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Andrew Tobias
Andrew Tobias

Money and Other Subjects

Run a Small Business? Got a Maid?

July 26, 1999March 25, 2012

Full disclosure: I own a little piece of this. It’s called OneCore.com. And, no, it’s not public. But it might be of interest to those of you who run small businesses, or even if you don’t (you don’t? it’s 1999.com, for heaven’s sake — get with it!). OneCore might be helpful if you have a one-day-a-week housekeeper and find the “payroll” aspects so daunting that, by not filing the proper forms and paying the nanny tax, you are jeopardizing your otherwise very real shot at becoming a Supreme Court justice.

(The household-employee aspect of this may be a little premature. But when I suggested it to OneCore, they thought it might be possible. In the meantime, Charles and I have an accountant working two days a week to tend to the requirements of employing our housekeeper one day a week. Or so it feels, anyway.)

As Business Week On-Line described it last week, “OneCore is a middleman: It bundles the small-business financial services of a number of companies into a single package accessible on one Web site. … [Its] basic service — which all customers must take for a fee of $25 per month — is an interest-bearing checking or sweep account, called the Core Account, administered by mutual-fund company Scudder Financial Services Inc. Aside from that, services are a la carte. Other offerings include payroll processing by Computer Resources Inc., bill payment through CheckFree Corp., 401(k) administration by Bankers Systems Inc., merchant card services from Michigan National Bank, and equipment-leasing loans from BankVest Inc. All transactions are handled online, and clients can download transaction information into their accounting programs. The system is compatible with a number of software packages, including Quicken and Quickbooks.”

Interest on business checking accounts. I like it.

OneCore is the creature of Barry Star, whom I first met when he was at Fidelity Investments. Company lore has it that OneCore was born when Barry was charged 85 cents to deposit a $100,000 check in his — non-interest-bearing — business checking account. (Even the youngest companies need their lore.)

OneCore is just staring out, but already it has clients like Clint Clemons, a photographer whom Business Week Online’s Jeremy Quittner describes this way: “His office is in Rhode Island, his bookkeeper is in New Hampshire, his production facility is in Los Angeles, and his agents are in New York and Italy. He travels about 150,000 miles annually. He has used OneCore since the spring of 1999 to pay bills and handle his payroll. The online access to his business accounts is indispensable . . . ‘It allows me to have personal control of the signing of checks, checking the performance on the accounts, and approving all the money that gets spent out of the company,’ [Clemons says].”

I haven’t tried OneCore yet myself, so cannot vouch for it. But if you’re tired of doing the pizza parlor payroll by pencil, check it out: OneCore.com.

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