Useful Tips to Small Business Owners for Purchasing Payroll Software

Finances are an important consideration for most small business owners and payroll is often their biggest expense. Therefore, it’s essential to process payroll efficiently and accurately. For this purpose, picking suitable payroll software for small business is crucial. Smaller companies may not require the advanced features used by larger organizations. To help you choose wisely, this article offers helpful tips for your selection process.

Assess the Main Features

Each payroll solution offers its own set of features, but in general, the system you select should provide the following main tools:

Staff Self-Service Portal

This functionality allows your employees to update and manage their personal data on their own. The advantage is your personnel doesn’t need to communicate with HR executives to get their personal information updated. The portal should allow workers to view and download details like W2 forms, paid leave balance, pay stubs, etc.

Tax Filing

Managing and documenting taxes is a complex aspect for most small businesses. There are constant changes in local, state, and federal tax guidelines and regulations. Enterprises need to comply with these laws to avoid expensive penalties and fines. Therefore, the payroll software should provide tax filing functions to help you manage the tasks of deductions calculation and tax filing.

HR Integration

The payroll tool should integrate with your HR system so that you can streamline organization and communication between units and save costs, resources, and time. Other key benefits are reporting consolidation, automatic updating, and less paperwork.

You should pick a product that integrates with your other platforms like an accounting system. These integrations can help to eliminate errors that can happen when different departments juggle and share data. Plus, the integrations can also help to improve analytics as they enable information cross-referencing from the different programs to enhance decision making.

Direct Deposit

Paper paychecks are inefficient and time-consuming for both employers and employees. Staff members need to go to the bank to deposit their check and wait for some time for the amount to be credited. Employers need to print and distribute checks to all employees which can affect productivity as the work is time-intensive. Go for a payroll software that facilitates direct deposits so you can eliminate paper checks and save resources, effort, and time.

Advantages of Payroll Software

While evaluating payroll products, check the benefits each one offers. A good payroll program offers the following advantages that can help you gain good returns on the investment you make in buying the software.

Convenient Access

Cloud payroll systems give the advantage of any time, anywhere access, on any internet-ready device. You can work from any place when you have the time and process your company’s payroll at your convenience.

Simplifies HR Management

An integrated HRIS platform can make your work easier as it offers all the essential HR and payroll data on a single well-organized dashboard. You don’t have to keep switching between applications but can perform all your tasks in a single window.

Facilitates Automation

You can pre-set custom automation programs to improve efficiency and productivity. Automatically check for policy changes and compliance issues, and get the confidence that your business is being handled in the proper manner.

Data Analysis

Payroll software can generate insightful data-based predictions and reports that you can use to compare your business performance with competitors, find avenues to reduce costs and make other informed decisions.

Minimize Human Error

Manual payroll processing is risky as it can be error-prone. An automated payroll solution reduces the chances of mistakes such as double entries. Plus, your employees can check and inform you about any errors so you can rectify them quickly before they become major issues.

Eliminates Fraud

Employee fraud and can cost a small business dearly. A few violations include an hour and wage falsifications and fraudulent expense claims. Payroll software enables you to automate tasks such as hourly attendance so you can reduce the risk of fraudulent activities and identify those that may be hurting your business.

Saves Money and Time

Manual generation of payroll and expense reports is much more expensive compared to automating the process. Payroll software thus saves money and also enables your employees to focus their valuable time on priority tasks that help to boost your company’s bottom line.

Final Thoughts

As our article reveals, payroll software offers numerous useful features and benefits to small businesses. An ideal way to select the perfect solution for your needs is to try out the free version of leading tools to check the suitability of their features for your unique requirements.