Whether you’re in the market or not for new payroll software, it’s important to understand that today’s software comes with the latest technology and features that makes your business a better place to work for your employees and your financials more secure.
Here are a few features that make having payroll software a must-have solution:
Employee self-service
Employees constantly want to know how much they made on their paycheck, how much they’ve accrued for paid time off, how much vacation they’ve taken or how much they’ve contributed for federal taxes. Today’s payroll software does that for them.
Payroll software like Xero gives employees that self-service portal that allows them to look at paycheck history, in addition to adjusting information for their taxes, like address or even allowances. When an employee is planning vacations, the portal also comes in handy to check out a PTO balance.
And being that they have this freedom to look at their own paystubs and keep records, if there’s ever some kind of payment error, it’s on the employee to bring it to your attention.
Direct deposit
A huge draw of payroll software is its ability to easily handle direct deposit. If you’re a small business with a handful of employees today and you’re not offering direct deposit, than you are behind the eight ball.
If you’re not offering direct deposit, than you’re likely printing checks, which is actually costing you more money.
But this comes down to convenience for employees. They want the opportunity to log in to their internet banking from their smartphone on the morning of payday and see the money in their account. Printing a check and asking them to go cash it isn’t good enough anymore. While mobile deposits is an option now, it takes at least 24 hours for the check to go through and if the check is more than $2,000 — the standard limit for mobile deposits — it won’t work anyways.
Alerts and updates
Beyond making paying your employees easier, payroll software can alert you when needing to input your data for the pay period. On busy weeks, this can be a lifesaver.
Better yet, some software can detect new changes to the tax code and update automatically. When you don’t have to worry about new tax requirements, you can focus on growing your business.
When you have a solid payroll structure, you have happy employees. And happy employees means better employee retention.
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