On-Demand: Operating in the Cloud | Payroll and Benefits Through the Cloud

That's the overwhelming largest part of our practice. And when we're sitting across the table from a business owner or entrepreneur, most of their energy, their time and their focus, is really helping them growing the value and the profitability of their businesses and serving their customers. Unfortunately, there's a lot of other things that have to happen for that business to be successful. And as a part of our fact finding and discovery process in the early part of the relationship with a client, we really want to understand, what are the pain points within the business? What are some of the areas that the business owner is concerned about that might hold them back in terms of growing the business? Generally speaking, the largest asset of any business are its employees. How has that business owner going to recruit, hire, attract, retain, and reward those employees, especially today with this COVID environment. This has always been an important focus for businesses to grow and to thrive.

But as we are in this new work from home environment, it's really changed a lot of ways that we're all doing business. And as a result of that, we're finding that many businesses are taking a step back and looking at not just working on the business, but working within the business. In addition to the business owner, you have a lot of key people within the organization with different disciplines that are really working towards that mission of the business. And that would typically include the financial folks internally, whether it be a CFO or a controller, it could be the HR, Human Resources Director, or if there's a benefits person as well, someone that maybe focuses on the payroll and just making sure that that is working efficiently and effectively. When looking at all these different parts of the business, there's costs associated with providing these solutions and benefits to their employees. And we want to break this really down into two parts. We have hard costs that we're always trying to keep efficient to control those costs. And at the same token, we like to refer to the soft costs. All the time, all the energy and the back and forth in terms of the different forms of communication that employers have with their employees and how that either can enhance their productivity, or maybe be a distraction.

We also want to take into consideration the recruiting and onboarding process. Making it not just easy and efficient, but making it a positive experience. That's usually the first opportunity after someone has accepted a position within an organization, really to see what that first impression might look like in terms of the onboarding process. And as a small business, many small businesses may not have all of those resources available as a larger company has. But in this environment, as we can see, there's a lot of movement in regards to individuals working in large businesses, maybe going to small businesses or middle-market companies. We're all competing over the same talent pool, thus making the recruiting and onboarding process that much more important. One of the biggest areas and probably where I get approached and the people within our group are approached first, is looking at health insurance and all the benefits that are offered to the employees. Health insurance being the biggest and most expensive component of the employee benefit package. I can tell you specifically, especially in New York State where businesses up to a 100 employees, they have community rates. So that means everybody pays the same premium regardless of age, gender, et cetera, and so on. So that could be a very expensive offering to a small business, particularly if it's a younger workforce. And we'll touch on that a little bit more in a moment.

But there's always going to be different challenges, just a few to name that we hear on a pretty regular basis. In addition to looking at the accounting and the technology and the benefit aspects, it's looking at this fairly, very highly regulatory environment that we're all living in, whether it be state rules, federal rules, local city rules, depending on where your business is located. There's always a challenge in terms of making sure that you're in compliance, making sure that proper communication is put out there to your employees. Then looking at the payroll system and its capabilities. Not just making sure that your employees get paid on time, but also all the data that's within that payroll system. How can that payroll data help you in other areas of your business? Particularly in the accounting area, tax preparation, and again, looking at opportunities where more can be saved in terms of taxes. The companies have choices to approach all these potential problems with opportunities and you can take it into two different approaches.

Some businesses may want to take an unbundled approach and usually taking one-step at a time, looking at payroll, benefits, accounting technology, onboarding, human resources, or we can consider a PEO, a Professional Employer Organization. There's pros and cons with everything. Today, we are going to touch a bit in regards to how we at EisnerAmper, working together internally, collaboratively in the different areas of each practice, and also how we work with friendly PEOs, such as TriNet, one of the more well-known PEOs in the tri-state area and nationally. I'd like to just kind of kick it off. I'm going to introduce to you John Littler, who's going to walk through the basic process, from hire to payroll, to journal entry, and really just kind of give you a sense of, and show you how all those pieces work together. John I'll pass it on to you.

