We live in a world of technology. From using Venmo to repay our friends for a concert ticket to paying for fast food using our phones, technology, like online payroll software allows us to transact everywhere. Most businesses do their payroll processes in-house, often in the form of a full-fledged payroll department. However, there many benefits of switching to online payroll software.
Understanding Online Payroll Software
Basically, payroll is a process that employers use to pay employees their salaries or dues. It happens on a monthly, bi-weekly, and weekly basis, based on the agreement or contract between employers and workers. The right online payroll software will enable you to perform the payroll process online by simply using a very secure connection to the internet. It as well enables you to do payroll processes from anywhere across the world. Not to mention, it stores data on either the cloud or server, depending on your service provider. It includes the following features:
- Self-service portal – Using payroll software to automate payroll tasks enables workers to view payroll details, like benefits enrollments, pay stubs, and tax forms without HR’s intervention. It empowers workers to manage tasks related to payroll, with full transparency.
- Payment and direct deposit options – You may automate processes of making payments, which enables you to directly deposit employee salaries; thus, eliminating the need to write paper checks.
- Benefits and deductions management – You can easily manage deductions such as retirement contributions and insurance premiums through payroll software. It can as well help to track worker benefits, such as sick leave and paid time off.
- Payroll calculations – Calculating deductions, net pay, taxes, and gross pay depending on the worker’s working hours and status is a child’s pay if done using a payroll management system.
- Attendance and time tracking – If integrated with attendance calculating and time tracking systems, payroll software can help to track leaves, overtime, and hours worked. Approving time offs and leaves will be very easy to manage using a computer.
- Management of employee information – Maintaining records of employees, such as employment status, pay rates, and personal details becomes easier with online systems.
7 Key Benefits
Many businesses depend on online payroll systems to manage accounts payable, financial reports, financial details, and leave balances. Managers have a lot to deal with, so they can find themselves struggling to get the work done without an effective system. By using the right system, here are some of the benefits your business can benefit from:
1. Better Accuracy
Making mistakes is the last thing you want to make in business. With the help of an online system, you can minimize the risks of making costly mistakes. Making errors, which shortchanges your workers can easily reduce the morale in the company and result in legal issues. Making mistakes that involve paying your employees excess can leave your company without enough working capital, and the process of retrieving that money will be a nightmare. Through software, you will greatly minimize the risks of making human errors as well as ensure your workers get the pay they have worked for.
2. Improve Employee Satisfaction
Some systems provide workers access to their payroll portal. This provides them with limited access to the software and enables them to see payment history, book time off, and check details. Using a system helps to promote transparency with workers and build trust among your workers, ensuring they feel more confident that payment will be made on time.
3. Support Remote Calculation of Payroll
Online payroll systems automate the process of calculating payroll – meaning, your payroll will be processed on time, accurately, and seamlessly, regardless of where your team or employees work. Since payroll software is often incorporated with HR systems, it will gather any timesheet, attendance, and leave data required to automatically calculate payroll. This, in turn, makes collaboration with finance, payroll, and HR teams much easier by simply providing clear visibility into every step involved in the process of paying salaries based on permissions and roles.
4. Simple to Use
You can quickly and easily configure an online payroll system with several features, business policies/rules, and options depending on the requirements of your business. Every mandatory input to access payrolls, like expenses, salary structure, and reimbursement, is pre-populated automatically as their software modules are integrated smoothly with an epayroll system. Payroll for every worker can easily be processed with a click of a button.
5. Save Time
According to experts at BoardRoom, businesses spend more than 75 hours on their payroll processes yearly. This impacts the business bottom line because you don’t spend on other needs of the organization to reach your goals. This process of automating payroll through software helps to minimize the time you spend on making payments, enabling your department to concentrate on other important areas. It can as well give you year-end reports that will help you to take a closer look at your company.
6. Increase Data Security
Payroll data is important in every business. This is why you need to store and manage it in a manner that can easily prevent fraud in the long term. Unlike a manual system, online software guarantees 100% security of data. That means workers will not be worried about the security of their data.
7. Better Work-Life Balance
Because of cost and time savings, using online systems makes work-life balance better. This means CRA remittances and workers’ payroll won’t stress you over even after you leave or close your shop for the day. The right system gives you more confidence, knowing that everything will be well taken care of. Apart from that, you can achieve a lot with your workday because you will get through the whole process of payroll. This helps you prevent the need to spend more hours to catch up on tasks, which you were not able to do before.
The bottom line is that using online software for your payroll needs can help minimize costs, save time, increase efficiency, have easy access to data, and reduce mistakes. To get these benefits and so much more, you have to choose software with tutorials, features, and comprehensive support services that can suit the needs of your business. This way, you won’t regret your investment.