Business spotlight: Webb Payroll

Webb Payroll Service Inc., located at 2550 Decatur Highway in Gardendale, is owned by Sherry Webb.

The business can be reached at 631-3614 or online at www.webbpayroll.com.

Dean Taylor is vice president of marketing and sales and is also Webb’s son. Taylor provided the following information about the business in the inaugural edition of The North Jefferson News “Business Spotlight.”



• How long have you been in business? “Feb. 18 will be our five-year anniversary. We have been here in Gardendale all five years, and started out in the basement of a house.”

• How many employees do you have? “Right now we have nine employees. We also have some seasonal employees who work for us when W-2 time comes.”

• What’s your business background? “She [Sherry] has been in this business for 20 years now. She started running payroll for her father at a machine shop and then went on to run a privately-owned payroll company in Birmingham, which later sold out to ADP. Her customer base needed service they weren’t getting from the big guys.”

• What services do you provide?

“Anything to do with payroll, we handle it. We’ve added an employee benefits department, timekeeping, HR services and also do employer taxes. We’ve also added employee self-service, which allowed us to go paperless. The people on self-service had W-2’s by Jan. 5. They can also log onto our Web site and see any previous checks or W-2’s for as long as they’ve been with our company.”

• Why should someone use your services over a competitor? “I know it sounds like a cliche, but customer service. We do things the other ones won’t and we don’t have the overhead that other companies have. We’re able to beat pricing on everybody.”

• What’s been your greatest success as a business? “Growing the business and fixing problems. Anytime there’s any kind of opportunity to go above and beyond to satisfy a client, that’s a success. It’s easy to get new clients, but it shows who you are when you can keep the ones you have.”

• What are you doing to combat the current economic climate? “In 2008, we did not add a price increase because of the current market conditions and I don’t see that we’ll increase prices in 2009. Doing that keeps less stress off of the clients because the last thing they need is for us to go up on prices. We also took our accounts to the Alabama Power Credit Union. By doing that, we got approval that our clients and their employees could join a credit union, which may calm some nerves.”

• What future plans do you have for your business? “We just want to expand and take over a bigger market share. Most of our business is still from over the mountain, so we’d like to see it grow here a good bit.”

• Is your line of work something you would recommend to someone else? “Absolutely. I think this field gives you a great opportunity to form partnerships with a wide range of professionals.”