John Littler:Great. Thank you Onofrio. Greatly appreciate the opportunity and welcome everybody. To quickly credentialize TriNet, we are a national employer organization. We actually are traded on the New York Stock Exchange. We've been in business for over 30 years. We represent over 19,000 clients, with approximately 350,000 work site employees. More importantly, we are affiliated with the national association of PEOs and equally important, a member of the ESAC, which is basically the credentialized association for PEOs, similar to the FDIC as they are to the banking industry. But really one of the critical things that happened over the last two years, is when the IRS actually credentialized the PEO industry. They created a certified Professional Employer Organization credential and designation, and many companies had to go through a very in-depth process to be certified. And with that, came the benefits to small and medium-sized businesses where in the past companies who previously used a PEO, when it came to some different tax legislations, we were really confused whether or not they could benefit from those tax breaks that were out there.

Well, now that the fact that the IRS has stepped in, has credentialized the PEO platform, many of you are now seeing that language in legislation from the IRS and can clearly understand the benefits of the PEO for your company. That's very, very exciting for us to have seen. TriNet as a whole, we work with innovative and entrepreneurial organizations just to really help mitigate that HR risk and deliver on your missions, as Onofrio mentioned. It's access to large group benefit options, HR expertise, payroll services, risk mitigation, and technology platform, which we're going to get started with here very shortly. But most importantly, when we went to the market, we wanted to make sure we aligned with the specific industries that are out there, because we do realize each industry acts differently. Our platform differs a little bit. If you're a non-profit organization, if you're professional services, a technology company, MainStreet, which by definition under TriNet is blue and gray collar. So we know the importance there and how workers' comp relates to those industries, life sciences and financial services. It's a really unique way for us to go to the market with the technology platform, as Onofrio pointed out earlier, has allowed the small and medium sized businesses who went out and independently, got a group of services, now can actually streamline that through this advanced technology.

Let's get started. And let me share my screen with you and give you illustration of what that begins to look like. And can everyone see my screen? Okay. The first part we wanted to start off with, is from the recruiting perspective and the ability to start recruiting very effectively and very efficiently. With the applicant tracking system that's been made available through the cloud, it's designed to create your reach to a wider pool of applicants by posting to popular and specialty job boards of your choice. You can filter for candidates with the specific skill sets that you're looking for and get an overview of where your candidates are. We wanted to provide an illustration of how simple it is to create a job post.

Once you have the job in mind that you're looking to hire, you just go ahead and create the title, the reason for the opening, the number of openings. So many of you might have a few different openings for a similar position. Would you like it automatically posted on the free job boards? And then go ahead and place the job description here. TriNet also will help you deliver that job description and write it out for you. So it's easier for you to get started and then you'll have your workflow. Workflow industry and location for those companies that have multiple locations, you can really identify specifically where you're looking to place that hire. All the different other requirements that you'll see on here-

As I was mentioning, we're starting off with the applicant tracking component of the platform, which gives that illustration of, how many active candidates you have and any new applicants, outstanding tax and job pending reviews. We wanted to illustrate the job post. And so with the job posts, as I mentioned earlier here, you can go ahead and scan through the different type of position you want to open up, location, job description, the workflow, in the event that you want others within the organization to interview the candidate as well. You'll also notice that there's some internal job information as well as far as hiring level, the pay grade, compensation offered, all the private confidential information that you may want to know about the candidate. Most importantly, you can actually define common questions that you would like of the candidates, certain skill requests that you're looking for, or even develop your own custom questions that you're looking for that particular candidate.

Once you go ahead and you save the job, the job is actually ready for posting. And now you can start taking a look at the talent that is out there. So here's a quick look at the dashboard where you'll see the candidates name, their rating overall, the job that they applied for and what their status is. We've got a particular candidate over here who is a five-star candidate for administrative position. You can take a look at the job views to date, the total applicants, the active candidates here. Most importantly, as I mentioned to the job boards, that you'll be able to post those too. So the free job boards, through the posting process, you'll post to Monster, Glassdoor.com, Indeed, Job.com and Jobbydoo. And then if you want to go to a further reach, you can actually, for discounted rates, go to Career Builder as well as ZipRecruiter as well.

