I remember from starting newtron in 1999 in Germany trotting over to our payroll service consultant every month and duly reporting changes in the HR roster and receiving a roster of paper slips. After that several electronic transfers had to be taken to send taxes, salaries and other contributions to the respective accounts. Even after some optimizations it would takle a day to complete.

Enter 2005 and Paycycle here in Palo Alto, CA. We set up our Payrolls with them for almost two years now and their service is just spectacular!

It's all web based to start with. They helpful wizards to set up/edit data. It prints all the forms you need or submits them to via electronic filing. It sends out money vie ETF.

I can complete administer and run Payroll in 5 minutes while being in Germany. I never spoke to someone at Paycycle (besides a minor setup issue) and runs so well - amazing.

I just wonder why these kind of neat service don't exist for every business service in every country. That would speed up productivity enormously!

Next: Having an complete accounting for SME's without meeting your accountant once or opening Quickbooks for a VERY reasonable fee.