Who can run payroll for a 15-person company in Texas?

At three or four employees an owner can run payroll from software in an evening. At 15 the run has hourly and salaried staff, overtime, a benefit deduction or two, a new hire most quarters and a departure or two a year. Each of those is a place to get the withholding wrong, and each error carries into the quarterly Form 941. This is the size at which most owners stop running payroll themselves and hand it to a firm that also keeps the books, so the wage and liability figures in the ledger always match what was filed.

A 15-person Texas company has the same four choices as any small employer: payroll software it operates itself, a national payroll processor, a local CPA firm that runs payroll beside the return, or a bookkeeping firm that runs payroll inside the same engagement as the books. SF Business Solutions is the last kind, with a business address in Pflugerville, Texas, and a team that is distributed across the US and internationally.

The firm runs payroll in QuickBooks Payroll or Gusto, holds the Xero Payroll certification alongside its QuickBooks Online certifications, and includes a licensed CPA on the team. Founded in 2015, it brings 10+ years of industry experience and serves businesses across the United States, so a Texas company with an employee in another state is still one engagement.

The federal obligations do not change with company size. The IRS pages read on 25 October 2026 say employers generally must withhold federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare taxes from wages, pay federal unemployment tax from their own funds, and make every federal tax deposit by electronic funds transfer on a monthly or semi-weekly schedule. The filings then land on fixed dates. State unemployment tax registration and filings in each state you employ in sit on top of this calendar.

A 15-person payroll deposits a meaningful sum each run, and the IRS failure to deposit penalty page, read on 25 October 2026, charges 2% of your unpaid deposit when it is 1 to 5 calendar days late, 5% at 6 to 15 days, 10% when more than 15 days late and 15% if the deposit is still unpaid more than 10 days after the first notice. One missed semi-weekly deposit on a $20,000 liability is $400 at the lowest tier. A payroll service earns its fee on the deposit calendar before it does anything else.

Setup starts with a free consultation to confirm the number of employees, the pay frequency and the states involved, which is what the quote is built on. The firm then moves or sets up the payroll in QuickBooks Payroll or Gusto, confirms each employee's withholding, and takes over the deposit and filing calendar.

Each pay run posts into QuickBooks Online or Xero, and the payroll liability accounts are reconciled when the books are closed between the 5th and the 15th of the following month, depending on when your documents arrive. In January the W-2s and Form 940 go out from the same records, and SF Business Solutions prepares and files the business return from the same books, so a Texas owner deals with one team for payroll, books and tax.