7 Tips to Find the Right Payroll Software for Your Business
Payroll is an essential part of any business operations, most especially when you have employees that you need to compensate. Thankfully, the digital revolution has helped streamline many parts of payroll management and disbursement.
If you haven’t found the right payroll software for your business or department, you’ve come to the right place. In this article, you’ll learn how to choose payroll software that suits your business needs and all considerations you need to bear in mind throughout the selection process.
So let’s get started.
What Payroll Software Features Do You Need?
The first thing you need to know when choosing the right payroll solution is what features you need. Payroll software provides dozens of capabilities and features, but there are some clear essentials when it comes to these systems.
Whether you’re looking for payroll software for a small business or large operation, there are some non-negotiable to look out for.
1. Payroll Processing
The first non-negotiable feature is a payroll processing feature. This helps you automate payroll computation, tax deductions, benefits, and so on. It’s not a secret that these tasks take considerable amounts of time from business owners and human resource professionals. So to have this kind of system would do wonders for your payroll processing activities.
Find a payroll processing system that provides as many automations as possible, so you can streamline operations.
2. Time and Attendance Tracking
If you’re an organization that tracks your workers’ time and compensates them accordingly, it’s best to have a payroll system that already has this feature. That way, you can have employees track their time in one dashboard and have that dashboard record and compute one’s wages in the same system.
Time and attendance tracking software can also have advanced features to improve work validation. One example of these features would be a geo-location lock so that people can only clock in when they’re in a certain location. This avoids instances where employees might simply time in wherever they might be.
3. Direct Deposit
Arguably one of the most important parts of the payroll system is payment disbursement. 93% of American employees get paid via direct deposit.
You’ll need a system that can make direct deposits to your employees’ banks. Some systems also give you the liberty to disburse to multiple bank branches so that your employees don’t have to open one specific bank when they start working with you.
4. Integrations
Third-party integrations in your payroll software are also critical to streamlining your payroll, HR, and finance systems. Primarily, your payroll system should integrate with accounting software, so that you don’t have to manually enter payroll data once you disburse them.
Other integrations that you can set up with your payroll software include connections to:
- Human resource information systems
- Time tracking software
- Benefits management systems
- Project management software
- Sales and CRM software
7 Tips to Find the Right Payroll Software
Landing on the right payroll software is crucial to this entire process. When you make the right choice from day zero, you avoid the hassle and cost of having to switch to different providers.
So to help you find the right payroll software for your business, here are some helpful tips to get you started.
1. Determine Your Needs
When you review a list of payroll services, consider first which features you’ll need the most. The features discussed above should be the benchmark. But you might need other features to boost your payroll systems even more.
Some common ancillary features might include:
- Tax compliance
- Employee self-service
- Payslip generation
- Customization
- Mobile service
- Performance management
- Employee onboarding
- And so on
2. Consider Your Organization Size
Payroll for small businesses will look very different from a payroll system of a large organization. So take your organization’s size into consideration. If you’re small, you can start with a system that mostly charges you per disbursement or use so that you don’t spend too much money on a system.
But if you’re a large business, you might be better off with an enterprise-level plan with payroll management software. You’ll also need to consider who will approve direct deposits when sent out. Have two or three people mark approvals before sending out salaries to avoid losing money to internal theft.
3. Look for User-friendly Dashboards
User experience is the overall experience you have when utilizing a system. That includes navigation, steps to complete a task, layout, and design, among other things. To many people, your HR staff included, user-friendliness could be a make or break. When you have complex and hard-to-use systems, you’ll probably end up with a white elephant project that no one will maximize.
Looking at CheckMark Payroll’s pros and cons, for instance, user-friendliness is one thing they get right as their dashboard is easy to use and navigate through. It’s worth considering that investing in a product with a better user experience can bring numerous benefits, such as saving time and reducing stress.
4. Keep Customer Support in Mind
Things will not always go smoothly with your payroll system, as with any system really. So you’ll want to find a system with a customer support team to help you with any issues.
At the very least, your system of choice should have an email support channel. It would even be better if you had a way to access chat support or phone support, if available. This will be helpful if you have any urgent concerns like payment holds or financing problems.
5. Go for a Demo or Free Trial
As the old saying goes, “To see is to believe,” and if you’re a skeptical system shopper, that’s completely valid. In fact, it helps to have some reservations about a system. So to help you appease those reservations, you should go for a demo or free trial first.
You can get on a discovery call with a company representative if they provide it. Alternatively, go for a system that provides a free trial for a few days to a few weeks. Bear in mind that the free trial allows you to explore the system, so try out as many features as you can during that period.
6. Look for Security and Privacy
Payroll is a sensitive matter as it involves money. So you’ll need a system that provides maximum security and privacy. First off, the system must be encrypted. That way, you protect your business from any form of cyber attack or threat.
This also means that you should prepare your business internally to protect your business’s information and finances. Keep passwords safe and avoid storing them somewhere anyone can access them, like shared documents or storage facilities. Use a password-sharing system if needed as they provide a layer of protection.
7. Categorize Your Manpower According to Work Arrangements
Not all staff members will have the same arrangement. You might have regular employees and freelance ones. For instance, if you run events in your organization, you might have some on-call staff that you compensate for each event you run.
These might include event hosts, event organizers, set-up teams, sound, and lights technicians, etc. So you’ll need your payroll system to help you manage that. You’ll also need to build your disbursement schedules accordingly. Most companies run a biweekly payroll.
You’ll need event management software to help you with this activity, as it helps you track upcoming events and when you’ll need to pay your event suppliers. Here’s a list of event management software products that can help you with that.
The Right Considerations Plus Insights
Finding the best payroll software for your business requires careful consideration of your business needs, compatibility, security, user-friendliness, vendor reputation, pricing, and flexibility. By following these seven tips, you can find the right payroll software that meets your business needs and helps you manage payroll operations effectively.