Remember the days of using a calculator and a typewriter to process payroll? Thankfully, those days are gone, and there are much simpler tools to make the process more efficient. Today, there are tools available to help ensure timely tax payments, accurate and complete payrolls, and to make sure employees are paid on time. These days, most businesses use one of two methods to process payroll: in-house payroll software, or a payroll service. As a business, you must choose the method of payroll processing that works best for you. Start out by asking yourself these simple questions.

What staff is available to manage the process?

No matter which processing method you use, you will need staff to manage the associated tasks. Many in the business world tend to believe that a payroll service takes less staff time, since it handles the tax payments and processing. While this may be true, be sure to account for all of the time your staff must spend collecting and entering time data for employees (if applicable), updating employee earning and deduction changes, running payroll reports, and generally making sure that data is accurate and timely. When using a payroll software program, it is a good idea to have at least one employee who is familiar with your payroll processes, and your payroll software. He/she should be able to set up employee information, enter time in the appropriate manner, process payroll, run reports, maintain tax filing schedules and be able to file them using your system.

Who manages what?

It is important to consider your current staff and their expertise, when you are deciding on payroll processing. For instance, if you don’t have a skilled HR person, you may lean toward a payroll service, since some of them offer HR services. If you have a person who is skilled in using in-house payroll software already, you might find it easier to stay with that. Consider who you have on staff and their expertise, and then whatever system you choose will come along with a much smoother transition.

Where is my data safest?

There is a major different in the location of your payroll data when comparing a payroll service to in-house software. With a service, your data is typically stored in a remote location and accessed via the internet. Of course, most services use strong encryption to provide security for your data. For payroll software, your data is stored on your own server, so the information is not available via the internet. However, you still need to be sure there is a good internal security system, since payroll data is sensitive, and you don’t want unauthorized employee’s to log in and view or edit sensitive data.

No matter whether you use payroll software or a service, payroll solutions are definitely a key way of ensuring your payroll is easy to manage, accurate, and that taxes are paid on time! And of course most importantly, that your employees get their checks. There are a few additional steps you can take to make your employees happy. Just by adding features that may already be included within your payroll solution, you may increase the happiness level of your employees!

Add direct deposit

You might just be surprised how much happier employees would be by receiving their pay directly deposited into their bank account, rather than receiving a paper check. Direct deposit allows employees to eliminate the hassle of going to the bank, and also reduces the chances of lost checks. Some payroll solutions even allow for the depositing of funds to unlimited bank accounts, allowing for Christmas savings accounts, additional checking accounts, child savings accounts, and more!

Offer pay card option

Some employees may not have bank accounts, and in those cases it can be difficult or costly for them to find a way to cash their paychecks. Pay cards can be a great way to solve this problem! Deliver employee pay on reloadable debit cards instead of paper checks and you have just made some of your employees very happy by providing them an easy way to access the money they have earned.

Translate pay stubs into employee language

Do you have employees who are not native English speakers? Depending on their language skills, these employees may be better able to understand the important details of their pay and benefits if you have them printed on their pay stub in their native language. Payroll solutions that offer this feature will typically allow you to enter the translation one time, and assign it to the applicable employee(s), and the pay stub will be printed that way automatically from then on.

Add important information to pay stubs benefit summary etc.

Are employees constantly asking how much vacation time they have left? How much they’ve contributed to their 401K? Details like this, and much more can be included on a pay stub. Surely your company has its own unique set of details which you may want to include on the pay stub, so add whatever is most important to your business and your employees.

Add online pay stub access.

Many payroll solutions are now offering the ability for employees and previous employees to access their pay stubs online! No more searching around for slips of paper to access the information they need. Provide employees or previous employees with a password, and they will be able to look up their pay stubs and even W-2 forms online, making it easy for both them and you.

Don’t assume that what you are doing is the best or only solution available! You could make your own job easier as well as bump up employee happiness by adding features you may already have in your payroll system.

You’ve heard the saying “people don’t plan to fail, they just fail to plan”. Well, that’s not always true. Several years ago, (long enough that the statute of limitations has long passed), I was on the board of a not-for-profit organization that would consistently budget a negative cash flow for the year. They didn’t want to lose money, and didn’t think they would lose money, but they always planned to lose money. I didn’t understand that philosophy. I am certainly in favor of conservative budgeting, so if something doesn’t quite go according to plan, there are still prospects of survival.

Now that we’re in the New Year, you should have your plan for 2012 in place and have started executing that plan. Some businesses have to start executing their plan long before the beginning of any calendar period by buying inputs for commodities they grow or parts for finished goods they produce. In this case, their plan has to be more perpetual than based on a twelve month period. While I don’t believe the old Wall Street movie that proclaimed “greed is good”, I also don’t believe profit is a four-letter word. The best thing we can do for ourselves, the people that work in our companies, our local communities, and our country, is to plan to be successful and execute the plan. So, don’t fail to plan, and don’t plan to fail.

Here's an interesting infographic that does a great job of explaining what comes out of an employee's pay check.

http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/2012/2/28/payroll-and-tax-deductions.html

There is a tool included in some accounting software programs that has the power to lift a huge load off your shoulders. It helps you stay organized, and keeps customers happy by providing them the products they want, when they want them. That tool is purchase order management. If you find yourself scrambling around to decide which items you need to order, or you are surprised when you run out of your most popular selling items, or you simply don’t know what is coming when, you can benefit from purchase order management. If you think purchase order management is simply a program that lets you create pretty purchase orders to print and send, then you are missing out on the best parts of purchase order management. Here are some of the features of purchase order management you might not be aware of, which can help you keep ‘just the right’ inventory in stock.

Create suggested orders.

This feature helps you evaluate stock quantities and decide what needs to be ordered, reducing the time it takes to do it manually. When you use this tool, it looks at past sales, stock levels, and the parameters you set, to come up with a list of suggested purchase orders, which you can simply run and distribute. You can also choose to edit the purchase orders before sending.

Receive what you actually got.

Sometimes you receive an incomplete shipment for an order you placed. If this happens, and you don’t have a good way to manage it, you can easily forget about the remainder of the items you should still be receiving, or you could be confused about how many you actually have in stock. The ability to receive partial orders lets you receive what was actually shipped and place it into inventory, and then decide whether to keep the purchase order open until the remainder is received, or cancel the remaining items on the purchase order. A purchase order management system will even allow you to place the vendor invoice in your system on hold until actual shipping charges are known, or until you receive the rest of the order.

Ship to multiple locations.

If you run out of popular inventory items, chances are you will need to ship some to your customer(s) and some to yourself. Being able to place one order and have whatever quantity you choose shipped to multiple locations can save you the time of creating multiple purchase orders. This is helpful in many instances: shipping to a job site or several different warehouses, drop-shipping to several different customers, etc.

Purchase order reports: your dashboard.

The reports in a purchase order system are helpful so you stay organized and on track. Based on the purchase orders you have open, you can make cash projections, see what is left to be received and what has been received to date, and of course, view which purchase orders are open, on hold, received and cancelled. It’s definitely a huge step up from walking around the warehouse and scrambling to see what you should order!

With the right purchase order management tools at your fingertips, it will be much easier to know what to order, who to order it from, how much it will cost, and much more; all with just the click of a few buttons.