Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from James Kissane, Bear Stearns.
James Kissane - Bear Stearns
Thanks. John, could you just elaborate a little bit on why you expect core payroll revenue growth to accelerate over the balance of the year? I know it is lumpy quarter to quarter, but just --
John M. Morphy
You talk about acceleration. We don’t even think that way. The payroll number, if you talk about being off what you guys had is $2 million or $3 million on $150 million. That’s too close for me to call.
Obviously we would like to have been a little bit better but it still was within the guidance. It was right on what we expected in our financial plan and only time will tell.
You could sit here in the macro world and you can get all worried but I have to say; we spent -- obviously we knew people would be asking us about the economy -- we spent countless hours and I drove a few of my people absolutely crazy with statistics looking at this economy from all angles. And at the end of the day, we came to the conclusion we haven’t seen anything definitive to say anything about anything that is worth saying.
We’ll keep pushing our payroll revenue but when you get down to a couple million, it’s hard for me to sit there and say that’s a trend or something.
James Kissane - Bear Stearns
I don’t want to read into the term definitive, which you used a few times.
John M. Morphy
We haven’t seen anything.
James Kissane - Bear Stearns
Is there a change in tone of your customers or anything?
John M. Morphy
No.
James Kissane - Bear Stearns
Okay, and I guess Jon Judge, just comment on the progress towards the 5% net new client growth target.
Jonathan J. Judge
The 5% is in our model, right? It’s when we talk about the makeup of the 12% revenue growth. In the model, we say five. We are quite happy if we get anywhere near four. Obviously we would love to be 10 but we feel like we are in pretty good shape.
As John said, we looked at the quarter. We read a lot of the comments that came out last night after the announcement and I guess my comment to your earlier question would be that we are once again in one of those positions where our model and your model may be a little bit out of sync. If we felt like we had a problem, we’d clearly tell you but we don’t think we have a problem.
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