Invest In A Payroll Software That Grows With Your Business

Payday is typically a monthly affair that most people look forward to. For many small businesses and startups, it is a period of immense stress and frustration.
Why is payroll software important for small businesses?

Payroll is complicated and time-consuming. However, it is also a critical function within the organisation. As a small business owner, you need to ensure that your employees are paid accurately and on time.

Thankfully, technology today has automated this complex business function. Payroll software helps to keep your payroll data organised, automate tedious payroll calculation and catches any potential payroll calculation errors.

For small businesses, this helps to take away the stress in computing payroll and allow business owners to focus on the long-term strategies and business expansion.

How can small businesses ensure that their payroll software accommodates their growing business?

Small business owners may start off with purchasing payroll software that offers the basic features – payroll calculation, tax contributions and deductions and salary disbursement. These days, most payroll software are cloud-based as opposed to on-premise payroll software.

However, what most small business owners fail to realise is that their payroll software needs to grow in parallel with the business. As the business grows and employee headcount increases, payroll software with just the basic features may not be sufficient to handle the large employee headcount. This may result in the payroll software becoming less efficient at managing your payroll matters.

Invest in a payroll software is not just simply picking a payroll software that offers the very basic features. It is best to invest in a software that allows you to incorporate additional features and functionalities as your business expands.

Here are some functionalities that you may need to consider as your employee headcount increases alongside your business expansion.

1. Invest in a Human Resource Information System (HRIS)

With a payroll software in place, you will need to ensure that your employee records are up-to-date to ensure that employees are paid accurately. When you have a handful of employees, it is easy to record this information on an excel spreadsheet. However, this method of recordkeeping will definitely become a challenge when you have fifty or even a hundred employees.

This is when you should invest in a HRIS solution to manage large volumes of employee data. As your employee headcount increases, the amount of employee data that you need to store will definitely increase exponentially. Records such as employee’s position title, address, bank accounts and even dependents’ details have to be accurate and stored securely. Most payroll software vendors would be able integrate a HRIS solution within their existing payroll software, enabling you to store all this confidential information on a secure platform within your payroll software while allowing easy retrieval for payroll processing.

2. Implement a Leave Management System (LMS)

For some small business owners, their operations may expand across various countries across the region. It then becomes crucial for business owners to be aware of the respective labour laws and legislations in terms of personal time-off or annual leave obligations across various countries,

In most countries, employees are entitled to personal time-off as well as sick leave, maternity benefits or hospitalisation leave. Without a proper leave management system, it becomes difficult to track when employees go on leave as well as their corresponding leave entitlement. Concurrently, employees themselves may not be able to monitor their leave utilisation, resulting in over or under utilisation of their leave benefits.

Implementing a leave management system allows your HR team to effectively manage and track employees’ leave applications. With an auto update of employees’ leave balances, this ensures that accurate data is reflected within the payroll system, enforcing correct computation of payroll.

3. Utilise an Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

As your business expands, the number of available job positions within your organisation will likely increase. This translates to more hiring and recruitment activity. It also means that it may be a good time to consider utilising an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to support your hiring and recruitment needs.

An ATS software allows your recruitment team to post job vacancies on job portals while managing job applications, resume submissions and tracking of applicants – essentially streamlining your entire recruitment process. Some payroll software providers allow you to integrate an ATS solution within your payroll software, which helps to simplify the hiring and employee management process by allowing candidates and employees to conduct tasks such as uploading documents, submitting payroll times, and communicating with HR.

4. Leverage on an Employee Onboarding Software

To further enhance the candidate and employee experience as your business grows, it might be helpful to consider leveraging on an employee onboarding software.

An onboarding software helps your new hires to transition seamlessly into your organisation by allowing your HR team to track the new joiner’s progress as they move through each stage of the onboarding process. This includes submission of their personal information, background checks and integration of their details for payroll administration. Most employee onboarding software acts as the connection between the ATS software and payroll software to facilitate smooth transition for these new hires.

As a small business owner, you may initially feel overwhelmed with the numerous payroll software vendors in the market. However, go with a payroll vendor that you are comfortable with regarding their price point, and that is able to provide you with added functionalities as your business grows. Invest in a payroll software that can help you save time to focus on growing your business, while effectively managing your payroll processes as your business expands.