What Do Online Payroll Services Offer?
- Payroll processing: Online payroll services automatically calculate how much employees should be paid each pay period. The systems account for wage rates, shift differentials, overtime, holiday pay and taxes as well as Social Security and benefit deductions. They then make payments to employees by direct deposit, prepaid debit cards or paper check.
- File and pay payroll taxes: These services can withhold employee taxes, file quarterly payroll tax reports, and pay tax withholdings to the proper local, state, and federal agencies. They also issue employee W-2 and 1099 forms at the end of the year. Some services offer an error-free guarantee. If a mistake is made, these payroll companies will correct the error and pay any fines or interest incurred.
- New hire reporting: Many payroll services report new hires to the government on your behalf.
- Integrations: Online payroll services integrate with a variety of payroll-related programs businesses are already using, such as accounting software, time and attendance systems, and human resources software.
- Paid-time-off management: Many of these services manage paid time off by tracking how many vacation and sick hours employees have earned and how much they’ve used. Some payroll solutions even facilitate the time off request and approval process.
- Employee self-service: Typically, employees can access the online system to view pay stubs, PTO balances and year-end tax forms.
- Mobile access: Many systems offer mobile apps or mobile-friendly websites that let businesses manage and run payroll from smartphones or tablets.
- Payroll reports: Detailed wage and labor reports from your service can provide a deeper look at how a business operates.
THINGS TO CONSIDER WHEN CHOOSING A PAYROLL PROVIDER
TIMING OF A PAYROLL CONVERSION
Deciding when to implement a new payroll solution is important. If you are considering a mid-year conversion, Quarter 2 is a good time to start the process. Another option is to convert at the end of the year. The ideal time to begin a year-end conversion is October so it doesn’t conflict with any year-end processing you need to handle.
DATA CONVERSION
When considering a conversion, it’s important to also look at whether the payroll system is unified with core HR and attendance. When payroll, core HR, and time tracking data are stored in a centralized database, this provides many benefits.
DATA INTEGRATION CAPABILITIES
Many companies have existing business investments for benefits, such as general ledger software, point-of-sale (POS) systems, and retirement packages. The ability to integrate these existing systems with an online payroll system is a huge benefit as all of the data is accurate and up-to-date.
PAYROLL TAX COMPLIANCE MANAGEMENT
With payroll tax compliance rules constantly changing, it’s crucial to utilize a payroll provider with a tax compliance department that will help manage these updates. Once conversion is complete, a tax compliance team should update your payroll tax tables each year, and help with year-end processing.
DATA CONVERSION
One of the most important steps of the conversion process is migrating company data out of your old system and into the new system accurately. To ensure your data will be accurate, make sure the following tasks are performed.
How to Choose the Right Payroll Service
How much do I know about payroll?
If you aren’t a payroll expert, you need an easy-to-use software solution. Payroll software automates a complex process, and the point of automation is to free your time, not take it up.
Which basic features should a payroll software have?
First, let’s go over the key parts of running payroll. Running payroll is the process of entering the hours employees worked during a pay period, calculating their gross wages, determining deductions, and giving employees their net pay.
How much do I want to spend?
Deciding how much to spend on payroll is challenging since many factors go into the cost. To get started, learn what other businesses spend on payroll services.
What payroll software charges should I worry about?
Don’t buy payroll software until you check for contracts, additional fees, reviews, and free trials.
Which platform will I run payroll from?
Because you can purchase online or desktop software, identify where and how you’d like to run payroll.
Easy Tips For Choosing The Best Payroll Software Services
Analyze Features offered by Payroll software services
It is important that you first analyze what kind of functionalities the software has to provide to you. The payroll system you are looking at should be accurate and able to clock in the correct timings for each employee. Apart from that tax deduction, record keeping, and scheduling of processes are features that should definitely be a part of your payslip software.
Find whether the software is Cloud based
During 2016-2020 Technavio has fore-casted the growth of global cloud based payroll software solutions market at a CAGR of 6.94%. This gives a fair idea about the possibilities of customization and expansion available to us. Businesses need to work 24*7 and without any restrictions of time and place. Looking for payroll on the cloud which has the above benefit would make it easy for the manager to approve even basic requests from wherever he is at that moment.
Integration with other business processes
It is important that you look at the larger picture when you decide particular payroll software for your business. You may outsource your payroll functions to an outsourcing firm but still, it is critical that the small business payroll software you choose matches well with your business processes.
Optimize use of Budget
Payroll software cost is one of the important factors that you should keep in mind while making your choice of software. However, do not make the mistake of making it the most important criteria for selection. This is because buying low-cost payroll management services may save you some money but its use would involve a lot of other administrative expenses.
Security to be paid due attention
As per Cyber security ventures, global ransom ware damage costs will reach exceeding proportions to the count of $5 billion. This figure is exceedingly high in comparison to $325 million in the year 2015. Payroll solutions involve a lot of sensitive data in terms of employee’s salaries and their performance reviews. Security of your data would be completely dependent on the kind of payroll software you select. Your choice of HR software solutions should be one that is able to create encryptions at different levels.
Tips for Choosing the Best Payroll Service for Your Business
Self-Service
If you don’t want to be fielding all sorts of questions from your employees, you’ll want to ensure that the payroll company you choose has employee self-service. If your employees can log in to view their own payment and tax info, then they won’t need to ask you.
Pricing
The other important thing to look at before trying out a payroll service is how much you’ll be paying. This is especially important for small businesses that don’t require as extensive service as larger companies.
Reputation
How do you find out if it’s going to be easy before signing up? Look at customer reviews online. There’s no better way to find out how easy and functional a payroll service will be than listening to previous customers. Read Google and Yelp reviews to find out what you’ll be dealing with.
Look at Ease of Use
The whole reason that you’re outsourcing payroll is that it’s time-consuming. The service that you choose should be easy to use. If it’s a payroll company, they shouldn’t ask too many questions because they should know what they’re doing.
Figure Out What Your Needs Are
The first thing you should do is figure out exactly what you need. If you’re a small company, you might be able to get away with using a simple application that quickly does payroll for you like Patriot or Intuit.