So we have a real quick navigation way to go ahead and pass along your job description and who you're looking for and then going through that particular interview process. As I mentioned, once you go to the talent, and you find somebody, you may want to decide to go ahead and do an action item with them, that action item could be simply sending them a message which could be making a job offer, remove it from the job. But most importantly is once they've accepted the position, you can now actually run the background check. You are supposed to begin another step in the integration process that once you've posted the job, you selected the candidate, you could run the background check and then select the message to extend the offer to them. It's all streamlined for you at that particular point.

Now this is all being done through the administration view. And if you'll notice over here, we've got two different views that you'll be able to see from an administration view and from the employee view. From the employee view, what will happen at this particular point is, once the employee is hired, now what will happen is, the Worksite Employee information here and then the trusted advisor feature from the Worksite Employee. This will automatically enter in the employee's information, right from the point that they are hired. So there's no re-keying. It moves right from the job board, right into the application. And now at this particular point, you have all the information from the employee. No, re-keying, at this point. You'll put the work information, compensation, the benefits that they're eligible for, and then it gives you a quick review button before you do that.

Once that's completed, then an email is actually sent to the employee, welcoming them to your organization, and then the employee view then offers them the ability to get started with the company in a very quick remote way for doing that. We actually have to be in a benefits enrollment period right now. Just giving you an illustration of what it would look like if somebody were to go right to the benefits, they can go to the enrollment period and then go through and select their particular benefits. As Onofrio mentioned, they'll have different benefits from Aetna, from Blue Cross Blue Shield, just depending on what market you're eligible for. And then they'll go through that whole entire period of just getting registered and set up with the company, W-4 information and all of that. Additionally, we act as the repository for I-9 information. Once the employee supplies their I-9 information, that is sent over as well. And then we keep that and keep the e-file and do the whole verification of the I-9 for you, on your behalf as well. From an employee perspective, it's really a terrific application for them to feel really engaged with the company and really have a nice remote onboarding experience.

One of the things we wanted to share as well as we tied it into the payroll, is how employees would actually request time off. In the time off requests, employees will actually have an accumulated PTO, and that can be broken into many different ways depending on how your company illustrates it's PTO time. And once you request that PTO time, you will designate the type of request, if you're going out on PTO, you're starting period that you're heading out, maybe you're taking all of next week for Thanksgiving off, and then going ahead and completing that, and then submitting that time off at that particular time and you can place your comments. The nice thing is, once it's all done and submitted, it actually goes right to the employer who authorized to approve your PTO. And now it's all set and you actually got written communication back and forth as far as the PTO, which is terrific. How do we translate this into the payroll is, we want to be able to make sure that the payroll is seamless to all of these items as well. So we're heading back to the administration view and we're going to go ahead and demonstrate the payroll piece to it. It's a very robust payroll platform that TriNet has built, actually within our own system.

And if you take a look here at the payroll, once we enter in the payroll information here, you're going to see that this particular prospect we're working with has actually two different types of payroll frequencies. They have a semi-monthly and they also have a biweekly. We also like to point out that, you can set up different earning codes, you can actually add a special payroll if you need to do that. But let's go ahead and give you a little bit further insight of what that begins to look like. So you can pay employees, all of the employees, salary employees, hourly employees. You do have the ability to import that payroll in from your time and attendance system. But we also wanted to share with you managing time off. So many times, is it difficult that whatever your PTO time is and making sure that that gets captured into the payroll. Seamlessly, it is usually very tricky to do. With the managed time pay payroll, what will happen is you'll see any new relevant records displayed here for PTO.

And if in fact that an employee did show here, that they did have eligible payroll, it would move to the payroll grid. And at that particular time, it would pop up over here and would actually show the person and their hours here. To give you an example, as we do this, you might have some other hours. Let's go to this. For this particular employee, we're actually illustrating some department, a lot of department realization that's happening here. So you can actually move to the question that came up a little bit earlier is, can you departmentalized payroll? So the answer is yes, you can actually move people within different departments within your organization. You can pay in different hours. So whether it's holiday or vacation the PTO would actually end up moving over and then you can create the other odd items as well.

