP, Paychex, Gusto and QuickBooks Payroll all migrate cleanly if the year-to-date detail is pulled correctly and the final quarterly return has a clear owner. We handle both, run your first cycle in parallel with the outgoing provider, and compare net pay to the cent before you cancel anything.
Mid-year is fine. Quarter boundaries are cleanest. Waiting until January usually just means six more months of the problem you already have.
Getting started
- 01
Free consultation
Twenty minutes on team size, pay cycle, current provider and what is going wrong.
- 02
We pull your data
Prior filings, year-to-date totals and employee records come over. You do not re-enter anything.
- 03
First cycle runs parallel
We run your first payroll alongside your current provider so day one is boring.
- 04
You approve, we run it
Every cycle after that: you send hours, we handle pay, taxes and filings.
Payroll Services questions
- What does payroll cost?
- Payroll is quoted per contract based on employee count and pay frequency. The consultation is free and the quote is flat, so there is no surprise invoice.
- Can you switch us mid-year?
- Yes. Mid-year switches are routine. We pull year-to-date wages and tax deposits from your current provider so W-2s at year end are correct.
- Who fixes it if a tax notice shows up?
- We do. You forward the notice and we respond to the agency directly.
Payroll Services across West Michigan
Book a free consultation
Bring your last return and a payroll register. We tell you what we would change and what it costs. No charge, no obligation.