Streamlining success: How Baker Tilly Advantage helped transform a company's HR and payroll to fuel growth

Client background

Our client, a quality assurance, quality control and managerial services company in the oil and gas industry, serves clients mainly across the Appalachian basin and along the east coast. The business owners have more than 30 years of combined experience in the industry and are focused on providing reputable and knowledgeable inspectors that their clients can rely on. They strive to demonstrate their commitment to integrity, safety and quality in everything they do. Their workforce is mainly in the field, with a central office location for their back-office team.

Business challenge

The client began their relationship with Baker Tilly through engaging with our outsourced accounting, tax and benefits administration teams. These service teams provided outsourced payroll processing, Affordable Care Act (ACA) compliance, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) compliance reporting, among other services.

The client’s overall goal was to reduce the amount of time they were spending on manual payroll and HR activities and to remain compliant with all necessary regulations. The client was performing manual operational tasks daily and weekly to keep these types of processes moving and provide documentation to the service teams. Baker Tilly’s outsourced accounting team brought in the outsourced HR team, who saw an opportunity to implement an automated and streamlined approach to make the client’s overall experience more efficient and provide them more time to focus on strategic improvements and growth. Additionally, the added services would provide the necessary HR regulatory compliance oversight and help solve the local tax jurisdictions and withholdings challenges for employees in the field that the client was struggling with.

Results

Through working with Baker Tilly’s outsourced HR and payroll team, the client became compliant with all federal, state and local payroll taxes across their service area. The amount of time spent on payroll processing was reduced to a bi-weekly review of the payroll registers that could be performed in under 30 minutes instead of hours, and ACA compliance and reporting was reduced to an annual review of the employee reports that can be completed in hours instead of a few days. The client also received guidance on various employee relations issues, which helped mitigate the potential of a lawsuit from emerging.

By reducing the amount of time spent on these operational activities, the client was able to refocus their time and energy on more strategic endeavors for the company. This ultimately contributed to the client having the time to launch a new, separate entity, expanding the portfolio of companies for the owners. By installing the same payroll and HR automations and level of support as the original business, the new entity also had the foundation of streamlined and integrated HR and payroll systems installed, making tracking, reporting, and staying in compliance relatively simple and easy.

Baker Tilly solution

The outsourced HR and payroll team implemented tailored solutions for the client, including a customized time tracking system that could manage employees working across multiple customers in multiple states with varying pay rates each day. This system automatically loads the list of customers, states, and pay rates per staff member to simplify employee time entry and increase accuracy. The outsourced HR and payroll team also worked collaboratively with the outsourced accounting team to integrate ADP Workforce Now, the payroll system the client now uses, with QuickBooks Online to streamline data flows and ensure compliance.

The client and outsourced HR and payroll team continue to meet regularly to keep pace with how the client is changing and growing, to ensure policies and procedures are accurate and in compliance with all federal, state, and local payroll and HR regulations.