Let me just submit this here, before we get this going. And once this is done, the payroll preview can be clicked here. And then once the payroll preview, it gives you an overview of the overall payroll. And this way you get a clear view of how many employees you paid, what the total payroll, costs, expenses, and all of that information is available for your review at that particular time. Now, before I end the payroll piece to it and turn it back over to Onofrio, this is the export to Excel. So if you want to get that information, you can actually transfer that over into Excel as well. So with that Onofrio, I think, outside some click here challenges that we're running into, I think that captures the payroll, the onboarding and the recruiting process for the platform.

Onofrio Cirianni:Thank you, John. And by the way, I didn't bring the bell. That was excellent. I appreciate it. Our next speaker is Donna Zincone from EisnerAmper. She's going to walk you through from an accounting perspective and payroll perspective, some of the best practices. Donna I'll pass it on to you.

Donna Zincone:Sorry about that. I had a little trouble with my mute button. Hi, I'm Donna Zincone. I'm a director at EisnerAmper and I've been working in the accounting field for many years and I've also been a controller in a prior firm. I totally understand business owners pain points when it comes to setting up their accounting properly, getting their payroll, the headaches with tax compliance and so forth. Recently we've gotten very involved with helping businesses move forward to the cloud, where they can thrive with customized cloud-based accounting and payroll technology. Especially during this pandemic, we see people working from home, you have remote access, virtual office, and this is key for business owners because they need to have their data updated on a regular basis. They need to have that pulse on their business and they don't have time to deal with all the accounting problems and payroll problems that could arise.

By utilizing these technologies, we streamline and automate the payroll. We automate the accounting processes and we also, at the same time, make them more cost-effective and efficient. One of the key things that I find is that, clients can see their data 24/7. Their bookkeeping, their bill pay, their payroll. They can do multicurrency, financial statement consolidations and so forth. At EisnerAmper, we handle small to medium sized businesses, family offices, entrepreneurs, the startups. Those seem to be the clients that really need the most help at this time. They don't have large accounting department or maybe they have none at all. They’re working on desktop. And so we're here to solve that problem. Basically, everything relies on the general ledger itself. That's the backbone of all the financial data gathering, the reconciling and results of the financial statement and the tax return.

It's very important that this general ledger is set up properly. Also designed to the need of the business and what type of business they're in. A general ledger will be different from a manufacturer standpoint to a retail and wholesale, SaaS or e-commerce client, financial and consulting services and professional services. So they can all be very unique and how the data is driven and would depend on how the client wants that presentation to be. We always recommend that clients reach out to their trusted advisor to set up their general ledger, as well as their payroll. There are three key accounts in setting up your general ledger for payroll. And obviously the first one, is the wages. Two is, payroll tax expense and fees and also payroll tax liabilities, but they really should be much more involved than that. Obviously, the more detail you get, the more you can departmentalize and run various tracking categories or classes or departments.

The reason being is there may be different profit centers and different trackings that business owners may want. What's most important is to designate the officer's salary. One, because it has a separate place on the tax return. Also if you do guaranteed payments for partners, which can run through payroll, there are no taxes involved, you should have an account for that. Then we have a separate area for your cost of goods sold. Your research and development, which is also very key to clients that are startups, because there's great impact on isolating research and development, when we're preparing their tax return. You would have also possibly an account for general administrative or your finance department and such. Payroll tax expenses. If you're using a payroll service like TriNet or PEO, it's not necessarily important to break it down between the taxes because that's being maintained but you could also separate for federal unemployment, state unemployment, workers' comp, those types of things, health insurance. I like to keep my payroll fees separately also, just so you can get gauge that cost to your company, that soft cost.

We also track payroll tax liability, 401(K) liability, and possibly match, as well as health insurance deductions. The liabilities are usually an in and out because the taxes are taken out from the employee's payroll and paid immediately. Something you will not have to worry about anymore. Additionally to that on the general ledger, is the use of classes or tracking categories, depending on what software you're utilizing in the cloud. Like I said, it is very important is the R&D component. I strongly urge clients to use that as a tracking feature. You may have different locations. You’re doing sales and you want to know what your sales are in the North or the South or the East or the West. In addition, I recommend highly that you track by state, that being because of the whole Nexus and Wayfair issues.

