Payroll & Insurance, etc.

Payroll & Insurance, etc

Have you heard of PEOs?

In general, for back-office stuff, as soon as you have one employee (so there are two total, you and one other person), you can also look at the PEO option. I use a PEO now (Justworks), primarily to get access to the large employer health plans. I compared several PEOs before selecting Justworks (Paychex, Trinet, ADP, and Sequoia One), and to make a long story short, Justworks is the only one that works with fewer than 5 employees (some of them have a minimum monthly cost equivalent to the per-capita cost of 5 employees, others only offer access to the large employer plans if you have 5 or more people enrolling).

More about PEOs here.

If all you need is payroll, I've heard good things about Gusto, and I think Wave may also do payroll.

Business Insurance

There are a lot of helpful (googleable) blog posts and such on this topic. I went with getting coverage from Hiscox through the Freelancer's Union.

Staffing

• Hire tech freelancers through Upwork. Post a job, respond to people who apply, hire them, pay Upwork weekly, and Upwork pays the contractor. Easy-peasy. Braintrust is similar (haven't used but heard good things).
• The Mom Project has a nice mission. I hired my part-time virtual assistant through them, and it works basically the same as Upwork (20% fee on top of contractor rates), except that there is some kind of purportedly AI-driven matching (though given their very nice and very human-driven onboarding process, I wonder what part of it was AI). For permanent hiring, they're just like a regular on-line staffing agency (15% of first year salary).
• I also like the idea of Climatebase, but haven't used them yet. Pricing is a very reasonable $150/mo with a 3-month initial minimum (15% discount for 6 months paid up front, 30% discount for annual membership).
• Working Not Working is a staffing site specializing in creatives (and was recommended to me by a senior creative as a good place to find people). They charge a monthly membership rather than a fee on top of hourly rates.
• Hired looks promising for an online recruiting platform (they also provide matching, so you don't get completely random responses from folks who don't have the right background, but the pricing is such that it is a serious commitment. I haven't tried it yet.
• For internship postings, check out UCAN Intern and Handshake.