Payroll Software for Multiple Companies: One Login

Workzoom can run payroll for more than one company from a single login. The reason that matters is not the price. It is the hours your team loses every pay run moving numbers between systems that do not talk to each other.

Multi-entity payroll software

Workzoom covers multi-entity payroll software as part of the same platform that runs payroll software for multiple companies, payroll for multiple businesses, and multi company payroll: on one employee record, with statutory rates maintained in the platform.

It is 8 in the morning and Sarah has two tabs open. The first is the payroll system for the main company. 127 people, hours approved, the bank file ready to send. The second tab is the company they bought last spring. Different tax number, different books, a few of the same faces. The two managers who run both shops are real people in the first tab and strangers in the second, so she types them in again by hand, the same people, for the second time this month.

Then year end shows up and the numbers stop matching. She runs payroll for 127 people but prints 240 T4 slips. The folks who left, the summer hires, the few who moved between the two companies. The headcount and the slip count have not lined up in two years.

Here's the thing. The problem was never the payroll software. It was the gap between the two systems she was stuck running at once.

What really costs you when you run more than one company

When one business buys another, everyone assumes payroll doubles. It does not. The second payroll is the easy part. The cost is everything in between: the same people typed in twice, the shared costs split by hand, the one report someone rebuilds in a spreadsheet every pay run because the two systems will not share.

So here is what is really going on. You are not paying for a second payroll. You are paying to keep two systems in sync, and that job grows with every company you add.

Can one platform run payroll for more than one company?

Yes, when your setup needs it. Workzoom can run every company from one login, once each one has its own business number, a BN for short, set up on the account. After that, each company keeps its own pay dates, its own payments to the CRA, and its own year end. One place to work. Kept apart only where the law says it has to be.

Now the honest part, the bit most vendors go quiet about. If a person works for two of your companies, they need their own record in each one. We charge per active employee, so that shared person shows up twice on your bill.

We could dress that up. We won't. The companies that run it this way know what the second record costs, and they keep it, because the other option is two systems, two logins, and a person whose whole week goes to making the two agree. One extra record is cheaper than paying someone to fix mismatches all day. That is the whole reason they do it.

In practice, it looks like this. We have restaurant groups where one person picks up shifts at two spots in the same pay run. Each spot is its own company, so that person gets a record and a pay stub at each one, and each is billed on its own. On the bill, yes, that is more. But no one is typing that person into two systems or piecing their hours back together by hand at the end of the run, and every dollar lands on the right company, which keeps the books clean and legal. The clients who do it tell us the extra records buy them way less busywork and numbers they can trust.

Cable Bahamas runs about 850 people across a few companies with a payroll team of three. A pay run used to take five days. Now it takes about a day and a half. That is most of the week handed back, and the team did not grow. They just stopped fixing mismatches by hand.

What one platform actually buys you

Call it multi company payroll, consolidated payroll, or just running payroll for a few businesses without losing your mind. The name does not matter. What matters is that one platform kills the busywork between the systems you used to run side by side. It does not pretend the extra records are not there.

Each company keeps what has to stay its own: its tax number, its pay dates, and its payments and year end forms, all filed under its own number. What goes away is the work around all of it. Instead of three systems and three logins, there is one. Instead of a spreadsheet someone fixes by hand, there is one report that already adds up. A back-dated raise is entered once and carries across every company that person was paid from, instead of being keyed into three places by hand.

You are also not charged for the past. When someone leaves, their record stays in the system, easy to find, and switches back on the day you rehire them, free while it sits quiet. Every person you paid that year still gets a T4 from the company that paid them, the summer hires, the ones who quit in March, all of them. That is how your T4 count can be far bigger than your active headcount without growing your bill. For a seasonal business, where that gap is huge, we set up billing to match the real T4 load, usually about 70% of your busiest headcount instead of your month-to-month average.

The real cost comparison

Charging per company, or per pay run, is where the separate-systems route quietly gets pricey. The fees pile up with every company. The hand work piles up faster.

When you should not put it all together

Sometimes keeping things apart is the right call, and we will say so on the phone. A few cases where we tell people to wait, or stay split:

• The law makes you keep them apart. Some industries have to keep their companies separate, so check your rules before you merge anything.
• You just bought the company. Do not merge payroll while benefits, union deals, and pay scales are still being sorted. Finish that work first, then bring the systems together.
• The pay setups are truly different. A union shop with deep overtime rules and a sales team on commission can share one platform, but only if you go in with open eyes about the setup.

That's not a software question. That's a business question. Are your companies separate because the law or the work needs it, or just because the old software left them that way?

What going live actually looks like

Setting up more than one company is not a switch we flip. We set each company up under its own business number, the way costs get coded, the pay dates, and who can see what, so each manager only sees their own. Each company runs as its own pay run, on its own dates, under its own number. You decide how the companies stay apart. We build it that way.

Start with the messiest company first. Get the overtime, the union rules, and the odd pay codes right on the hard one, run it for a couple of pay runs, then add the easy companies. Moving your data, training, and support are all included, with no setup or hidden fees.

What it costs

Workzoom runs $4 to $16 per employee a month, per suite, with a floor that starts at $400 a month for one suite. No setup fees. No hidden fees. No contract. You pay per active employee, which, yes, counts the shared people who have a record in more than one company. The full pricing is here.

Here's what we landed on after 25 years of this. The cheapest bill is not the one with the fewest records on it. It is the one that does not also need a full time person making two systems agree.

Remember Sarah and her two tabs? On one platform, the second tab is gone. The manager who works both shops still gets his own record in each company, that part is real, but she sets him up once instead of keying him into a system that has never heard of him. And at year end, for the first time in two years, the slip count and the headcount line up.

If you run more than one company on more than one payroll system, and someone on your team loses a chunk of every pay run making the numbers match, that is worth a talk. Tell us what your companies look like and we will tell you, straight, whether one platform is the right call. Have that talk here.