Why we wrote rules down
Every software buyer has been burned by a feature that was “coming soon” for two years, an integration that turned out to be a waitlist, or a security badge that described the hosting provider rather than the product. Those claims make the next buyer more sceptical of everyone, including companies telling the truth.
We sell accounting and payroll software. Our customers trust us with their books, their employees’ pay and their tax filings. If we are loose with the truth in our marketing, they have every reason to wonder where else we are loose. So we wrote down what we will and will not say, and we apply it to every page, post and video.
No invented numbers
We do not publish customer counts, revenue figures, team size, awards or testimonials that we cannot back up. You will not find “trusted by thousands” on our site. When we use a number, it describes the product and can be checked: 13 provinces and territories in payroll, 160+ built-in reports in SeroBooks, 207 permission nodes enforced on the server, 25+ reports in SeroPOS.
We also do not publish a founding year we have not chosen to make public, or an office address we do not want to list. If we have not said it, we would rather leave it blank than fill it in.
Labels that mean something
Features that are partly built are described as what they are: live bank feeds are rolling out, the SeroBooks iPhone and iPad apps are coming soon, the SeroPayroll employee app is in development, and direct Uber Eats integration is rolling out in Canada.
Security certifications get the same treatment. We describe what we actually do, such as encryption in transit and at rest, server-enforced permissions, an append-only audit trail and tenant isolation. Formal certifications such as SOC 2 are on our roadmap, and we say exactly that.
- Rolling out means partly available, not everywhere
- Coming soon means not available yet
- Roadmap means planned, with no date promised
Limits, stated plainly
Every product has limits, and we put ours where buyers will see them. SeroPayroll produces a direct deposit file you upload to your bank; it does not move money itself. It files RL-1 as slips only, without electronic transmission. It is Canada-only, and US payroll lives in SeroBooks Pro. SeroBooks for Amazon covers North American marketplaces only.
We would rather lose a sale on day one than lose a customer on pay day. A buyer who knows the limits in advance can plan around them; one who discovers them later has a reason never to trust us again.
Prices exactly as charged
Our prices are published in US dollars, exactly as they appear at checkout: SeroPOS from $29.99 a month, SeroBooks from $79.99, SeroPayroll from $25. Add-ons are listed with their prices. We do not hide a mandatory onboarding fee behind a low headline price.
When we compare ourselves with competitors, we keep it general and fair, note that the information is current as of the date we wrote it, and never invent their prices. Competitors change their products too, and a comparison that was accurate last year can be wrong today.
How it changes what we write
In practice the honesty ledger makes our copy more specific and less exciting. Instead of saying our payroll is “accurate,” we say it reconciles fourteen jurisdictions against the CRA calculator. Instead of “works with delivery apps,” we say delivery-platform menu and order management, with direct Uber Eats integration rolling out in Canada. Instead of “enterprise-grade security,” we list the controls we actually run.
It also changes how we write guides. Our how-to guides on payroll, sales tax and bookkeeping are written to be useful whether or not you buy anything from us, and they tell readers to confirm rules with the CRA, Revenu Québec or their province, because rules change and no article replaces the source.
Specific claims are harder to write and easier to check. That is the point. A reader who can verify what we say on page one is more likely to believe what we say on page ten.
Holding ourselves to it
Rules only matter if they are applied when it is inconvenient. That means correcting pages when a feature changes, removing claims that are no longer true, and resisting the temptation to round “rolling out” up to “available”. If you ever find something on our site that does not match the product, tell us at support@serohq.com and we will fix it.