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Landscaping & grounds · St. Louis region
A crew that changes with the season.
In June you have forty people. In December you have nine. Simploy runs the payroll, HR, workers’ compensation and benefits behind all of it, so the back office is never the reason you turn down the next contract.
The year you actually run
Your headcount has a shape.
Most back-office systems assume a company that looks the same in January as it does in July. Yours doesn’t, and every part of employment paperwork feels that difference.
Feb – Apr
Twenty-five new hires in six weeks. I-9s, W-4s, direct deposit and safety orientation, all due before the first cut.
Jun – Aug
Full crew, longest days, most equipment moving. This is when a claim costs you a person you cannot spare.
Sep – Nov
Layoffs, final checks, unemployment claims, and keeping hold of the people you want back in March.
Dec – Jan
Snow crews on call at 3 a.m., working under a different class code than the one they worked in July.
What actually breaks
None of it is a payroll problem. All of it shows up in payroll.
Hiring a season’s worth of people in six weeks
Onboarding twenty-five people at once is a paperwork event, and every missed form becomes a finding later. We run the whole intake, so a new hire is ready to work the morning they show up.
I-9 · W-4 · state withholding · direct deposit · handbookOne crew, two class codes
The person mowing in July and plowing in January isn’t the same workers’ comp risk, and comp doesn’t care that it’s the same employee. Add a premium rate for a 3 a.m. call-out and you have two codes and two pay structures on one timesheet. Miscoded payroll follows you into your e-mod for three years.
Grounds maintenance vs. snow removalInjuries arrive in the weeks you have no slack
Claims cluster in your busiest months. We handle the filing, the return-to-work plan and the carrier conversation, so a sprained back doesn’t take a supervisor’s whole afternoon.
Claim intake · return to work · carrier managementBenefits a seasonal roster usually can’t reach
A thirty-person company buys health insurance at a thirty-person price. Through co-employment your crew is rated inside a much larger pool, and that is often what finally lets you keep your best foremen year-round.
Medical · dental · vision · 401(k) · lifeAll-inclusive, in five parts
Everything an employer has to do, handled in one place.
Human ResourcesHandbooks, compliance, onboarding, the awkward conversations.
PayrollMulti-state, multi-code, overtime and seasonal swings included.
Workers’ CompCoverage, claims, class codes and your e-mod over time.
BenefitsMedical, dental, vision, retirement, rated in a larger pool.
TechnologyOne system your office manager can actually run.
Pricing
Priced per person, not per payroll.
This matters more in landscaping than in almost any industry we serve. A percentage-of-payroll fee charges you most in the months your payroll triples, and it climbs again every time you give a raise or run overtime through a heat wave.
Percent of payroll
Your fee follows your busiest month
July payroll is four times January’s, so the July invoice is four times January’s. Overtime, seasonal bonuses and raises each lift the fee alongside the wage.
Simploy · per employee, per month
Your fee follows your headcount
One rate per employee, per month. When the crew shrinks in November, so does the bill. You can price a bid in March and know what the back office costs you in August.
Your proposal shows our fee on its own line, separate from wages, taxes, workers’ comp premium and benefit costs, so you can see what Simploy costs and what is simply passed through.
Why us, specifically
Outdoor services is the largest industry in our book.
This isn’t a vertical we’re expanding into. Landscaping and grounds companies already account for more of the people we serve than restaurants, construction or medical practices, and they’re the largest companies we work with on average.
Serving St. Louis and the region since 2004. There is no headcount minimum, and the fee moves with your crew.
“We had our best year ever last year, record financials. And in part because Simploy has been a good partner for us.”Buddy DeLong, CEO · Bluegrass & Weedman
He told us no several years running.
Buddy had an in-house HR person and payroll in QuickBooks, and it was working well enough. What changed his mind was a workers’ comp renewal with a significant increase coming. Simploy took the program over, and the increase didn’t land.
“Some things are no-brainers. You’re going to do all this work and then we’re going to pay less and have your HR experience? Wow. Yeah, that’s what we did.”
Eleven years on, his people run three pay structures at once: an hourly day rate, a premium rate for 3 a.m. snow call-outs, and commission on the Weedman side. A hundred and fifty checks a week, all of them correct.
“If you’ve got 150-plus employees, you better be taking care of them and making sure their check is right, or else you’re going to have issues.”
How it starts
Fifteen minutes, then real numbers.
- 01
A fifteen-minute call
We ask what your season looks like, how many people you carry at peak, and where your comp stands. If we’re not a fit, we’ll say so on that call rather than three meetings later.
- 02
Your census and loss runs
We need a headcount by role and your last few years of comp claims. It’s the same paperwork your broker asks for at renewal, and it’s the only homework in the process.
- 03
A proposal built on your actual numbers
Real class codes, real census, real benefit plans, with our fee shown as its own line. You’ll be able to compare it to what you spend today without a spreadsheet exercise.
Free · no call required
The seasonal employer’s compliance checklist.
Nine things a landscaping company with a swinging headcount has to get right across a year, in the order the calendar hands them to you. Written for owners, not for HR departments.
Your checklist is on its way.
It should reach your inbox within a minute. Don’t want to wait? Open the checklist now (PDF) →
If it hasn’t arrived, look for a message from Lewis Marty at Simploy in your junk folder.
We send the checklist and follow up once. No newsletter, no drip you can’t get out of, and we don’t share your information with anyone.
Questions owners ask
Do I lose control of my own crew?
No. You hire, you fire, you set the schedule, and you decide what the work is and who does it. Co-employment separates the employer-of-record paperwork from the running of your company. The people on your trucks are still your people.
What happens to the broker I already work with?
Plenty of our clients came to us through their broker and kept the relationship. Tell us who they are on the first call and we’ll work out how they stay involved rather than making you choose.
Does this make sense if I only have twelve people in winter?
That swing is the reason to look at it. Because we charge per employee per month, the cost moves with the crew. Companies with flat headcount get less from the model than you will.
Can my seasonal people get benefits?
Eligibility rules still apply and we’ll walk through exactly where your roster lands. The usual outcome is that year-round foremen and office staff get coverage they couldn’t buy at your size, which is often what keeps them from leaving in the off-season.
How long does switching take?
Most clients go live on their next payroll cycle once the census and loss runs are in. We run a parallel first payroll so nothing depends on it being right the first time.
Where do you work?
St. Louis and the region we can drive to: Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Arkansas. We come to your shop rather than handling you from a call center in another state.