Perfecting Payday

Helen Bradley and Kurt Best explain why good payroll software is crucial to good employee relations and sound financial management in your business.

While there are many factors involved in running a successful business and maintaining good relationships with employees, payroll is one of the most important. It might be your biggest expense and it is a critical process that must be performed on time and accurately. Not only to pay employees, it must also handle regular reporting to various government agencies.

At the heart of any payroll system is your payroll software. There is a wide variety of programs to choose from, and we've investigated what's available and talked to some industry specialists to determine what you should look for when buying payroll software.

This software services your business in many ways. It services office administration in making payroll processing easier and it services your employees by dispensing pays in a timely manner. And it services you, as a manager or owner, by providing management reports, helping you meet legislative requirements, and protecting you from legal action or penalties for making incorrect or under payments.

What You Need

Nothing is more destabilising to your business than staff who are suspicious and doubt the accuracy and consistency of your payroll system. Employees have a legal right to receive accurate pay, a pay slip containing not only their gross wage and deductions but complete details of what they are paid for, entitlements such as leave balances and RDOs, and superannuation payments made on their behalf. The challenge doesn’t stop there.

Expectations are that your payroll system should perform other services in addition to simply calculating a pay. It should handle salary sacrifice requests where pre-tax deductions are made from the gross into an employee's superannuation account and it should handle multiple payments, such as paying part of a pay into an employee’s mortgage account and the balance into their regular account. In short, as Susan Burns, payroll services manager for Quicken Australia says, "It should do the job it is supposed to do, which is to process your payroll."