Jeannine Dubiac, in the foreground, poses with staff at the company’s new offices at 3 Hemphill Place in the Parade Ground Village complex in Malta.
BY JILL NAGY
Priority One Payroll, an eight-year-old payroll service company, has moved to new, larger officers in Malta but things have been too busy for them to show off the new space to the public.
“We love our new space,” company head Jeannine Dubiac said, and she hopes to have an open house and ribbon-cutting in the spring.
The company moved its offices from the Village of Ballston Spa to 3 Hemphill Place in the Parade Ground Village complex on Route 9 near Northway Exit 12.
The move from a 700-square-foot office to 1,700 square feet of space was prompted by the company’s growth. It allowed the business to add new employees and to install camera security and other security systems to protect clients’ confidential information.
The company prepares and files payroll documents for more than 500 companies, most of them in the Capital District. Of those, about 50 clients come in person to pick up their payrolls, Dubiac estimated.
She said there was a “tremendous increase” in pickups around the holidays, when employers wanted to be extra sure that employees were paid on time. Most payrolls are mailed to employers, so being near a post office is another plus for the new location.
Increasingly, she said, employees are opting for direct deposit of their paychecks and many employers opt for “paperless” payrolls.
Dubiac and two of her employees are certified by the American Payroll Association. Certification requires taking courses or sitting for an exam every three years in order to re-certify. While there are no CPAs on staff, Dubiac said that she receives “tremendous support from the CPA community.”
Virtually all of Priority One’s clients are referred to the company and many of those referrals are from CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers.
Among the services Priority One performs is the preparation and filing of payroll tax documents. Although nearly all their employer clients are in the Capital District, employees are so widely scattered that the company files tax reports in 16 states, Dubiac said.
The company is independent and locally owned.
“Every client works through me initially,” she said, and “they never feel like they are just a number. We help insure that our clients’ staffs are paid on time and correctly every time,” she vowed. She estimated that her fees are 20 to 30 percent less than those of national payroll companies.
