What is a payroll management software?
A payroll management system, predominantly a software, is a tool that allows organisations to handle all of their employees’ payroll details.
Alongside employee wages and deductions, other details such as leave management, employees’ personal data and HR document management can be done through a payroll management system. These features may vary depending on your organisation’s size, number of employees as well as business geographic scope.
What is the purpose of having a payroll management software?
A payroll management software helps to automate the mundane aspect of payroll while driving high accuracy of payroll calculations. Given the advancements in technology, payroll has evolved over the years from mountains of paperwork to paperless and digital processes. As employee and payroll records are stored digitally, this means that it is possible to store larger amounts of data as compared to before.
With the vast amount of data, a payroll management system helps to facilitate easy retrieval of data for whatever needs – audit, people analysis or trend analysis. A payroll management system also allows for monitoring of payroll processes, flagging out areas where there may be potential bottlenecks for mitigation.
Are there different types of payroll management software?
Most payroll management software would have the following modules: employee management, bank account details, HR document management and payslip generation. These key modules are critical in feeding employees personal information and bank details to facilitate payroll calculations and salary disbursement. HR or the payroll team simply needs to ensure that employees’ details are up-to-date and that salary calculations are computed correctly.
Some organisations may also opt to integrate an employee self-service portal to allow employees 24/7 access to their personal payroll information.
Cloud-based payroll management software
Cloud-based payroll management software involves storing payroll data on the “cloud”, which is a remote system that can be accessed by any computer with an internet connection. Given the ease of access, this allows for real-time update of payroll data as well as changes in employment laws and legislations. This helps HR to keep abreast of any revisions in statutory regulations and to modify internal HR and payroll practices and processes quickly.
Web-based payroll management software
Web-based payroll management software is simply an extension of cloud-based payroll software. The cloud is typically provided by the external payroll software provider, whereby your organisation is able to store payroll data on the host’s cloud. Web-based software allows your HR and payroll staff to access the organisation’s payroll database. This is particularly useful when there is a need to access historical payroll data for audit purposes, trend analysis or simply to streamline payroll processes. Having data at your fingertips allows HR to make quicker and efficient decisions that benefits the workforce.
Key features to look out for when choosing a payroll management software
Given the numerous benefits associated with using a payroll management software, there are plenty of payroll software vendors in the market that probably have the solution to meet your HR needs.
However, it may be tricky to decide which software vendor to go with. Here are some key features to consider when choosing a payroll management software for your organisation’s payroll needs.
1. HR tracking tools
HR tracking tools allow your HR team to track employees’ leave applications, overtime, and attendance. With proper tracking in place, the right data can be fed into the payroll software, facilitating accurate calculations of monthly payroll.
2. Built-in reports for statutory filing
Having built-in report templates for statutory filing facilities the process of tax submission, while ensuring that you comply with the statutory requirements and deadlines as well. Given that you already have the respective employee classification in your HR management system, you can easily compute the tax calculations for submission.
3. Web-based employee self service portal
There are times whereby HR may be overwhelmed with payroll-related queries from employees after each month’s payroll. To free up some time, it may be helpful to have an employee self service portal for employees to log in and access their own payroll records. Creating a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page may be helpful in addressing some of the common enquiries received from employees.
4. Transparent pricing with pay per use subscription
Most payroll software vendors have a slew of solutions and features that they are able to include in their payroll management software. However, do you really need all those features? Before choosing a vendor, decide on which are your most critical HR and payroll needs and ensure that the payroll software vendor is able to meet your requirements. Your payroll software vendor should be upfront about the fees as well as the costs of any other additional add-ons.
