A plain summary of the Resourcing Edge quote, the in-house alternative, and the handful of facts that change the answer. Written so the decision can be made on the numbers rather than on the sales call.
The proposal has been discussed under at least four different names, which has made it hard to tell who is actually selling what. Here is the stack, from the salesperson down to the insurance company.
| Name | What it actually is | Who we have dealt with |
|---|---|---|
| OneDigital | The broker. An insurance and benefits agency that sells and services the arrangement. It is not the PEO and does not employ anyone on your behalf. | Ilene Flores, Business Consultant, El Paso |
| Resourcing Edge | The actual licensed PEO, based in Rockwall, Texas. This is the party the agreement is with, and the one that would become the employer of record. It holds IRS Certified PEO status. | Ted Crawford, CEO, signs the agreement |
| T&T Staff Management, LLC | One of six Resourcing Edge entities listed on the front page of the agreement. This is the "TNT" that has been discussed. It is not a separate company or a separate offer. | Referred to as TNT throughout |
| PrismHR | The software underneath. A payroll and HR platform that many PEOs license and rebrand. It has a documented open API, but Resourcing Edge provides no support for connecting anything to it. | Named on the demo browser tabs |
| re360 | The brand PrismHR is white labeled as for this arrangement. The $35 a month "Protection Plan" on the fee schedule is a re360 line item. | Glesni Rouzeau demonstrated it |
| Texas Mutual | The workers' compensation carrier. The quote states its rates are "subject to Texas Mutual approval," which reads as the carrier underwriting the class code for the PEO rather than a policy Northwell would hold. | Referenced in the quote and follow-up email |
Practically: you would be contracting with Resourcing Edge, brokered by OneDigital, using software made by PrismHR, insured by Texas Mutual. Nothing about that is improper, but it does mean four parties are taking a margin, and it explains why the person on the demo could not answer questions about the software.
None of these are complicated once unpacked, and a couple of them carry real consequences.
A Professional Employer Organization co-employs your staff. On paper they become the employer of record: their name goes on the tax filings, their insurance covers the crew, and their unemployment account is the one the state looks at. You still hire, direct and fire the people. It is a paperwork and liability arrangement, not an operational one.
State Unemployment Insurance is a payroll tax that funds unemployment benefits. Your rate is meant to reflect your claims history, and Northwell's is currently 6.32%, close to the Texas maximum, on an account with no claims history to speak of.
Texas is unusual in that workers' compensation is optional. Going without it means losing your legal defenses if someone is hurt, and it also fails vendor credentialing, since apartment owners will not let uninsured vendors on site.
Resourcing Edge's Schedule A lists roughly twenty services. Sorted honestly, they fall into three groups, and only one of them is expensive.
Repetitive, rule-driven, and verifiable. This is most of the list.
The irreducible human layer. Realistically a couple of hours a month.
Legal positions and licensed activities. No amount of software substitutes.
Two things follow. First, almost everything in the middle column is already priced separately by Resourcing Edge anyway. Their Safety Services Addendum charges $35 to $300 per employee for the training, drug testing is marked with an asterisk on Schedule A, and timekeeping is switched off on the quote. So the $500 a month is buying the legal position and the payroll processing, not the whole list. Second, the only genuinely irreplaceable items are in the right-hand column, and of those, the two that matter here are the employer of record status and the workers' comp policy.
Both get five people paid correctly and on time with the filings done. The difference is who carries the liability, and who does the couple of hours a month.
They carry it. Workers' comp under their policy, the unemployment account becomes theirs, IRS certified so payroll tax liability does not come back to you, and the strongest story to tell a property manager. Twelve month term, renews automatically, sixty days notice to leave, and a security interest over the business. Safety training and drug testing still cost extra.
You carry it. Software only, no commitment, cancel any month. Patriot files the taxes, geotags the punches and pushes hours to payroll in one click. It also connects to QuickBooks Desktop, which the PEO never addressed. Workers' comp bought pay as you go, so no annual premium up front. Agent tooling to watch the calendar and chase the hours is a separate conversation, not a monthly fee.
Quoted from the Client Services Agreement received on 2 September. None are unusual for a PEO, but two differ from what was said on the call and are worth raising before signature.
One year initial term, then automatic annual renewal unless you give at least sixty days advance written notice. On the call, thirty days notice was mentioned. The document says sixty and the document governs.
The agreement grants Resourcing Edge a security interest in all of the company's present and future receivables, cash, equipment, inventory and personal property, described as "tangible and intangible (including software embedded therein), now owned or hereafter acquired."
In practice that is a lien across the whole business as security for the payroll fees. Worth asking whether they will narrow it, and worth your attorney reading it either way.
The 19% billing rate on class code TX9014 is reasonable on its own. It replaces the roughly 14.6% currently paid in employer taxes and adds workers' comp and the filing work on top, so as a percentage it is close to fair.
At current payroll, 19% comes to about $228 a month. The schedule sets a $500 monthly minimum, so that is the real number until wages pass roughly $31,600 a year, which is about three times the hours booked so far this year.
Every add on box on Schedule B is marked No, including Time & Labor, despite the covering email saying the timekeeping feature can be activated. If timekeeping is wanted it is $4 per employee per month plus a $500 setup, and the accounting interface into QuickBooks is a further $1,500 one time.
Worth having those added to the quote in writing before comparing prices, so the comparison is like for like.
Fix the registration and the pay schedule first. Both are cheap, both are owed under either option, and the registration may quietly fix the unemployment rate as well. Then answer the NetVendor question, because it decides whether the PEO is buying something that matters or something that does not.
On the two options, the honest framing is that you are not choosing a platform. You are deciding whether to pay roughly $6,890 a year to hand the liability to someone else and buy back about two hours a month. If the hours genuinely are not available, and if NetVendor confirms a PEO is acceptable, Option A is a defensible purchase. Ask them to re paper it first: thirty days notice as discussed, the security interest narrowed, and the timekeeping and accounting add ons priced into the quote.
If those hours are available, Option B does the same job for a tenth of the money, and the pay as you go workers' comp closes the one real gap. Our view is that at five part-time employees, Option B is the better buy, and the moment to revisit it is when headcount or the vendor requirements change.