So you’re a new business owner, and things are running smoothly. You have a business plan that is working out within the margins of how you imagined it, and everything seems to be going great. But there are some things popping up that you never imagined would take as much time as they actually do. One of those things is payroll. You think it’s as easy as just making a deposit once per month, but there’s so much more to it, and as the number of employees increases, you’ll definitely want to invest in good payroll software. Here’s why:
Minimize Human Error
If you sit down right now and try typing out the same number a dozen times, odds are, you’ll make a mistake somewhere. And if this happens while you’re filling out the salary details for tens or even hundreds of employees, you might be in quite a bit of trouble. However, if you use a software, it will do all the copy-pasting for you, and as long as you input the correct number the first time, you have nothing to worry about every month when the time rolls around. Mistakes can not only cause legal trouble, but can stir up mistrust with your employees, and they might not accept the excuse of you just accidentally messing up.
Make Changes Easy
Even if you keep clean records, there are times you have to make changes, like when an employee works overtime, or they deserve a bonus for any reason. If you have to manually input and calculate everything, it’s a hassle, and you might make mistakes. But software like this one from Zenefits will allow you to easily add a bonus to someone’s salary or change the number of hours they worked or their base pay. Everything is much easier when you have an intuitive interface you can work with, so you don’t have to think about where you need to write what number.
Safety
Just keeping all of the details in a spreadsheet might seem like a good solution at first, but this leaves all of the information of your employees – like personal and banking details – up for grabs for anyone who gets access to your computer. And people can get access in many different ways. For starters, if something gets through the antivirus on your computer, they can take control and see everything you have, including this spreadsheet. Secondly, if someone breaks in and physically steals your computer, they can access everything.
Thirdly, if you keep the information on a cloud that can be easily hacked in, you’re putting all of your eggs in one easily hackable basket. In turn, payroll software will encrypt all the data, so even if someone takes your computer and gets access to it, they won’t be able to see the information you have in the program.
Free Uptime
As we mentioned at the beginning, handling payroll can be very time-consuming, and you’ll find yourself devoting big chunks of time filling out every individual pay stub, inputting the numbers, and then depositing all of the salaries to your employees. With software, not only is all of this automated, but it also allows you to offer multiple payment methods to your employees without any added effort on your side, which is always a benefit.
Peace of Mind
Most payroll systems operate on the principle of set it and forget it. You set it up once, and it will automatically deposit the money to your employees on the given date, send out notifications and payslips, and everything will run fine, even if you’re not there. This means that you don’t have to think about things like whether all of their salaries are synced up to the same day or if you forgot to send out one of the payments. Everything is handled, and you can sleep peacefully.
So is a software worth it? For all the reasons listed above, it definitely is. When you calculate how much of your time (not to mention nerves) you spend on doing all of that work manually, the math is pretty simple, and you’ll see that software is a better solution from every angle. Make sure you choose that suits the size of your company and covers all of your needs, which will greatly depend on the type of employment you offer and about a million other factors. It’s good to consult a professional before committing to software to make sure you’re getting the right one.