Southern Payroll & Bookkeeping has been voted first place in Bookkeeping & Payroll at Chattanooga’s Best of the Best People’s Choice Awards 2026. It is the second year running we have taken the category.
The winners were announced at the Best of the Best banquet on the night of Thursday, September 17, 2026 at the Chattanooga Convention Center. The awards are run by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, and every category is decided by public vote. You can read the Times Free Press write-up of our win here.
Twice is a different thing than once
Winning the first time was a genuine surprise. Winning it again is the part we did not take for granted.
A first win can be a good year, a burst of goodwill, a few people who happened to remember the ballot. A second win means the same clients and neighbors went back twelve months later — after another full year of us actually doing the work — and put our name in the box again. That is a harder thing to earn, and a more honest signal than the first one was.
What changed in the last twelve months
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
We were named a national winner in the Gusto AI Innovation Awards this August — one of six firms in the country recognized in the Growth & Scale category — for the work our team has done building AI into how we run payroll and bookkeeping. A labor report that used to take fifteen hours now takes about three minutes.
We promoted from within. We sent people to Xerocon in Denver and to Zoholics in both Houston and Manila, and they came back with things we have already put into practice.
None of that shows up on a ballot. But it shows up in how fast a client gets an answer, and whether their payroll lands on time. That is what people were actually voting on.
What we think the vote was really about
We now look after the books and payroll for more than 120 businesses, and every one of them is handled by a team rather than a single person. On each account there is a primary bookkeeper and a primary payroll contact who know how that company operates and what its slow months look like, and behind them two backups who know the account well enough to step in without the client having to re-explain anything.
That is a deliberately expensive way to structure a firm. It is also the reason a client can call on any given day — holiday, sick day, busy season — and reach someone who already knows their account, instead of repeating themselves to whoever picks up. We think that is what a people’s choice award actually measures.
Rooted in Chattanooga, working across more than 30 states
We process payroll and keep books for businesses in more than 30 states. Southern Payroll & Bookkeeping is a Chattanooga firm — it is where we were founded and where our office is. Our team reaches further than that, with people working remotely across the US and overseas.
That combination is the whole point. A client calling about a multi-state hire reaches someone who knows what a Tennessee unemployment filing looks like, and what happens when a growing company crosses into Georgia or Alabama. Being voted first by this community, two years running, in a category that names both halves of what we do, suggests we are getting that balance right.
Thank you
To every client and neighbor who voted — thank you. You had to go out of your way to do it, twice now, and we know it.
And to our team: this is your award, again. First place in a public vote is not something a marketing department can manufacture. It is the accumulated result of payrolls filed on time, books closed cleanly, and calls answered by someone who knew the answer.
Last year’s win is here: First Place: Best Bookkeeping & Payroll — Chattanooga’s Best of the Best 2025.
