Other customer stories
Hortinvest
For Central Otago’s Hortinvest, making the switch to Ezypay has been the cherry on the top in getting its business processes sorted.
Hortinvest owner Sharon Kirk has been using Ezypay’s services for almost 14 years, across several different horticultural businesses. She says what she loves most is how simple the Ezypay team make the whole payroll process.
Hortinvest works with investors wanting to enter the New Zealand horticultural industry and is run by Sharon and her husband Ross. The couple also contract to a cherry company called Pure Pac that grows, picks, packs and exports cherries. During the cherry picking season, staff numbers can increase to more than 250 people on the payroll. Many of these staff are backpackers, who may only work for a week, before heading to their next destination. Sharon says that having a high number of casual staff means Pure Pac’s payroll is always changing and needs extra attention to detail.
She says that working with Ezypay saves time and overhead costs as well.
“They’re specialists, so for us, working with them is a no-brainer. Our staff get their payslips and everything they need, and we as employers, get all of the information we need for our accounting,” she says. “One of the issues we were having [before working with Ezypay] was that staff would spend an entire day preparing and processing the payroll and the next day we’d still get people questioning their pay, even if it was correct. As soon as we moved to a professional payroll company it stopped. Ezypay take the stress out of payroll for us.”
One of the Ezypay features that has been most beneficial to Sharon’s businesses has been the Ezytime Online Portal. “Staff can upload the hours they have worked or, for our casual staff, we do that for them. All of their deductions such as Kiwisaver and PAYE are taken care of, they can request holidays online, view payslips, and it all happens seamlessly.”
Although the number of staff on the payroll at Hortinvest is smaller than Pure Pac, Sharon says outsourcing the company’s payroll was still a viable solution, financially.
“Even for a small payroll, it works out to be a lot more cost effective than employing or training someone on our staff, managing our own payroll software and processing everything in-house. Ezypay do an awesome job. The team are always very professional and polite to deal with and we recommend them to others all the time.”