One, because if you are liable for sales tax, this will be necessary for probably computing and also for recording for tax return purposes at the federal level. Also, you may just want to start tracking profit centers by the various states, depending on especially with remote employees, they could be all over the country. How much are they generating in and tracking the sales and then the costs that affect the sales. The cost of goods sold or any other items, subcontractors that affect the gross profit. So this just gives you a better idea of where your business stands, what your costs are, where your sales are at. I recommend highly the tracking categories or classes. QuickBooks has classes, tracking categories are Xero. Utilize that function to better understand where the money's going, where your resources are going and where your income is derived from.

Let's see. The other thing is, the reason for a payroll service or a PEO is, I know what payroll involves, I've handled payroll internally and I know the pain points of having to register in various states, filing those various multi-state tax returns, staying in compliance with the different minimum wages and so forth. A payroll service and especially PEO, highly recommended. And the PEO just gives you a better benefit bucket for your employees. Allowing them better access to investment companies for their 401(K), as John said and Onofrio. Also, the health insurance, which is of the utmost important to a lot of employees. That gives you resources for attracting better talent and retaining that talent. To put it all together, the general ledger is of great importance. And when you have the payroll in the cloud, you can then automate it up in the cloud and create these departments and GL mappings.

It is automatically almost like a seamless integration. You run that payroll and it flows down into your software package in the cloud, and there's really nothing for you to do. It's going to the cost of goods or the G&A or the officer, or the guaranteed payments. It's really, just seriously, almost a click of a button to just do the download when that payroll is processed. And you know all the taxes are paid and you have access to W-2's that are filed at the end of the year or possibly 1099's. It just makes the whole process of payroll so much more efficient, compliant and you really don't have to think about it. You just have to look, be involved with hiring your employees, keeping them happy and all this automation is correct. It's accurate. There's no real issues. I mean, except for someone maybe possibly reviewing it before it goes final on a weekly or bimonthly basis or monthly basis.

In my opinion, as a small business, this is something that should be highly considered depending on how many employees you have. And now the PEOs are accepting a smaller employee pool. So to me, it just makes sense, because who wants to be bothered with payroll? And as I mentioned, we're going to have a demo on the whole automation process of the actual payroll platform into an accounting product. And you'll see how simple it is to use, either your controller, your bookkeeper, or if EisnerAmper is doing your cloud accounting, just makes that whole process so much more streamlined. It's more efficient and also more cost-effective. Thank you.

Onofrio Cirianni:Thank you, Donna. I appreciate that. Our next speaker is Ishawna. Ishawna is going to spend a few moments to not just describe, but also give us a demo on TriNet's interface. Ishawna.

Ishawna Wint:Absolutely. We've covered some of the benefits with using a PEO such as TriNet. And one of the things that I also wanted to touch on, which is an extra added bonus benefit in terms of flexibility is the Integration Center. You can see here on my screen from the admin view, we have a listing of third party applications that you can easily connect to from the TriNet platform. So not only do we have accounting systems as a category, we have single sign-on as a category, identity management as a category, HRIS as a category as well. And you have the opportunity to take advantage of coming here and connecting to a system of your choice. Now we do have available applications, which is what you're looking at right now, meaning these are available to me. I haven't yet connected to any of these. And then I have another tab for my connected apps, which I've four of them I've connected to as well. So if I open up the NetSuite card, this is meant to be fully self-service. We give you a wealth of information, the overview, the benefits, the next steps, which set the expectations in terms of what should I expect from this connection. You have the integration guide. You can modify your setup. You can come in here on contact TriNet if you need to, we are here to help you.

