The most expensive line item
no one audits.
Independent PEO Audits & Financial Infrastructure
Payroll, benefits, workers' comp, and HR administration arrive bundled into one number — and inside that number, overspend hides. We take your employee census to a marketplace of 70+ vetted PEO providers and return with a line-by-line comparison of what you pay against what the market will bear. Organizations typically recover about $4,500 per employee, per year — $45,000 annually for a staff of ten. The audit costs you nothing. The findings are yours either way.
Thirty minutes of your time. A market's worth of clarity.
The Premise
Bundled invoices hide it. Renewal increases compound it. An independent audit ends it.
PEO and payroll pricing is built to resist comparison. One provider quotes administrative fees as a percentage of payroll; another quotes a flat rate per employee. Workers' compensation and unemployment taxes arrive blended into bundled invoices no two companies present the same way. Benefits are pooled behind rates you cannot see into.
And every year, the renewal arrives as a percentage increase — never as an explanation.
That is not a failure of diligence. It is the design.
Because payroll clears and people get paid, the question never quite reaches the top of the list — while the difference compounds, year after year, in someone else's favor.
The audit exists to end the ambiguity: line by line, provider by provider, with the market itself as the witness.
"You were called to lead. Not to manage the weight of it all."
— Principle 16:10We are not a PEO. We hold no inventory, carry no quota, and sell no platform. Principle 16:10 is an independent advisory that audits what you are actually paying, takes your census to market across 70+ vetted national providers, and reconciles every offer into one apples-to-apples comparison — the document the industry's pricing structure is built to prevent.
A multi-campus organization. An arrangement no one had re-bid in years. One audit, one re-marketing — and money that had been leaving quietly at every renewal now funds the mission instead.
During a recent client transition, our reconciliation caught a $40,402 billing misallocation by the client's former PEO. A small detail with large consequences — exactly the kind that cloudy, bundled billing is built to bury.
"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much."
Luke 16:10"Faithfulness in the small numbers is how the large ones stay honest."
— Principle 16:10Plainly: if the audit leads you to select or restructure a PEO arrangement, the provider pays our brokerage fee — the same distribution cost already built into PEO pricing, currently flowing to whoever sold you your current plan. You will never receive an invoice from us for the audit.
The safeguards are structural, not promised. You see every quote, side by side, unfiltered — nothing can be steered, because nothing is hidden. If the numbers say stay, we tell you to stay, and the complete analysis is yours to keep at no charge. We only do well when you do better.
And where our work goes beyond the audit — fractional CFO leadership, budgeting and forecasting, systems implementation, governance — we are a consulting firm like any other: standard professional fees, quoted plainly and in writing before the work begins. The audit is free because the marketplace funds it. Everything else is priced in the open.
"We would ask this question of anyone advising us. You should ask it of everyone advising you."
A great engagement should feel like relief, not another burden. The audit asks almost nothing of your team — and returns the one document your provider will never hand you.
Everything below is included — and none of it is invoiced to you.
Recovery scales with headcount — and so does delay. Defer the question twelve months, and that year's difference is simply gone; it does not return with interest, or at all. Renewal increases, meanwhile, compound quietly in the other direction. The most expensive decision most organizations make about their PEO is the decision not to look.
"For a church or nonprofit, that is not a line item. It is a staff position restored. A ministry funded. A building note retired early."
Many of the organizations that would benefit most have simply never been told. If you are not yet with a PEO, the same audit tells you whether joining the market beats standing outside it — with your own numbers, not a brochure's. Across more than 230,000 businesses studied by the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations, the pattern is consistent:
Source: NAPEO Industry Research, 2024–2025
The audit opens the books. What most leaders find there is the reason we built the rest of the firm — the disciplines that keep an organization worthy of its own growth. Each protects something growth depends on. Each is engaged on standard professional fees, quoted in writing before work begins.
A checking-account balance is a number, not a strategy. We build the budget and the forecast, then transfer both entirely to your team. Our goal is not dependency. It is capability.
You cannot lead what you cannot see. Assessment, selection, and implementation — from chart of accounts to board-ready reporting — run independently by your people long after we are done.
Executive-grade financial counsel without the executive salary. We design the systems, the reporting, and the governance — and build your team's capacity to own them. Our job, stated plainly, is to make ourselves unnecessary.
Compliance is not a fire drill; it is a discipline. Controls, policy frameworks, and clean filings — including minister's housing allowance and 403(b)(9) advisory where they apply.
New campuses, capital projects, staff expansion, facility decisions — modeled and stress-tested before they are signed, so enthusiasm becomes a sound plan.
Principle 16:10 serves organizations under 500 employees, in any industry, in all 50 states. The more complex the payroll — multi-site, multi-state, seasonal, regulated — the more the audit tends to find. The principle is universal: growth requires trustworthy infrastructure. The application is tailored to who you are and what you are building.
These are examples — not limits. Principle 16:10 serves any organization in any industry ready to build trustworthy financial infrastructure.
Principle 16:10 takes its name from Luke 16:10 — a foundational text on trust, faithfulness, and the relationship between small things and large outcomes. We do not require shared theology to deliver value. But the wisdom that built this firm runs older and deeper than any business framework. These are the texts that shape the work.
"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much."
"The plans of the diligent lead to profit, as surely as haste leads to poverty."
"Be sure you know the condition of your flocks, give careful attention to your herds."
Begin the Conversation
If your organization has a PEO no one has re-bid in years — or payroll and benefits costs no one has independently verified — the audit will tell you exactly where you stand. It costs nothing, obligates nothing, and the findings are yours to keep.
Paid by the marketplace. Accountable to you.
Casey Jones has served organizations in senior accounting, controller, CFO, and advisory roles — strengthening financial systems, improving internal processes, building clearer reporting structures, and supporting more confident strategic decisions. With a Bachelor of Science in Finance and Business and hands-on depth across nonprofit accounting, HR/payroll, audits, compliance, data migration, real estate, and business ownership, Casey brings financial leadership, operational discipline, and practical implementation experience to every engagement.
His passion is centered on helping owners, executives, and organizational leaders step out of the administrative weeds and return to their mission — with stronger systems, better forecasts, customized reporting, optimized PEO solutions, and faithful attention to the details that drive long-term success.
Strength begins in the details.
Small disciplines. Lasting strength.