Payroll is a crucial part of running a business. Not only is it how your employees get paid, but it also encompasses calculating taxes and other deductions—which means accuracy is imperative. If you’re a small business owner, you may feel that automating payroll is unnecessary. While you absolutely can do payroll manually, it can be incredibly complex no matter how many employees you have. Let’s take a look at how modern solutions can help simplify the complex task of payroll.
What does manual payroll entail?
It’s hard to appreciate the benefits of payroll automation before fully understanding what’s involved in manual payroll. Manual payroll truly means doing each and every piece of payroll by hand. This means manually entering data for each employee’s salary, paid time off, any holiday time, or bonuses in order to calculate their gross pay, taxes, and deductions.
How automating payroll can help simplify the process
Automation can help reduce errors.
When so much manual data entry and calculation is involved, there’s a lot of room for error in the process. Manual payroll can be incredibly tedious—it requires complete focus and attention to detail. Even the smallest mistakes when conducting payroll can lead to massive disasters when it comes to taxes and employee pay.
If a mistake is made with manual payroll, you’ll have to go back to figure out the error on your own, costing you money in the long run. Payroll automation can help reduce those common human errors and improve overall accuracy.
You’ll save valuable time.
Efficiency is such an important part of owning your business. As a business owner, your time is incredibly valuable, and you likely have countless tasks or projects on your plate at once. Adding manual payroll to an already heavy load—for yourself or another employee—can cause unnecessary stress. By automating your payroll, you can create more space and time for you to focus your efforts where they’re truly needed.
It helps you stay compliant with regulations.
Employment laws and tax regulations change often, so it’s important to stay up-to-date. Automating payroll can help you stay current with regulations, ensuring taxes are calculated and filed accurately each year.
Security is increased.
Manual payroll means entering each aspect of employee information into the system individually—which doesn’t offer much security. Online privacy is incredibly important—particularly when you’re in charge of sensitive information for multiple employees. When you use an automated payroll system, the system is typically secure. This can help prevent data breaches and ultimately protect your employees from anyone who may want to steal their information.
It helps improve employee satisfaction.
Employee satisfaction is essential when it comes to running a business. Your employees should be able to count on you—especially when it comes to getting paid. As an employee, it can be frustrating and even detrimental to wait longer than promised to receive your paycheck. Accurate and timely payments are a necessity for myriad reasons—from paying bills to putting food on the table for your family.
Automating payroll can help ensure paychecks are distributed accurately and on time, ultimately improving employee satisfaction overall. The higher the morale within your company, the higher your retention rate will be for your employees—which only benefits you as an organization.
It helps improve employee satisfaction.
Automating payroll is a great way to use modern solutions to simplify an otherwise complex task. It can help you save time and money, stay compliant with regulations, and help ensure the satisfaction of your employees. Keep these benefits in mind if you’re considering transitioning from manual payroll to automated.
