The end of each tax year in April is onerous and busy enough for those managing the payroll function for businesses. But now is the time to ask yourself if you should think about upgrading your payroll solution, is it fit for purpose?
Most payroll managers know that fully integrated payroll software would make their lives a lot easier. No more ‘how many holidays do I have left’ queries for starters. But how do you convince your senior management team to embrace this?
It would be a lot easier if you can demonstrate how the financial and time investment to undertake this can save money, boost profits, motivate staff and improve strategic input?
This would be easy to show if you had an integrated system in place. All you would have to do is tap your screen a couple of times and real-time analytics would help take care of it. If you don’t yet have this facility there is a little bit of work involved doing a cost/benefit analysis.
The following points may help persuade your boss that a powerful and integrated payroll software can boost the bottom line in your organisation:
Your existing payroll solution is not fit for purpose
If your existing payroll software has been used for years without upgrades, chances are its programmes and features are already obsolete, you may be running several reports which aren’t integrated.
You will be missing out on significant developments and wasting unnecessary time to perform payroll processing. Choose a payroll solution which delivers regular upgrades allowing you to work smarter and more efficiently.
Your business is losing key staff
HR departments with robust employee systems are regarded as twice as effective and efficient as those who haven’t invested in such systems. If your payroll team are performing duties not part of their job description then it seems clear to upgrade to a payroll system that will significantly reduce their workload and make other tasks a whole lot easier.
Workforce management should be at the heart of any business, by empowering people to do more with less, organisations will achieve effective outputs.
Slow response time
The biggest and most obvious benefit of a payroll system is that it saves time, which, in turn, saves money. Payroll solutions are designed to be highly intuitive, so if you are using a basic payroll system whereby pay runs are taking hours or running overnight you are more exposed to falling over.
Save time by not having to re-enter information such as timesheets, absences, adjustments, reconciling of data to HR information, bulk entry uploads and more.
Poor technical support and service
No matter how well you manage your business, there will always be a time when you will be in need of technical support. If your payroll software provider fails to resolve any issues immediately, it will help your payroll function to replace them with one that offers a fast and reliable service and technical support.
The old system costs money
Examine your current payroll software, you may find that keeping it up to speed costs more than upgrading to a brand new one. Maintenance, add-ons, admin and technical support costs can all mount up to a sizeable sum of money.
Engagement
A modern, easy to use interface and good customer service for payroll support can do wonders for productivity. You can create an online community environment with data that is easy to use and accessible across all mobile devices.
A payroll solution should deliver mobile self-service, giving staff instant access to commonly requested documents like payslips, P60’s, statutory deductions and allowances as well as cumulative values.
This keeps everyone happy, your staff can view information instantly and with employees getting instant results and it frees up the payroll department from dealing with endless calls about them!
The system should also enable mobile approvals and sign-off by managers whether they are working in the office or remotely.
Your payroll system is not fail safe
Problems with payroll have cost organisations millions of pounds. Many of these of which have been caused by manual inputs – or lack of integration in automated processes. Some technology performs better in this regard than others, but pick the right provider and you won’t go too far wrong.
Compliance
The UK government make a number of statutory changes directly impacting payroll. Some years the new legislation can be quite simple and straightforward however in recent years it has been more complex with the introduction of RTI (Real Time Information) calling for payroll software to collect and send to HMRC via the Government Gateway payroll information, shared parental leave and Automatic Enrolment not to mention changing salary sacrifice schemes.
No business wants to waste money paying financial penalties for filing payroll taxes late or incorrectly.
The introduction of RTI was the biggest reform of the PAYE system since its introduction in 1944. Failure to comply with RTI – and other HMRC requirements – can result in significant fines. But you can ensure you won’t have these penalties with an automated payroll that’s pre-programmed to meet compliance.
Rest assured that Miracle solutions are all HMRC compliant recognised. Payroll software providers must of course make the necessary statutory changes to their software, at Miracle we also use this time to improve our product functionality adding features to make payroll much easier helping to improve HR and business processes.
Save money
Apart from saving on non-compliance fines, it cuts fraud and saves a significant amount of management time better employed on less mundane tasks than telling employees how much tax they have paid.
Thinking of upgrading your payroll?
Do you need help to demonstrate the benefits of an integrated payroll solution? Why not get in touch or book a short personalised demo today? MiraclePay is a fully integrated payroll solution designed to help users increase their productivity, reduce administrative workloads and improve accuracy.