We have a team dedicated to help you with any of these third-party applications. If you need that help in order to get through some of these connections, but it's very easy. Click of a button and it just adds to the flexibility. Now, not only is this applicable for accounting systems, but if I open up BambooHR for a second, just to show you with the other applications that we have here, it's the exact same thing, a wealth of information that provides the overview. It provides the benefit, what to expect, tons of resources, pre-integration checklist, and how to complete the integration, FAQ's if needed. And again, we do have a team that's dedicated to help you step through this, if needed, but it is meant to be self-service. So again, you have your available applications, and then you have the applications that you've connected to. And I'll take you there now. And you can see from this listing, I've connected to three different accounting systems. And you can also see talent acquisition there at the bottom with Greenhouse Recruiting. But I've connected to Xero. I've also connected to QuickBooks Online and I've connected to Custom.

So let me take a minute and speak about Custom. Now, if you are using an accounting system that you do not see in our listing of direct integrations, we still give you the opportunity to take advantage of GL mapping and GL reporting. And that is what you would use the Custom option for. So you would still go through the same process in terms of mapping your GL accounts and I'll take you there in a moment so you can see what that looks like, as well as getting your GL report every pay period. Just as Donna mentioned, whether it's weekly, biweekly, depending on your needs, you do get a GL report after every pay run, and that will contain all of your journal entries, and you can easily export that data out of our system using that Custom option. Now for the Xero product, which I know that's the main application that we want to talk about today, you can see that I have completed the connect process.

I am successfully connected. But in addition to connecting, again, we step you through everything and you can see that I have a status of mapped and not mapped. If you take a look at Xero and QuickBooks Online. You can see for Xero, I've already mapped my GL accounts, whereas with QuickBooks Online, I have not yet mapped my GL account. So again, with the TriNet platform, you can easily connect to a third-party application and we take you through each step of the way and guide you as a user. If I open up the card for Xero here, again, a wealth of information. You can see when this was last updated, when was the setup last updated, and by whom within the company made that update. You can see what company I'm connected to. So as a CPA, if you have multiple companies, you can see which company you're connected to. Again, resources, you can contact TriNet if you need help and you can also edit.

Edit is where all the magic happens, because that's actually when you get taken into the actual GL mapping. And this is just a snapshot of what the GL mapping templates look like. You have a basic mapping, you have an advanced mapping if you take a look at the left navigation, and then you also have a settings, I'll get into advanced and settings here in a moment. But for basic, I want you to think of it this way. The bare minimum that is required for GL reporting is what we've given you in this basic mapping. In order to generate a GL report, there's a few key things that are required, this is what you have here in front of you. The other thing about basic mapping is if you're a small company, you don't have that many employees, your GL is not complex at all, because we know that each GL is different. No two GLs are the same. If you have a very simple GL, basic mapping would be a great starting point for you. We've provided very simple, very basic, bare minimum that is required. And the basic mapping is actually our most popular mapping template, to be honest, as basic as it looks, it's the most popular. And so we've provided that for you here.

Now, you can see you have your payroll accounts on the left-hand column. So your wages, your reimbursements, your medical taxes, et cetera. And then we also give you an option for the unmapped debit and credit. That really just refers to any future items that may have not been mapped. You've provided an advance, the debit and a credit account that those items can fall into. This way, it doesn't throw off your reporting, it doesn't throw off your balances because you've provided a bucket for those items to fall into ahead of time. But again, the wages, the reimbursements, your benefits, your medical, your payroll clearing, which is the credit side, we've provided that for you. The simple thing about this mapping is, if you remember on the previous screen where I click the edit button, that is actually where all the magic happens. Once you click, edit, we actually pull in your chart of accounts and we give you the opportunity to map those account on the right hand side of this column. If I hit this drop down, these are all my chart of accounts here in this test environment. And you can scroll through and you can select and you can do your mapping.

Your payroll accounts are on the left. The chart of accounts are on your right, and it's a simple mapping that can happen. And then you click save and you're good to go. Now, if I take you into the advanced template, you can see that it looks very similar to basic, but we've just given you some additional information. Here you have more options essentially. If you take a look at the very top, we've broken it out into the different payroll categories. So you have your earnings and your deductions and your taxes, your employer charges, and you would just map based on those different payroll categories. Again, very simple layout as well as you can see on the left-hand side, you have your payroll account. Some of these items look very familiar because they were also on the basic template as well, your wages and your benefits, your reimbursements, et cetera. But we have given you additional items. So you have vacation, which you didn't see on the basic. Overtime and bonus and commission, et cetera, that you didn't see on the basic that we've provided here in this advanced mapping template.

