Last Updated: February 16, 2021
Congratulations! Statistics indicate that if you are in need of a payroll software, you have gotten to a point where most businesses fail to achieve - growth! However, now the task at hand is how can you find an ideal payroll system. In the initial stages of establishing your business, it may have been fairly easy to organize payment related aspects of your business. But now that your company is expanding, it's necessary to establish a system to deal with employee payment related aspects of your business. In this post we take a look at what to look for when choosing the best payroll software.
Many business owners can attest to the fact that staying within compliance of state and federal laws can prove to be a headache. One small mistake and you may be held financially and/or criminally liable. This is why most businesses spend an abundance of legal expenses just to ensure that they remain in full compliance with the law. When it comes to choosing the right payroll software, it would be advantageous for you to acquire one which has done the compliance homework for you from EEOC to the IRS. In addition to that, the software should be updated regularly to keep up with changes in those regulations. An ideal payroll system should ease the burden of being in compliance with federal and state payroll guidelines. Some providers even offer software with guarantees in regards to tax compliance and will cover you if unforeseen issues manifest themselves further down the line.
Ideally, you'll want to get a system which provides an abundance of features that go outside the space of the periodic needs of payroll processing. For example, the retention of employee payroll records is also important in regards to tax compliance. An effective payroll system should offer cloud storage which can help to ensure you are in compliance as far as record keeping goes, as well as to protect you from unforeseen disasters which can cause you to lose your documents.
Reporting is a feature that is provided by most types of payroll systems. However, a critical aspect of good reporting consists of an easy to understand dashboard. As such you should evaluate a given provider to see if the reports are built into a system which has a proven track record of meeting most customers' needs, as well as a reporting dashboard that provides critical numbers at a glance. This can help to alleviate the end of week, month and year headaches payroll managers typically face when it comes to accurate reporting.
If your company already has another system in place or if you plan to use different platforms for HR, scheduling and payroll, then you'll want to ensure that you are able to integrate it with your other systems. If you fail to consider this feature, you may find the process of trying to exporting and importing data between platforms to be time consuming and stressful to say the least.
One of the features of a good payroll system that many businesses overlook is employee access. However, as more and more things become digitized, younger employees in particular, expect to receive a greater level of access to view their pay stubs. Even though businesses are moving away from paper checks and opting for direct deposit and other forms of digital payments, it doesn't negate the fact that some employees may want to view their pay stubs or track tax forms. The important thing to remember is that most employees will need pay stubs for things such as an apartment and bank loans. As such, if this is something you would like to offer your employees, ensure that you select a software that enables self-service for employees in your business. Some other features that are worth considering include:
The cons associated with using a bad payroll provider are evident. For employees, not getting accurate pay, or not getting paid on time can negatively affect morale and performance which will cost you money. And for employers, a bad payroll system can cause reputational and administrative issues in addition to legal difficulties. Therefore, ensure that you take the time to use a good payroll system which can eliminate these issues by increasing the effectiveness of payroll procedures.
