By Jim Lundy
ZenPayroll is just starting and already they are getting a buzz from Twitter. It started with an innocent Retweet of a Techcrunch article. It was picked up by others and then questions were raised about whether they had any payroll experience.
It was humorous but at the same time serious and it brought ZenPayroll CEO Joshua Reeves out to respond to the question and he was pretty clear about the experience of his team.
ZenPayroll is poised to challenge ADP and Paychex
The launch of ZenPayroll couldn’t come at a better time. Paychex and ADP have a pretty good lock on Small and Medium size business payroll. ZenPayroll offers great pricing. We know, since we have checked quotes for both Paychex and ADP and they are very close in price and way higher than the base prices quoted by ZenPayroll. Payroll start-up with the established players can be bumpy; it can take a few payroll runs before things start to run smoothly. All that said, ZenPayroll will meet a welcome audience if they can make life easier than it has been for many.
ZenPayroll’s growth may come from adding additional services or partnering to add them. These include Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA) and 401K Accounts and this is where Paychex and ADP can really nail a business with things like a $3000 sign-up fee. Yes, you heard that right, the initial fees for additional services are high.
Is ZenPayroll the new Workday?
ZenPayroll will probably borrow the playbook from Workday, which with a Cloud based HCM approach, was able to garner the attention of many enterprises during their rise (they just IPO’d). As the new Payroll player, ZenPayroll will find a ready and willing audience in Silicon Valley. That is probably why so many Founders (Box, Yammer etc.) have invested in them.