In case you need it, you do have two different options for mapping. And it's the same concept. You click the dropdown, you scroll through you select your GL account and you map your items. You go through and you click next to get into the next payroll category. And then you save your items once you get to the very end. Now, under the settings tab, you do have an option to enable department and location tracking. Some clients do not want department location on their GL report. Maybe you only have one default department or one default location. You don't necessarily need that information, we do give you the option to enable that for geo reporting, if you want to see that information there. Okay. So again, we've mapped the basic jail mapping. And I'll take you back into the main dashboard here. And now I'm going to take you into the reports application. TriNet has what we call the workforce analytics. That is our reporting tool and it has a wealth of different reports. You have reports for everything and you can also add reports if you want and customize reports. If I open this up, give it a second to load, and we move under the payroll and accounting tab, you can see I have my general ledger report already, stared as a favorite.

If I open this up, what I'm going to show you here is a very basic, simple sample of a GL report. Very basic for this demo purposes. But on the left hand, you can see I have my company code, I have my accounts, all my different GL accounts that I've mapped. For this, we have the department ID, location, I have the transaction dates. I have the descriptions, is it worker's comp? Is it FUTA? Is it services fee? If it worth any benefits listed, it would be listed here, all the descriptions. I have also my debits and my credits, and then the associated invoice numbers to go with each transaction. Very simple and basic, depending on your reporting needs, this report can have a lot more data in it or not. Every pay period, this is the report that you would get. Now to get this data out of the TriNet system and into the application, your accounting application, I would click, more and export, I hit this dropdown. You can see the different options, QuickBooks Online, NetSuite, Intacct, QuickBooks IIF which is the format for QuickBooks Desktop, as well as Xero. Simple click of a button, you can send this data over into your accounting system application.

Now for those using the Custom option, it would be as simple as exporting this data into a CSV and then you can upload that into your accounting system as needed. For Xero, I simply click on the export button and I will get a success message here in a second. And this tells me that my journal entries have been posted to Xero successfully. You will get the same message regardless of the accounting system. Very simple, very easy. I close out of this. All my journal entries have been posted. I move over into the Xero application and I move down under, accounting and journal report, and give it a second to load here. And from here, if I were to click on manual journals, you will see a listing of all the posted journals that have come from the TriNet system. Now, I am in a test environment. So never mind the dates that you see here, but the concept still applies, where all my journal entries are posted here to the accounting system. And I can go ahead and take a look at that by day, if I were to click all. Of course, that's all my journal entries posted or a manual journal that I've entered or archive journals, but the idea is that if it comes from the TriNet system, it will be a posted journal.

So if I move you back over to posted, and I open up one of these reports, you will see the information that you just saw within that sample GL report. So you'll see your description. You will see the account, you will see the department location, even though this report does not have department location, but that information can be there if you want, as well as the debits and the credits. If you remember on that sample report, I had worker's comp and FUTA and the services fee, et cetera, that information is here as well. All the different GL accounts are listed here. Again, you can enable or disable if you want the department location tracking and your debits and your credits will move over. And this is again, the sample report, just as a reminder of all the information that we'll send over to the accounting system. So this could be as simple as you see it here, or it can be even more complex if you need it to be. And we post that information over. That simple, that easy. And I'll take you back to the main dashboard for trying it and I'll pause here and see if anyone has any questions. Thank you.

Onofrio Cirianni:Ishawna, thank you. That was excellent. And the remaining few minutes that we have, we have some questions from our audience. So I'd like to take a moment and ask each of you a few questions. I'll start off with John. This is a really robust system here at TriNet. John, we're representing some smaller companies and they're looking at all of this, within this PEO model, can some of these services be offered like Alcor or do you have to implement all of these capabilities?

