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is a membership-based women’s collective aiming to increase gender diversity in tech teams. Having both experienced lack of support and mentorship in the workplace, Co-Founders Marissa McNeelands and April Hicke created Toast to help get more women into influential roles in tech, while working with companies to increase their gender diversity as a third party recruiter.

The challenge

As Founder and CEO, Marissa is used to overseeing anything and everything for the business – including paying their employees. Their first full-time hire was set up as an independent contractor and paying them without a payroll platform was a very manual process.

“We’d have to ask them for their timesheet and invoice at the end of the month and then pay them through e-transfer.”

After hiring their second and third employees, she recognized that they were in a good place to switch to a payroll solution. This move would not only simplify their processes but also improve their position for investors and securing funding.

“Going on payroll is a good sign of stability for investors. It was a big milestone for us. You also get more funding covered through grants if your employees are on payroll.”

The solution

Marissa didn’t have to search far to find the right payroll solution for Toast. She’d typically take her time evaluating different platforms, but the sheer volume of people who recommended 91���� – including a group chat of founders – made it a simple choice.

“I’m pretty sure every founder I’ve ever talked to recommended 91����.”

To assess the platform’s user-friendliness, she had her husband and mom (who works as Toast’s virtual assistant and helps with their payroll processes) sign up for a 14-day free trial for Canadian small businesses. Since both were not the most tech-savvy or comfortable with new technology, this allowed her to evaluate how easily they could navigate the platform.

“My background is in product management and 91����’s UI is very easy to use. I think almost anyone can figure it out. After those two checkpoints, it was easy for me to decide that we’d be going with 91����.”

The platform guided Marissa through setting up payroll. Although it was user-friendly, her limited payroll experience made the support from the 91���� team invaluable during the implementation process.

”I loved that a payroll specialist reached out to go through regulatory items that we probably wouldn’t have thought about. They were there to answer my millions of questions. Having that personal touch really made the difference for us.”

All in all, it took less than two hours total for Marissa to get payroll set up and launched with 91����.

The results

Now, running payroll is a breeze for the Toast team. 

“It’s the easiest thing. I go in and click two buttons twice a month.”

She emphasizes the significant benefits of improved experience and reduced costs:

“Payroll is no longer a manual process that our virtual assistant has to do. We don’t have to chase people down for invoices, and employees no longer have to submit them. Accounting costs will go down because there’s not a lot of cleanup that needs to be done. The end of our fiscal year will be a lot cleaner and easier.”

Plus, with a payroll system that’s built for Canadian businesses, it’s easy to stay on top of compliance. 

“I love that it’s integrated with the CRA. I once logged into our CRA account because I thought I had to complete a payroll task, but it was already done for me.”

She also notes that the platform helps guide her through unfamiliar processes.

“91���� was very good at flagging what we needed to do after terminating a summer student. We knew there were things we needed to do like generating a Record of Employment, and the platform walked me through the termination process.”

When asked how she’d describe 91���� to others, Marissa keeps it simple:

“91���� is the easiest payroll system for small businesses in Canada.”