Need help with payroll? Here are five essential features to look out for in an online payroll program. It’s not uncommon to have questions when starting a business or to manage a business. Why invest in payroll software if you have only a few hourly employees or work mostly with contractors?
Incorrect or late payments can lead to penalties and fines. They can also cause lasting damage to the trust of your workers in you.
It is easy to simplify the payroll process if you’re trying to be thrifty or frugal. This can make it more challenging to manage and complex as your business grows.
Payroll Software is an area that your business must excel.
Payroll mistakes are serious. Not only could they lead to legal consequences, fines and penalties, but they also cause lasting damage to the trust of your workers in you. Why?
Additionally, it can be time-consuming to manage DIY payroll, especially if you have new employees.
You can either have a payroll solution already in place or are just beginning to evaluate potential options. Your payroll software is here to help. Make sure you have six key payroll features.
. Efficient and straightforward Payroll Processing
A payroll solution must be reliable and on time, as well as easy to use, to prove its worth.
This is just a tiny part of the payroll software you need. The best payroll software should do more than manage the basics. It should also handle other financial aspects such as salaries, wages and bonuses.
It is essential to look at three areas when assessing your payroll processing.
Payouts to hourly, salaried and contract workers are accurate.
Your payroll software can you manage vendor payments and hourly wages?
Automatic benefits deductions, tax withholdings
Is your payroll software able to calculate earnings and withhold tax? Is it easy to understand and show employees the financial breakdowns?
It’s worth looking into whether the software offers multiple payment options. For example, splitting direct deposits across multiple bank accounts. This feature, along with other features such as payday emails or easy-to-understand breakdowns, can help personalize the employee’s pay experience without adding to your HR burden.
- Compliance with the Employer Payroll Tax
Your payroll software will be able to assist you in complying with state and federal employment laws. It is not easy to navigate these government regulations. The IRS assessed 4.9million civil penalties for violations of employment taxes in the 2018 fiscal year. These penalties included accuracy, delinquency and failure to pay — totalling more than $29.3 trillion in penalties.
Small businesses must be aware of the possibility of tax penalties or fines. Your payroll software must accurately calculate, withhold and pay federal, state and local payroll taxes. Also, make sure your software can generate year-end forms such as W-2s or 1099s. This will give you peace of mind.
- Robust Payroll Reports
Seeing your payments is critical to running your business efficiently and growing it.
You should have detailed reports for your payroll software that cover multiple business areas. This will allow you to understand better how your business works.
Although essential payroll tools can run payroll and file taxes, they do not provide much information about operational efficiency and payments.
So that you have a better understanding of your business’s operations ensure your payroll software provides detailed reports for all business areas. It should allow you to view all payroll from different departments and tax and benefits deductions. You can also look at company-level overviews and individual employee details.
- Support available 24/7
Even with the best payroll tools, nothing beats real human support. Even better, your support is available 24 hours a day, so you don’t have to worry about potential problems when you could be focusing on growing and running your business.
Assess the level of customer support provided by your payroll options. Are they available to communicate with you via email, phone, or Slack? How many hours can you reach them? Are they available at all hours? Or do you have to adjust your schedule to reach them? What do other customers think about customer support?
Each company is unique, so your support requirements might differ from others. It would help if you looked for a payroll company that can provide you with the personalized, round-the-clock support your customer success team needs.
- Portal for Employee Self-Service
How much time and effort does your payroll system save you regarding HR administration? Are employees able to use your tool? Or does it create more questions or add to your administrative burden?
If your payroll software cannot handle all of the payroll-related requests from employees, it may be slowing down. It will help if you look for an easy-to-use solution that gives employees access.
Employees should have easy access to their digital pay stubs and benefits breakdowns. They also need to log in to view their personal information, such as bank account information and withholdings.
You have a computerization system that can control all your Payroll Process and freeze the employee data. The points introduced above are issues almost every organization faces, followed by solutions. So now, if you are looking for an app that produces all the payroll-allied tasks, Ultimate Business Systems (UBS) is an infusion for that.
