Comment by edawerd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edawerd | Hacker News Reader

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These are all really great points you bring up -- we definitely aren't taking other payroll companies lightly, and providing amazing customer support for both big and small companies is one of our core-tenants.

One of the things that the article didn't mention that I think is worth bringing up is how we eventually plan expose parts of a "payroll API" which can make managing payroll much easier. For example, I would imagine that tabbing through text boxes to enter hours for 120 employees every 2 weeks can get pretty tedious and error-prone. Well, we actually have a (currently internal) API for that, which can eventually be integrated into, say, time tracking software. We believe similar benefits can be realized by integrating our API with accounting software, expense reporting software, etc.

In fact, we've architected our system to be an API from the start, and our JS web-app is just a consumer of our API.

I'd love to hear some other ideas people might have that could take advantage of a payroll API!

>"we definitely aren't taking other payroll companies lightly, and providing amazing customer support for both big and small companies is one of our core-tenants."

Good stuff. I'm going to keep my eye on this. Having gone through it, it's an interesting space. I think it can be done better than the incumbents, and that's key, right?

My point was that there's a bit too much "shoot-for-the-stars" mentality when great start-ups are on the rise. Players like ADP are slow because they are large. But they got large because, at the end of the day, they offer a good product (maybe a tad pricey). $30BB in market cap ain't easy to achieve.

Anyway, I believe there's a big hole ZP can fill, especially if you can market to businesses that can't justify spending thousands per year on payroll. It didn't make sense for us for a long time. It's nice to see a relateable problem being solved. Congrats on the round, and good luck.

Curious - do you see price as being the only differentiator?

To the representative of the company - does anyone on your team have industry experience and/or have been a HR (or possibly finance in smaller companies) director?

Price is most definitely not the only differentiator for us, though we do see it as one of main benefits of using us, especially for smaller businesses. One of our main differentiators is having much more intuitive, simpler, and beautiful payroll software.

Just to heed a warning...be very careful with design being a differentiator when it comes to large enterprise (as the article insinuates). The person buying the software may not be the one actually using it, so therefore this is not as much of a USP as you may hope.

Good luck and happy to give some direction on the challenges of dealing with the enterprises area. Contact details in profile.

I think if you are banking on something being simpler and "beautiful" as your key differentiator then you are not in a good place. A lot of solutions on the market are not hard to use and they are very entrenched. Sure, they don't look great but at the end of the day you need to realize this is payroll software. People don't live in these systems like they do with Apple products. Not to mention, most of the current companies will have a trained tech setup your account. You really don't have to do much. All customers want is:

a) Flexible. Can handle my current and future employee payroll needs. b) Accurate. c) Reliable d) Great customer support. This includes people who are very knowledgeable with what Congress is up to, taxes, etc, and can make sure I am always in compliance.

I agree with a lot of the comments above. I am not sure with the ROI is from your system vs. PayChex or ADP.

>"Curious - do you see price as being the only differentiator?"

Perhaps it's an approach unique to me, but pretty much, yeah. If I can define exactly what I need in a service, and the service provider can assure me they can meet those demands, it's all about price.

Which was my point with regards to ADP. It may be clunky and unpretty, but it does what I need it to do: pay my employees, accurately and on time (disclaimer: I hope, still in implementation!). Flash and prettiness is nice, but if it's superfluous, it has to be free.

I'd be very interested to hear how you feel after you get out of implementation. Maybe we can share war stories (see my email in my profile if you're interested in catching up).

We currently use paychex and hoping to switch to ZenPayroll as soon as you guys allow us :). The biggest attraction is the API which will make managing all our workforce sooooo easy!

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