John Littler:Yeah, that's a great question, Onofrio. So with the PEO solution, it's ideally designed to be a bundled solution. However, from rare circumstances, what we can do, is we can actually carve out the health insurance. As you suggested earlier in the New York metropolitan area because of the community rating, there's a favorable component of TriNet. But at times, if you've got multistates and you want to explore and retain your own health insurance organization, you can, and we can carve out the medical piece. We also can carve out the workers' compensation part to it. And then the last other piece is not necessarily included, but it is included in our administration fees, is the 401(K). With those things in mind, it's not necessarily an Alcor, but there are certain things that we can carve out, "in the PEO model". Once we sit down with the client and evaluate what's in their best interest.

Onofrio Cirianni:And just as a follow-up to that, is there any mobile access to these capabilities from let's say an employee or even from an employer's point of view?

John Littler:Yeah. Great question. To our complete mobile app, actually, we won recently six TV awards based on our mobile app and what's available on it. As illustrated before the time off request, that can actually be done from your phone. So you don't actually have to log into your computer. Most importantly, I think what people really like about the mobile app is that, all your health insurance card. So think about the health insurance cards that you keep in your purse or your wallet. All of that's actually on your phone and being able to show that to your doctors and dentists out there just very quickly. A full slew of our services are available on the app.

Onofrio Cirianni:Thank you. Here's one for Ishawna. Just from a cost standpoint, if you have a moment, if you can just comment, are there multiple costs for each of these integrations with third party applications?

Ishawna Wint:Really good question. And the answer is no. We get asked that question a lot from clients when they see the listing of available third party connections that we have from our platform, including the one for accounting systems. And I showed you that we have a basic option, an advanced option, and no, there is no additional costs. Once you become part of the TriNet family, it is free of charge for you to take advantage of that.

Onofrio Cirianni:Great. Thank you. Donna, just some final thoughts. What are some of the top reasons, maybe to consider switching from maybe normal practices now to this cloud-based technology?

Donna Zincone:One of the first things that comes to mind is a real-time, automated, streamlined 24/7 data accuracy. To me, that's key. I want to know what's going on in my business, my financial situation. On the employee's side, those increased benefits, that's a great attraction to attract good talent and also to retain great talent. And one of my real, only having been there done that type of thing is the multistate tax registrations and tax filings and staying in compliance, W-2s, 1099s, federal levels and everything. That's just to me, a win-win no matter what. To me, for business owners, better to outsource for the time savings, the business efficiencies, compliance, and allowing that business owner to concentrate on running and building their business.

Onofrio Cirianni:Great. Thank you. Thank you very much. As everyone can see here, there's a lot of moving parts. Business owners have challenges. Some are old, maybe some are new challenges as a result of the work environment that most of us are working in today. But there's potential solutions and benefits which we hopefully highlighted today and you have a little more clarity in regards to what a PEO is, some of these accounting tools and technology and the integration of these tools, which is key. Here at EisnerAmper, we are in a position to help you as your independent advisor, evaluate, are these applicable, can they help you? If it is coming in an Alcor platform, which are maybe the applications that work for you best? And if a PEO is the potential solution for you, we can help you evaluate as there are many, many PEOs in the marketplace. You had an opportunity to see TriNet's today.

Just kind of final thought is, as you can see in this bundled approach, as you look to a PEO as a potential solution, or even the accounting solutions that are integrated, that may eliminate maybe a variety of decisions that you have to make on an independent basis. But one thing I can suggest, having done this for decades, is you need some time. The execution and implementation, it takes a little bit more time upfront in terms of evaluating the alternatives, getting all the data from you to actually generate proposals and seeing which are the potential best solutions for you. And then once you give the nod and say, this is the direction that we're going to go, you want to make sure that you have time on your side because you are implementing and executing multiple strategies and solutions. And with that being said, I want to thank everybody for participating today. It's been a pleasure. Hopefully you got something out of this today. You can reach out to Donna or myself directly at EisnerAmper or our speakers for any follow-up. And if there's additional questions, we will follow up with you. Thank you for your time. Everybody stay safe and healthy and have a great holiday season and a close of the year. Thank you.

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