If you have a business and you have more than two employees, then you might need a payroll management system. Many companies are moving to new payroll software solutions to pay their employees. Why is it so? The countless hours of filing, paper-pushing, checking & re-checking of payroll forms, combined with the enormous cost of carrying out these tasks are reason enough for businesses to deploy a payroll software solution.
With ever-evolving elements of the payroll procedure, you should ask yourself, is your current solution able to keep up with the processes? Has your current solution brought about any essential benefits? If not, then you have another reason to get payroll software. Few businesses tend to understand that the benefits of payroll software go beyond just efficiency and cost-reduction matters. Below we have outlined ten reasons why your business needs payroll software.
1. Reduces operational cost.
Getting a payroll software solution that compliments your business purposes can be of great help. Reducing some operational necessities could ensure your company saves a lot of money. Payroll software allows you to cut costs by eradicating the need for outsourcing accountants or dedicated payroll companies who bring about unnecessary expenses each month.
Every country has statutory compliances related to payroll; failure to meet these compliances leads to considerable costs in terms of fines. Getting payroll software helps overcome this issue. Payroll software helps keep track of tax rates which change annually; failure to meet up to the expectations may lead to unnecessary expenses in the form of fines.
2. Save time
You are growing your business and want to focus your time on activities generating income. Payroll can be very demanding with the massive amount of operations needed to maintain everything in order. Spending hours every month filing, paper-pushing, checking, and re-checking payroll forms is not a wise use of your time.
End of year tax preparations also takes up a lot of time every month. Using payroll software and an HR replaces the vicious circle of commitment to payroll with a few clicks and help save the countless number of hours, as well as let the Finance and HR department focus on more important and pressing tasks.
3. Reduces human errors
With manual processing, there is bound to be errors which lead to feeding forms with incorrect data, miscalculating taxes, ignoring taxable items, and much more. These mistakes come at a considerable cost. As per a report, the IRS levied $4 billion in penalties from the businesses that made mistakes with their employment taxes.
Using an automated payroll system reduces human errors and omits mistakes in data entry and processing, this in turn help maintain impartiality and transparency across all departments in your business structure. With the help of payroll software, your employee’s won’t help but be more accurate, proficient, and flawless in every given task.
4. It is secure
The process of payment involves a lot of sensitive information that needs to be maintained and kept private. If your current payroll system isn’t safe, you risk a lot. In the wrong hand’s data like the full names, salary information, addresses, and social security numbers of employees can lead to severe crimes, including identity theft.
One of the essential features that payroll software offers is top notch security. Payroll software stores your sensitive employee data on highly secured cloud-based servers that employ the best encryption technologies as well as redundant data backups. Only personnel’s granted permission through role assignments can access that sensitive data.
5. Automatic tax calculation
Taxes are, by far the most challenging aspect of the payroll process to manage. How are you calculating your employees’ taxes? Are you making sense of the complex formulas? It takes a lot of time to figure out every employee’s tax amounts. Using manual means to calculate taxes is bound to create errors which lead to miscalculations in taxes and ignoring taxable items, which is punishable with huge fines or jail time.
Payroll tax calculator exists to help you collect, organize, and report the financial data of your business. All you have to do is choose each employee’s filing status, allowances, and any additional information, and the calculator will do all the rest. This software helps you do math faster and accurately and avoid errors and fines.
6. Employee portals
A payroll system will empower your employees to access all their pay and benefits records from anywhere at the click of a button. All other vital information about your employees can also be stored and accessed from this portal. Employee portals allow employees to edit their details, and withholding information as well as let them view relevant documents and access their payroll history.
This gives your employees have greater control over their work lives, which may, in turn, improve employee morale. Employee portals also save the employers’ time as they can easily access and edit their employee’s data, which is a tedious and cumbersome process with a manual payroll.
7. Customizable to your business needs
Payrolls are too diverse to fit into one default bundle. A lot of things need to be taken into account with salaries; like whether it’s accommodating different payroll schedules, running payroll monthly or weekly, the compensation structures of the various benefits, roles, and bonuses e.t.c. Payroll software is flexible to take into consideration the way your business functions and will, therefore, expand with your business over time to meet your specific business needs. This dramatically reduces effort on the HR side to keep always verifying that all requirements are being adhered to.
8. Easy integration and access
Payroll software usually has integration options which enable the employer to give login access to employees and HR as well as syncing options with time tracking or attendance. Whatever your business demands are, software integration and great payroll features allow you to collaborate with other people to smoothen and streamline your business processes.
Providing your employees with quick and easy access to their documents and data has many advantages including boosting the staff morale and productivity as well as frees the payroll and HR department allowing them to focus on more pressing matters.
9. Track time and attendance
You may have staff that is paid in the hours they’ve worked, others that have gone on paid or unpaid leave, and others working overtime. Manually tracking all this information can be a cumbersome and tedious process riddled with errors. Payroll software keeps a real-time record of every employee login and log out time, the number of leaves available for the entire year, and the number of leaves taken during a month.
This information helps you determine the average working hours spent by your staff and measure their productivity according to their work, allowing you to be aware of unneeded overtime, which employee needs a bonus, who needs to improve their performance levels, regular absentees and more.
10. Pay your staff via direct deposit
If you are using a manual payroll system, the chances are that you are writing paper checks for your employee’s. This is not a bad thing, but what happens when your staff are on vacation during payday or on paid leave? Payroll software allows you to deposit your staff’s paychecks directly into their bank accounts getting rid of the minor inconveniences brought about by paper checks. Your employees will stay happy and motivated knowing their salaries will be in their bank accounts on payday.
Payroll used to be a stressful, time consuming, and tedious task for payroll managers. Payroll software has made it a much simpler process for businesses. On a day-to-day basis, payroll software contributes to multiple procedures and workflow within your company and enhances productivity at a larger scale. Most importantly, Payroll software is flexible, simple, and offers customized solutions for your organization’s needs.