For many small businesses, payroll presents a plethora of challenges and complications that can quickly make running a business seem overwhelming. Often, small companies are relying on manual processing to manage their payroll, an approach that’s outdated thanks to the wide availability of small business payroll software. In this article, we’ll be going over some of the common challenges small businesses face, and how utilizing software-based solutions can help you overcome these issues.
Completing Payroll Calculations On Time
Performing routine payroll calculations by hand is a time-consuming process, but it’s one that must be repeated every pay period for each employee. As your company continues to expand and onboard more employees, the payroll calculation process will grow from a manageable task to an unrealistic one. By this point (or, ideally, before) you will need to implement payroll software if you want to ensure payroll calculations are completed on time within a reasonable budget. The software will use T&A (Time & Attendance) data to produce each employee’s gross income. Once those numbers have been calculated, the software will apply any relevant taxes, applicable deductions, and produce the net pay amounts for each employee. The best part? This all happens within a matter of seconds!
Accurately Applying Deductions
If you’re still calculating payroll by hand, it’s vital that you stay up-to-date with the ever-changing tax laws and deduction rates. If not, you’re liable to miscalculate payroll amounts and could be subjected to fines by the IRS. Unfortunately, tax rates and deductions will vary by employee, which makes it extremely likely for even the most well-trained specialist to miscalculate once in a while. However, human error isn’t an issue with payroll software since the software will handle these deductions on its own. Using the most up-to-date information available from its internal database (which is programmed to update at regular intervals), the software will calculate each employee’s paycheck accurately each and every time, eliminating the possibility of human error and ensuring full compliance with the law.
Distributing Funds by Payday
While simply managing to manually calculate paychecks for each employee in your workforce is a daunting task in and of itself, distributing these paychecks is a whole different matter. Writing checks is a tedious task so many companies opt for direct deposit instead. If you use payroll solutions, these distributions can be automated using on-file employee banking information, making it virtually impossible to miss payday. As you can see, this type of software is capable of managing everything from calculations to distributions, but what about security?
Keeping Data Secure
In an ideal world, every employee would be able to be trusted and the risk of data theft would be zero, but realistically that is not the case. Whether it be an employee or a third party, the fact of the matter is that someone will eventually try to steal valuable PII (Personally Identifiable Information) from your company. If employee information is kept on paper forms in the office, this won’t prove to be much of a challenge. Fortunately, if you’re using payroll management software to run your payroll, you won’t need to keep any physical files around the office: they can all be stored in the cloud! Online payroll service providers don’t want to lose your business to data theft, so they stay up-to-date on the latest security threats and make sure that their systems are impenetrable to third-party theft, leaving you with a well-managed filing system and peace of mind.
So, How Much Will This Cost?
Surprisingly, a lot less than you might think! Exact pricing will vary depending on your choice of payroll provider. Standalone small business payroll software will obviously cost less than complete payroll solutions (which provide both payroll and HR services), but even the latter will surely cost less than hiring a team of in-house specialists to manage it for you. Companies like UZIO offer payroll services for as little as $4.50 per employee on your payroll system! With pricing like this, you can easily expand your workforce without fear of overspending, since online payroll management will only cost a fraction of the cost of in-house alternatives. At the end of the day, the vast majority of small businesses struggle with payroll every day, but they don’t have to. With a wide variety of platforms and services available, you simply need to pick out a provider and purchase a plan. The system will do the rest.
About the Author: Mohd Sohel Ather, is a talented specialist and a passionate tech writer. His business goals are to help you and your business flourish to its full potential.