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What to look for in Payroll Software?

What to look for in Payroll Software

Investing in payroll software has become one of the important parts of every organization. In today’s rapidly growing world and when everyone is working from home it becomes very crucial to choose from the tons of payroll software programs. They are available in the market and are capable of handling and managing an organization’s entire employee information accurately.

The market today has a wide range of payroll software available according to the needs of the organization. While many of them have common practices for all the organization, others tend to customize as per the business requirements.

What is A Payroll Software?

Payroll software is an application that manages, organizes, and automates your entire salary payment process in the organization. The software helps track all payments of the organization and maintains all employee payment records. In addition, payroll software has a wide variety of features. That can be used both by small and medium organizations as well as large corporations.

An effective payroll management software helps the management in monitoring leave, tax information, and pay structure. The software is easy to integrate with the existing company policies and procedures. It competently takes care of the company’s Bank details to run your transaction professionally. Payroll System can also be set for necessary holidays and the type of leave policy followed by the organization for the financial year.

There are two types of Payroll software:

The first one is a desktop payroll software can purchase or download from the manufacturer website and installed on your desktop. This software gives you the ability to access your payroll information from your computer or laptop. You need an internet connection for updating the software or filing your statutory returns.

Rather than installing it in your desktop, There’s a second type of software called Cloud Payroll software which stored all your information in the cloud. You just need to log in with the login credentials provided by the manufacturer for your organization to access the information and service provided. This type of software is easily accessible from anywhere, anytime at any device.

What does payroll software do?

Payroll duties involves many activities, it includes tax deduction, health insurance premiums, EPFs, gratuity and calculating the amount payable to government authorities. Additionally, the feature also includes calculating the tax liability of the company as per Government and individual State Laws. It also takes into account calculating deductions, medicare etc.

Missing a deadline while filing taxes or filing incorrect income tax return details may cause legal implications for the organisation and the department involved. Hence managing these tasks require utmost patience and importance.

The HR department also has to take into account that the employees filled properly and they paid on time, manage tax claims and other tax benefit services. Managing leaves, disabilities etc. also fall under this domain.
Lastly, they need to keep track, maintain and update the various employee records as per current tax laws.

Benefits of Payroll Software

Shifting to payroll software can bring extreme benefits to companies. The most important of these is an improved process. That eliminates the element of inaccuracies and other human errors in your system. Payroll software is cost-effective as you can add employees, and generate payslips for each of them. The employee can file their statutory returns and many more things in one place.

The organization does not require any professional service from outside firms which leads to lots of cost savings for the organization. The security of your data is very important and this type of information is very sensitive. Payroll software is safe and secure and maintains high-security protocols to prevent the flow of information outside the organization.


Questions to ask before making a purchase:

Does it provide good Customer support Service

Customer service should always rank top as it is one of the most important governing factors in today’s time. No one is interested in buying software from a company that has a bad after-sales service. Therefore, before purchasing any software module, do make sure that the company’s customer and support service satisfies the required norms and practices, and matches the company policy and standards then sign the project, look for customer reviews, and make a thorough analysis. A better plan here is to have a demo with the organization and have a conversation with existing clients if possible.

Can it be integrated with other software or spreadsheets?

The payroll software should be able to integrate with other third-party apps and spreadsheets for activities like importing and exporting information. For instance, if you need to integrate it with your Biometric system or with your current HRMS software the task should get completed without taking much time.

Does it have an Overtime calculation feature?

Not all organizations provide overtime fees but one should not ignore the fact it is also crucial in calculating employee benefits. You need to check for software that has overtime features in their software. It’s a common belief calculating overtime is easy and it shouldn’t take up that much time. But in reality, it does. Errors do occur when you calculate overtime and discrepancies occur between HR as well as the employee in question.
Overtime calculations are one of the important features which should be checked before opting for payroll software. Employees can clock in their hours manually on their phones or through biometrics and have their overtime calculated accordingly.

Does it have a mobile app?

The most organization wants to manage their payroll from different locations or have an offsite payroll manager, this is why you should check for mobile payroll management. And fortunately, there are plenty of cloud software options available in the market that have their own app for every user. You can facilitate your payments from anywhere with a flexible mobile feature.

Conclusion:

Not everyone may need payroll software but that doesn’t mean you will ignore the fact. That this software is very useful for HR managers in increasing the productivity of the organization. Now that everything is becoming self-managed and utterly automated you can look for this guide if you need to implement one.