Ask HN: Mundane startup financial details?

- 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.

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