Let’s make sure we define our terms before we get into details about payroll software. Payroll is the the regularly-scheduled payout by an employer to an employee. The amount paid to the employee is the total of that employee’s salary, commissions, bonuses, and allowances for a specified time period, minus the employee’s deductions, such as taxes, loan payments, insurance fees, contributions to the employee’s retirement plan, and administrative fees related to the job, to name only a few.
Payroll cycles can be any time period agreed upon between the employer and employee that is still compliant with any regulations, rules and laws set for payrolls. Payouts customarily have been monthly, weekly, or daily, or twice a month. Weekly paper paychecks with attached stubs showing details used to be the most traditional method, but the shift today is for companies to pay the payout amount electronically and directly into an employee’s bank account with no paper involved. Paper paychecks used to be calculated and written manually and individually. Electronic direct payments can still be done individually and manually, but the trend today is to automate payroll operations into batch jobs that consolidate the payouts for many employees at once.
Payroll software is the means by which such consolidation can be done quickly and easily for any company. Such software, of course, must fits the needs and the size of the company. A company can develop payroll software on its own, license software from another company, or outsource the entire payroll process to a firm that specializes in payroll processing. Free trials of payroll software are also a short-term alternative to help a company decide on which path to take — for example, IRIS PAYROLL SOFTWARE is offering free thirty-day use of their payroll software during February.
There are many benefits to using payroll software. But, making sure that the payroll software selected by a company will work well depends entirely on the fit to the existing processes and systems of the company. Using the correct payroll software will provide a company great savings in both money and time, specifically in the areas of payroll data reliability, and in the ease of access for data retrieval.
The advantages of Direct Deposit should not be underestimated, because such a feature of a payroll system provides security, convenience and savings for both the employee and the employer. The company saves by no longer issuing paper paychecks, and there are legal assurances that funds are delivered securely, safely and in a timely manner. And employees no longer need to wait in line to cash their paychecks.
Web-based payroll software is also available. Employees can use a secure sign-on into the online capabilities of such an online system to check their current pay statements or do searches of their past pay history.
One further advantage for a company using any payroll software from a third party is that the software vendor is responsible for keeping the software up-to-date with respect to any new laws or regulations concerning payroll, employees and employers.
