Payroll "is one of the easier soft-sell products" he says. And that has resulted in a channel of about 350 members. Originally, Intuit, based in Mountain View, Calif., thought payroll would be a tag-along product, one that accounting software VARs sold as an extra service. In fact, they became much more active.
"Tag-along? We thought so originally," says Schaknowski. He explains that he expected that VARs selling QBES would ask about payroll. It's something like "do you want fries with that?" But instead of seeing payroll being sold into just the installed base, "we are now seeing payroll standalone sales which we weren’t counting on."
The Intuit program embraces more than one product. While the focus was originally on the QuickBooks Payroll Assisted Service, it is also offered with the Intuit Online Payroll for Accounting Professionals. That's the former PayCycle product and that company had wholesale product for accountants.
Payroll reselling is different than reselling of other kinds of software. In many cases it's more a co-sell or referral sale in which the dealer finds the prospect, but the vendor often ends up performing the payroll calculations. It often depends on how the VAR wants to do business. Often, payroll vendors will let resellers as much or as little, of the process as they want. Companies with payroll channel, including Intuit, also offer channel members the chance to hand off the business to the vendor and in Intuit's case, the dealer gets a 20-percent residual as long as the company remains a client.
Chicago-based SurePayroll, which launched its program last year, has about 150 resellers. The company offers a tiered pricing model in which the more companies resellers enroll, the greater the margin they receive. And as with the others, the vendor does much of the work with SurePayroll doing the tax filing and reporting.
The company has no cost for signing up, according to Francesca Zelasko, channel marketing manager. She says the accountant partners get an online hub via which they can manage clients and set their preferences. The product is also not offered under the SurePayroll name.
"The service itself is branded with their firm name and the company and employees have their own secure access and data control," he says.
Like many others, Miramar, Fla.-based CompuPay, which has had a reseller program for years, will buy the dealer's client list, if the payroll professional gets tired of being in the payroll business.
"We have more of a hosted program," says Kathey Palmer, SVP of business development. "What that means is that the accountant would use our software to process payroll on behalf of his or her clients. They would be responsible for getting the client on board."
Like other vendors, CompuPay offers software for reselling at a wholesale price. The company has about 1,000 referring accountants with many others using the hosted program.
