I have recently heard again the phrase, “you need to take your business seriously”, and the humour in this is that if you don’t you won’t be in business very long. When I do an evaluation on a business and find the employer running the payroll on a spreadsheet, I first cringe then secondly start asking a couple of pertinent questions the result of which is I invariably end saving the poor blighter money. Salaries and wages as a rule sit in the top three input costs in a business and the management principle of ‘if you can measure it you can manage it’ is very true. So why if an excel spreadsheet works should one change? Well between the sophistication of our beloved Revenue Services, the need for labour legislation compliance and the potential for errors and many hours lost due to manual processes, taking your business and hard earned revenue seriously will cause an owner or manager of a business to be efficient and effective and leave the complexities of payroll to the software.
In payroll systems one size does not fit all and technology has advanced to such an extent that there is more technology in the average smart phone than was in the Apollo 11 spacecraft. The conventional payroll systems are excellent in the correct context and application but often for the small to medium business these are over kill and running the payroll is intimidating for all except the bookkeeper or accountant and can become costly and resource hungry to manage. You do not want to rely on an external expert to help with a backup, legislative upgrade or other routine procedures.
There are a myriad of different systems available and inevitably a business obtains one by default because the service provider happens to supply that particular brand, now backup and support is important but the reliance on that backup is not. In addition payroll software systems have often become a bolt on to an existing accounting or other industry software which causes the payroll system to become ungainly and complicated. You would not go to a doctor to have your car serviced?
There are many more reasons for using the correct payroll system for the correct application, if you have not evaluated your payroll needs in the past two years it’s time to take the pain out of your payroll.