Overview
Payroll software ensures your staff get paid accurately and on time. Getting this wrong will lead to disastrous consequences for your teams, and will quickly erode trust and goodwill. Selecting the right payroll software, and configuring it correctly, is therefore crucial.
Payroll software is often bundled with a ‘bureau service’, whereby you outsource some or all of the payroll work (like processing expenses, printing payslips and so on) to an external provider. It’s important to fully understand what your provider is delivering, what you’re responsible for, and where the burden of risk lies.
Payroll is one of several 'foundation' applications (like POS) from which several other services tend to link (like employee relations and rota scheduling in this case). As a result, your choice of payroll provider may limit your choice of other applications, as providers encourage you to buy every product they offer. This is known as a single platform approach, and may not be desirable.
Critical functions
Your payroll software (and possibly the bureau service it comes with), need to facilitate:
Accurate payments to staff
Expenses recording and reimbursement (possibly with an app to make things more efficient)
Pension auto-enrolment
Reporting
Income streaming services (whereby employees can access part of the money they’ve earned before payday) are becoming increasingly common. They are popular because they help employees avoid payday loans, and many operators find staff are willing to take on extra shifts at short notice if they know they can access the money the same day. However, there is often a fee involved (either for the employer, employee or both), which becomes ethically questionable. Some services include money advice and savings facilities. If you pay your staff weekly or fortnightly, the benefits may be less than for those who pay monthly.
Important integrations
The most important integration is with your time and attendance (clocking in) system. This might be integrated into your POS system, managed using a separate device, or even enabled by your employees’ own mobile devices. However your staff clock in and out for their shift, this data should feed directly to payroll, to ensure shifts are recorded accurately. This might also necessitate a link with your labour scheduling system, depending on which applications you’re using and how they’re configured. The aim should always be to minimise manual rekeying of information, to avoid the chance of a mistake.
Your payroll software ought to integrate with your recruitment software and your employee relations software, to ensure records are kept up to date, and to avoid manual rekeying of data.
Users
Employees (using a self-serve portal to update bank details etc)
Managers, to update employee records
HR and finance teams
Payroll bureau (if using)
