It doesn’t matter if you have five or fifty-five employees, setting up a payroll management system for your business employing payroll software is sure to streamline the whole process for you. A properly established payroll software in its turn guarantees you the ability to stay on top of your legal, fiscal, and regulatory responsibilities as an employer. It saves you payroll-processing time and protects you from incurring costly compliance-related penalties.
Implementing payroll software for a small business may seem and sound easy, but there are a number of things that are involved, that the small businesses need to address, to do it effectively. Missing out on one can lead to hefty fines and penalties. To help you make sure you do not miss out on any aspect, here are 7 steps to help you set up payroll software for your small business.
IT infrastructure requirements
Implementing a new payroll software may require you some additional hardware and software infrastructure. Take your IT team in confidence and understand the scope of your existing IT infrastructure, to be able to figure out its compatibility with the new software, and the consequent IT requirements.
Understanding the Payroll Software in its totality
When you are planning to set up a new payroll software for your small business, it is important to understand it thoroughly in its totality. Both the Human resources and the Payroll teams, along with other stakeholders, must familiarize themselves with the software and know how it works. The new system, as brought in by your chosen payroll software, will be different from the system you are currently following. As such, getting the teams properly acquainted with the new system and its functions is important.
Possible integrations and compatibilities
When implementing new payroll software, you need to understand if it can integrate all your HRIS and payroll services seamlessly. payroll software should have capabilities to integrate these functions. You should be checking the in-built programs along with the possibilities of add-ons to serve your purpose.
Ensuring an integrated payroll system allows both your human resources and payroll services to have access to the same information. This eliminates the duplicate paperwork or files, creating efficiencies that are sure to save your precious time and resources.
Flexibility and scalability
As a small business making continuous strides towards growth, your workforce is bound to grow as you grow! However, a growing workforce also means growth in your payroll responsibilities too. Good payroll software should allow you to accommodate this growth in terms of your staff efficiently. It should be flexible and scalable. If payroll software for small businesses is not scalable with inbuilt flexibility for expansion, it can cause complications as you grow.
Timing is also important
Whether implementing an altogether new payroll software or transitioning from an old one, you would do good to spare some thought on timing. The start of a new financial year or quarter is the most conducive time to implement a new payroll software, or transitioning from your existing one. This is so because it makes integrating processes and systems easier with no or little downtimes/time lags.
Ensuring the Quality and Easily Accessible Customer Support
Before going ahead and implementing a new payroll software, it is quite indispensable to make sure that you receive quality and accessible customer support after onboarding with the software provider. This also adds to the credibility of the payroll software provider.
Payroll is certainly a very complex process, and organizations require constant help during the onboarding process and later using it. Support at every stage should be readily available.
Vendor Reference Check and Reviews
Payroll management-with its fiscal implications and trust factor dependent on timely and accurate paychecks-is very important for the success of a business, especially for the small businesses trying to establish themselves. As such, when selecting new payroll software for small business to implement, the software provider must be chosen wisely. Check and ensure the credibility and reliability by connecting with existing customers. Make sure that the provider has a positive market presence.
Implementing new payroll software for small businesses is not as easy as it seems. If the new software is not properly organized and planned, it may lead to mismanagement of salaries and taxes.
