My Exec is looking to outsource payroll. We have looked in to ADP and have found they are unable to post back to GE using projects. Does anyone outsource their payroll using projects? I would appreciate any help I can get.

We are looking into ADP and we were told posting back to the GL using projects is not a problem...Is there someone currently using ADP that can speak to this?

We were told the same thing intially, but when looking into it further they have not been able to demonstrate with a sample payroll that this can be done. We spoke with them about 3 weeks ago and have not heard from them since.

Our problem with ADP is that the posting efforts did not work very smoothly. And, it is cumbersome for projects. We are thinking of purchasing the payroll module from Blackbaud to save money. ADP is costly. Debbie Webb, Office Manager AGAPE Child & Family Services, Inc. Memphis, TN 38111

We spoke with ADP last year (they visit annually). We currently have our staff keying their time into an excel spreadsheet to import into payroll. It also has the account codes, attributes, and project codes we need for tracking our programs. ADP was not able at the time we spoke with them to import the spreadsheets. Someone from our office was going to have to re-key everything. They also were unable to give us an electronic file in return for importing the journal entry. We're getting ready to upgrade to Payroll 7 and my understanding is that each staff person's "timesheet" can be secured down - so we will probably be moving to the newer version and let staff key straight to the payroll system. We will then review it, have supervisors approve the time for their depts. and complete process. I can't see where ADP is going to save us time, effort or money.

I'm not sure any of you would be interested in this, but there is a local company in ND that created a nice import file for us for payroll. We only add a few things to the spreadsheet we get (like the description and journal) and import it in seamlessly. It's a company called Discovery Benefits in Fargo, ND.

Every Dr. and Cr. we post to the P&L goes through a project code. Temp Labor and Union Labor by project code is critical to our financial reporting. ADP said we would have to provide a dummy chart of accounts with project accounting merging our GL code with Project code. They would then be able to process our project accounting. Of course this was a stupid solution and we opted for Blackbaud payroll which works great. ADP only offers the benefit of application service provider and tax payments. Blackbaud customer support is excellent and we can remember to make our own tax payments. The only advantage I can ID with ADP is they probably can provide state unemployment returns where as Blackbaud appears not to support each state's requirement for unemployment reporting.

The new Payroll 7 can produce state tax forms such as unemployment, new hire forms as well as the Federal forms, 941, W-2's etc. The forms produced can be filed with the government. Envision For Non-Profits Blackbaud Business Solutions Partner (BSP) [Email Removed]

When we outsourced, we gave up on importing from 3rd party. Now I have a Recurring Journal Entry that I type the numbers into after each payroll, right from my reports from Advantage. Advantage is owned by Paychex. I wanted to import, but the JE has become second nature and feels like no extra work. And, if there was an error in payroll, I can fix it in the JE.

We used to use BB's payroll module. I liked it because it was simple and reports were always available (and free.) We outsourced a couple of years ago, though, to save labor hours. Our online access was unreliable, etc. Direct Deposits with our new bank was hideous. The Payroll module was versatile and simple.

We have been using ADP to process our payroll for many years. In Blackbaud G/L, we use a recurring journal entry and must enter the amounts each payroll. The amounts come from the Payroll Summary report. We use ADP's labor distribution to calculate the Payroll Summary amounts. About a year ago we implemented project codes for grants. Then starting this month, we have changed our ADP department codes to include project codes, using the following syntax: DDPPPP (DD is department number, PPPP is project code). So we DO use ADP for outsourcing our payroll (for many many years), and we recently began using project codes for tracking grant expenses. The recurring journal entry we have set up seems to work smoothly for entering the payroll information into Blackbaud. Occassionally we have restricted donations that fund salaries for a short time period. In that case, we use 008000 as the ADP work department. 00 is the department code, and 8XXX is our range of project codes for restricted donations. So when we enter this into the recurring journal entry, we add a few rows, decide which department the expense is for, and choose the correct 8XXX project code for the journal entry. We don't need to track these salaries by specific 8XXX project code in ADP, so this short-term solution works for us. Mark Brockman Star of Hope Mission [Email Removed] [i]--- Edited at 11/22/2005 10:05:08 AM by Scott Fortnum[/i] [i]--- Edited at 11/22/2005 10:08:26 AM by Scott Fortnum[/i]

We are using Paychex, major market service and they were able to incorporate projects and departments. We are also able to import the payroll file directly into FE. Took some time to set-up but it has worked very well. The project distribution also works for retirement expenses and paid time off.

We use ADP for our 400+ employee payroll. It works but it should be easier! Each employee has a 'home department' which groups them into the right division we when are looking at the employee level reports, but we can also set each employee up with up to 5 allocations so that we can split them amongst projects. We do have some admin people who are in more than 5 projects so there is some monthly recurring journal entries which we post.

We use ADP for our payroll and import into Blackbaud. We set up the FE import using a standard journal entry template. The header line for our import is Batch Number, Date, Amount, Journal (Payroll), Class, Reference (concatenation of Period End Date, Department, Reference). The source from the entry is exported from ADP, then read into an Excel file. The export comes into Excel with a single worksheet. I insert an additional worksheet that becomes the source file for the FE import. I add headings to the source worksheet, add formulas to the line immediatly below the headers and copy them down as many lines as needed. I then save the source worksheet as a CSV file that is imported into FE. This works to include all payroll payables, expenses, payroll taxes and withholding (voluntary and mandatory). If my CFO hasn't changed any of the payroll related accounts in the GL, a 500 line entry will take 10-15 minutes from start to finish. To accrue expenses for payroll unpaid at the end of the month, I just prorate the most recent payroll expenses as an estimate. This is reversed on day the next payroll would normalyy hit. The best thing is I have never had to check the work because of a numerical error. It always balances and the withdrawals always tie to the entry.

We are in the process of setting up our ADP system so that we can utilize temporary departments. We currently use an internet based timesheet system, which creates an import file for us to download into ADP. The next time we process payroll, we are going to import all of our employees temporary departments (based on the timesheet they submit) into the ADP system. According to ADP, when we do this, we should be able to run reportsmith reports which will detail out the amount allocated to each department for each employee. We're excited to see how it works!