CareGuide has always been a company unafraid to play in multiple marketplaces at once. Since its inception, launching in five different markets at once, the company has looked for novel approaches to accelerate growth for its suite of home care services. Today, CareGuide announced another novel move to expand its offering to the wider “care” market — this time in the FinTech space.
CareGuide has taken the payroll service from its recently acquired CanadianNanny.ca brand — which offered a Nanny Payroll and Tax Service — and spun it off into standalone service HeartPayroll, available to all CareGuide portfolio users, as well as people not on the platform.
The service takes control of the complete payroll process, such as providing T4s for nannies and adult caregivers, calculating net and gross pay, taxes, CPP, and EI amounts, and providing remittance of all source deductions. It’s a resource that both caregivers and families employing caregivers don’t know they desperately need — the latter being the main reason the company decided to create HeartPayroll in the first place.
CareGuide has seen first-hand what happens when families don’t realize that they need to formalize payments to caregivers.
According to CareGuide founder and Chief Executive Dad, John Philip Green, Alyssa Atkins, CareGuide’s Director of Marketing, was instrumental in leading the charge to create HeartPayroll. She’s seen first-hand what happens when families don’t realize that they need to formalize payments to caregivers beyond just writing a cheque — down the road, when caregivers can’t claim income, it can lead to complications and heavy fines.
“We’ve had families come to us almost in tears, because they’re trying to do payroll and taxes themselves for a couple of years thinking they’ve done it correctly, but then they get this letter saying they need two things they didn’t realize were required,” Atkins said. “We’ve had to help them go back two years to get everything in proper order so that they can figure out why they have to pay fines and penalties.”
Because the service is open to anyone seeking nanny services outside of CanadianNanny, HeartPayroll has also teamed up with nanny and senior care placement agencies within Canada to give them access to HeartPayroll services.
“We had to think about an effective way to do this where we could still support CanadianNanny, and how that makes sense for our partners,” Atkins said. “When we started to build relationships with agencies, their excitement completely exceeded our expectations. They were thrilled to be close partners and service their clients where they may not have been able to provide them with payroll servicing before. It aligns so closely with the personalized touch that they’re able to provide clients. Families using agencies enjoy the very personalized experience, and once they become an employer, they require that same level of service with payroll.”
“CareGuide expanding into FinTech is the last thing anyone expected.”
CareGuide isn’t the first company to find a payroll niche within its own core offering and spin-off its service — Wave recently announced that it was working towards moving into the lending space after finding that many of its small business customers trusted them with payments and payroll.
Atkins said that HeartPayroll’s team of payroll experts, who have “dedicated their lives to payroll,” ensures the company can guarantee the accuracy of its service, which can be a complicated web for many people.
“It’s so important not to compromise what your core offering is, but if you can identify and serve a segment of the market with the team and services you build, it makes sense to do so. And it’s a way for startups to expand their offering with the infrastructure and team they’ve already built,” said Atkins. “With CareGuide, we try to challenge the status quo where we can.”
It’s a sentiment matched by Green, who also acknowledged the need to expand a company’s horizons if the opportunity presents itself. “CareGuide expanding into FinTech is the last thing anyone expected,” he said. “Alyssa is not just a gifted marketer but also has an entrepreneur’s eye for opportunity. HeartPayroll is a huge help to Canadian families.”
Photo courtesy Mark Dufour