

Ask HN: Mundane startup financial details? - joshu

How do folks handle business banking? Payroll, HR, etc?
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answerly
Banking:

\- We use silicon valley bank. They have a pretty horrendous online banking
system (essentially a bunch of third party services cobbled together- we have
like 4 different sets of login credentials). But, their bill pay system is
good. They also are extremely responsive. We have a real account manager to
help us with issues. They were also able to make intros to a number of
financial/HR vendors that were used to working with startups, which was really
helpful.

HR:

\- Our lawyer provided all the boiler-plate hiring docs.

\- Paychex (SVB intro) handles payroll processing, withholdings, etc for like
$10 per employee per month.

\- Melita Group (SVB intro) handles benefits administration. We only have
basic medical coverage now, but they have the capacity to provide all sorts of
enhanced benefits if we need them.

Expense Tracking:

\- We use InDinero to track all of our expenses by category each month. They
do a better job of categorizing expenses than the SVB system does and it saves
us some accounting time.

~~~
gsiener
Definitely agree that Quickbooks is the standard to beat. We (Profitably.com)
just launched small business analytics that work on top of Quickbooks, and we
keep hearing that lots of owners feel more comfortable with a well-established
accounting suite. What other pain points are there for you? What would make
that easier?

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billflo
Another thumbs up for SVB. The real value is in the the personal manager they
provide.

We use ADP for payroll - they are a little expensive

In terms of managing your finances it can be broken into two \- Accounting (or
preparing for taxes) I would check with your accountant for their preferences.
Most smart ones will suggest an online app which saves them having to come to
you(and saves you money!). If you don't have an accountant yet just pick one
that you can invite your accountant to: Outright.com, Kashoo.com,
LessAccounting.com or QB online are all good. \- Finances (or managing your
dollars) There's a new group of applications that some are calling BFM
(business finance management) or CFM (cash-flow management). They could be
described as Mint.com for small business. billFLO.com (us) and indinero are
probably the best known at this point.

Good luck! Ian

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jaddison
You might look into using Quickbooks - they have addon payroll options (I've
not tried payroll though, sorry). I do like Quickbooks, however. Most
accounting firms work well with the data files. Good reporting.

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swalberg
If any Canadian startups are reading, my venture is <http://SmallPayroll.ca>.
Right now it's targeted to a slightly different audience, but I'd love to hear
about what it would need to appeal to the startup crowd.

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garply
Local bank, pay monthly in cash (China is a cash economy).

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dangrossman
Local bank and a copy of QuickBooks.

