ADP is likely the most widely known provider of payroll and Human Resources outsourcing in America. Indeed, it is probably the only such company that has broad name recognition outside of the world of payroll professionals. ADP is the preferred provider of payroll production by a very wide range of highly successful enterprises.

ADP offers three levels of payroll service for small businesses. The most basic plan, called the Compliance Package, calculates payroll and federal, state and local taxes and reports new employees as required by law. It doesn’t, however, include all of the features we’ve been using for price comparison. For level-field comparison purposes, it’s necessary to upgrade to ADP’s Compliance Package with Pay Convenience. It offers payment of employees by direct deposit, centrally printed pay checks or by payroll debit card. With this package, employers can view individual employee pay histories online and more advanced deductions such as retirement account contributions can be managed. For the comparison example that we’ve used across this review site of five employees paid bi-weekly, ADP’s charge would be $159.57 monthly. They also charge a $200 set up fee though representatives told us that the charge is negotiable. Even their lesser Compliance Package would run $111.04 monthly for our test example. ADP’s charge for annual W-2 processing is $30.00 plus $5.40 per employee.

In addition to the above options, ADP offers the Compliance Package with Pay Convenience and Reporting which adds general ledger interface with QuickBooks and additional management reports. Indeed the range of services offered by ADP is, for all intents and purposes, limitless for a price. Our reviews are specifically geared towards online payroll management but ADP offers a broad selection of other input options as well including calling in payroll and using a standalone computer.

ADP offers access to payroll specialist by both telephone and email and in that they have widespread local offices, a nearby representative is available to most clients. To see how ADP compares to other top rated online payroll services, we invite you to read our reviews of Intuit Online Payroll, SurePayroll and ProPayroll.