Keeping up with regulatory changes and creating growth opportunities for employees are significant challenges for small businesses without internal payroll and talent experts. Since their corporate restructure in 2017 and subsequent ownership change, Vancouver-based apparel company Kit and Ace has engaged ADP Workforce Now® Comprehensive Services to meet these challenges. We spoke with Melissa Kinnoch, chief financial officer and part-owner of Kit and Ace, about how ADP continues to provide their business with the tools necessary to streamline payroll and activate talent — even through a pandemic.

With our ADP partners, we are always sure we have the information we need to eliminate potential errors. That has created labour savings and has enhanced our business.

Melissa Kinnoch, Chief Financial Officer and part-owner
Kit and Ace

The Challenge

  • Our business has gone through some significant organizational changes since we did a major restructure back in 2017. We went from having a global presence with headquarters in UK, Australia and Hong Kong to a team of 35 based in our Vancouver home office and more employees working in our retail shops. We no longer have a full-time in-house payroll specialist or a built-out HR group. We made some costly payroll errors after government CRA review and had to acknowledge after the reorganization that we didn’t have the internal skill set to stay compliant with shifting government regulations.

How ADP Helped

  • Our ADP partners essentially do everything and let us know when there is a regulatory change. We are not left to do the research on our own. We have complete trust in them to provide us with the information we need to help us maintain compliance. It is just one less thing that I must focus on in terms of running the business, and it really has helped us from a business development and cashflow planning standpoint, especially during the pandemic period when our business temporarily moved exclusively online.