Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Rod Bouget – Sanford C. Bernstein
Rod Bouget – Sanford C. Bernstein
Jon Judge outlined a long list of encouraging signs. Those things are good to hear about, but at the same time, the guidance is being nudged down for payroll revenues. So can you explain what the main things were that got worse to offset the encouraging signs that you outlined?
John Morphy
Basically the guidance didn't get changed very much when you start talking in terms of total dollars. We forecasted a pretty narrow range. We started the year, we were hopeful the checks per clients would be stuck right where it was and that the client base basically stayed dead even.
Client base went down a very small amount in the first quarter, but it was a little bit more than we thought it would be, but not much. Right now we're looking at client growth for the year to be much better than it was a year ago as most of the decline took place basically in the last six months.
Checks per client was off a tad. The good news was that it didn't move very much. When you look at those things, and we also have a lot of other factors and some of our clients are also being a little more prudent on which special reports they're running and things like that. So when we looked at guidance and revenue for the rest of the year, we decided that we would take it down slightly.
When we looked at our expense controls and the rest of it, we felt that the rest of the guidance could stay where it was.
Rod Bouget – Sanford C. Bernstein
You mentioned that the main thing is the client base declined. Can you quantify the amount of the client base decline and whether that decline was more because of a surprise on the booking front or the bankruptcy front?
John Morphy
There was no surprise. I think the number is very small. It's less than 1,000 so it's not a big difference. The client base went down about 18,000.
Rod Bouget – Sanford C. Bernstein
But it was consistent with what you were expecting?
John Morphy
No, we were expecting it to stay exactly flat.
Rod Bouget – Sanford C. Bernstein
So it was a surprise, but a very slight one.
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