Payroll management entails calculating many components, like basic salary, overtime wages, allowances, bonuses, and taxes, to name a few. It also involves maintaining proper documentation and ensuring compliance with state laws. However, managing all these elements can be challenging regardless of whether you run a small or big company.
Fortunately, you’ll be happy to know that payroll management can be optimised and simplified by going further than installing new payment management software or making small changes. This is where a payroll management system comes in, as it enables the automation of the payroll process, freeing up your and your staff’s effort and time. Read on to learn more on how you can better optimise your payroll management system to boost your company’s overall efficiency.
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Train Your Staff
You can’t guarantee the optimal running of the payroll management system if your staff members aren’t well trained. This is more vital today than ever because the payroll systems constantly evolve. Therefore, you want your payroll professionals to be well knowledgeable about the latest regulations by the government, such as what Payroller single touch payroll aims to achieve. In addition, training your staff will enlighten them about technological changes in tools and services.
The continuous training of your staff, even virtual assistants, will ensure they have the necessary skills to avoid preventable inaccuracies when calculating salaries. This is because your payroll staff, after their training, will boast of having upgraded skills in how to use new technologies when doing salary calculations. As a result, they’ll have an easier time calculating salaries and avoid any unwanted errors that might cost your company significant losses.
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Create A Transparent Payroll Policy
Another way to optimise the payroll management system is by developing a transparent payroll policy. Doing this will help avert the widespread payroll issues, such as tax overpayments, misclassifications, and confusion. The transparent payroll policy should outline to your staff vital principles about the following:
- Employee categorisation
- Expense reimbursement
- Resignation
- Salary/bonus calculation
- Expense reimbursement
- Company scheme to handle payroll anxieties
By making policies on these matters clear to your employees and easily accessible, you’ll be able to avoid possible payroll issues in the future. This will also ensure everyone within your company is well on board with their expectations. With everyone on the same page even when outsourcing payroll duties, you’ll reduce the chances of confusion, frustration, and mistakes happening in the future. Likewise, prepare a well-laid-out plan on who to consult in case resolving a payroll issue is necessary.
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Select The Best Pay Schedule
Most companies follow different salary calculation methods: daily, weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly. Others even adopt a multiple wage calculation technique, whereby the management gets paid monthly while hourly or outsourced employees receive their salaries weekly or bi-weekly.
Such an approach may be ideal in some instances, but will eventually cause errors in the payroll process. This happens because doing so can result in duplication of numerous processes, consequently hindering the payroll team from carrying out their duties more efficiently. Because of this, you need to have a payroll management method where all your staff gets their payment simultaneously.
Setting a specific pay schedule helps reduce pay cycles, which helps to simplify payroll processing. Doing this helps avert possible issues such as the greater risk of errors and duplication of processes. This is possible because the consolidated pay schedule allows the payroll department to concentrate on a particular task at every given time.
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Incorporate A Paperless System
Manual payroll processes are not only time-consuming but also use up a lot of effort that could be better directed to other productive tasks. It also increases the chances of unwanted errors and damage to crucial payroll documents such as pay slips that can easily get destroyed. Such shortcomings are enough reason why you need to automate the payroll management system.
With paperless payroll management software, you’ll be able to automate all calculations, including those of salaries, bonuses, and overtime wages, among many others. You can also better compute taxes for the non-permanent and permanent employees without breaking a sweat.
Another advantage of a paperless system is your staff will electronically get their pay slips after a couple of seconds. The use of automated payroll software also allows for greater levels of accuracy within your company. This saves you from the need to repeat previously completed work due to inevitable errors in the manual payroll. Moreover, the paperless system helps safeguard the company’s data, reduces costs, and helps in the fight toward going green.
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Upgrade Your Payroll Software
You should aim to optimise your payroll management system, and the best way to accomplish this is by upgrading the payroll software. Having upgraded payroll software allows you to reduce errors within your company that arise by using an outdated system. This is because the modern payroll systems incorporate attendance and time, thereby taking care of tax compliance and direct payments.
The newer payroll systems also allow staff to easily record hours they’ve worked, check their salary slips, and figure out their used and remaining sick leave credits.
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Perform Regular Audits
The only way you can know the current elements of your payroll management system that need to be streamlined is by conducting regular audits. This will help you pick out system errors and put the necessary corrective measures in place. The detailed audit of the payroll management system will encompass different activities, including:
- Assessing the payroll software to identify the updates with the currency and examine its efficiency
- Carrying out extensive training for your payroll staff
- Examining the payroll processes
Takeaway
Properly managing payroll is integral for the success of all businesses, be it real estate, manufacturing, or tech companies. After all, it’s only once you fully optimise your payroll management system that you can better focus on other essential areas of your business without worrying about issues such as avoidable errors, penalties, or delayed payments. If you don’t know how to achieve this, this in-depth guide has hopefully shown you the various ways you can better optimise your payroll management system.