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Max Farnsworth used to spend four and a half hours a month processing payroll for his property management firm via a custom bookkeeping system and paper checks. His company, Farnsworth Industries, keeps vacation rental properties along Florida’s Emerald Coast running, handling everything from smart-home systems and Wi-Fi to construction oversight. Every minute spent on manual data entry was unbillable time stolen from clients, and his experience isn’t unusual.
In OnPay’s analysis of what small-business owners search for, questions about running payroll by hand (“how to do payroll,” “payroll spreadsheet template,” “payroll for one employee”) add up to more than 91,000 searches a year. Roughly 35,000 more come from employees asking where to cash a paper paycheck. The DIY era isn’t just inefficient — it introduces significant operational risk.
OnPay helps growing businesses put that time back where it belongs, with payroll, HR, and benefits in one place. Here is how to know when you have hit the limit of doing it yourself, and what businesses that make the move actually do.
Signs you’ve outgrown your HR setup
About six in ten new customers arrive from another provider or process that stopped fitting, and about four in ten are setting up payroll for the first time, often because they just hired employee number one. Wherever you are starting from, the warning signs look alike. Here are operational bottlenecks to watch for:
The 30-minute threshold: If basic payroll runs take hours instead of minutes, manual data pipelines are draining your labor productivity. On automated platforms, those runs drop to 15–30 minutes.
If basic payroll runs take hours instead of minutes, manual data pipelines are draining your labor productivity. On automated platforms, those runs drop to 15–30 minutes. Multi-state compliance risk: With over 374,000 annual searches tracking shifting localized mandates like paid family leave, manual tracking creates immediate compliance liabilities.
With over 374,000 annual searches tracking shifting localized mandates like paid family leave, manual tracking creates immediate compliance liabilities. Institutional data loss: Relying on physical artifacts or keeping PTO policies and employee handbooks in a founder’s head means every employee departure results in critical data loss.
Where HR structure matters most
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