No matter your industry and how big or small your company is, a well-organized payroll process is vital to your business’s success. However, payroll management is both time-consuming and expensive. It prevents your most important team members (HR team) from doing their essential tasks. And most importantly, manual payroll causes mistakes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Payroll costs are more than the salaries you pay your employees; they include benefits, taxes, fees, and other expenses. And handling them on your own is a bad idea. Research says that a company with 100 employees paying the average U.S annual salary will lose $23,530 – $47,060 a year in payroll mistakes. A survey shows manual data entry is the payroll activity that results in the most errors (35%).
An accurate and consistent payroll process is a crucial concern for any company. The payroll process should be simplified to reduce costs, improve productivity, and keep the process going. The world today is chasing innovation and perfection in products and services. So, businesses should focus on innovating rather than complicating the payroll. This article is your quick guide for streamlining your payroll process seamlessly.
Why Streamlining your Payroll Process is Important?
A poorly managed payroll process destroys your employees’ motivation to work in your company, which affects your business badly.
Moreover, the employee payroll management process has complexity and consequences, such as hidden costs.
If you’re doing payroll on your own, you might have struggled to understand the forms, tax requirements, procedures, and paid penalties. In the other case, if you’ve hired an accounting firm, you might be spending huge every time a new employee fills out forms.
Lack of understanding about payroll increases payroll costs. Streamlining the payroll process is the only simple solution to reduce all these costs. Below are simple steps to streamline your payroll process.
7 Simple Steps to Streamline Your Payroll Process
Automate your Payroll
Payroll is a fundamental part of any business. It becomes more vital as your business grows. So, buying reliable payroll software and automating the whole process is more than worth it. As we said, modern companies should focus on innovating rather than sweating over non-core tasks. Moreover, two of the biggest problems with poor payroll management processes are wrong and delayed paychecks. According to a study, 49% of U.S. workers would leave a job after experiencing just two problems with their paychecks.
You can find many payroll management tools on the internet today. Vultus Recruit’s Payroll Management software is one of the leading payroll software in the market. It is a cloud-based, fast and efficient payroll management software that makes all the payroll and HR management tasks simple and easy.
Also, avoid manual data entry as much as you can. You can automate tasks using the right tool, from bonuses and pay errors to time-off requests.
Integrate Employee Benefits
Employee benefits are challenging to manage if you’re handling payroll independently. Manual data entry is prone to expensive errors, and if you’re outsourcing employee payroll to an agency, you are exposing your employee data to risks and sometimes fraud.
By integrating your employee benefits into your payroll system, you can ensure security and accuracy and save time.
Create Payroll Checklists
Whether you’ve automated your employee payroll management process, creating and using checklists will help reduce errors. A checklist enables you to break down the complicated process and know what is essential and what else you need to accomplish. In the best case, you will identify unnecessary costs you’re spending and cut them off.
The primary goal of your checklist is to educate you on what’s necessary and what is not. You should audit the checklist regularly to ensure accuracy and legal compliance. Doing so can prevent you from lots of expenses and penalties. Also, have a dedicated person to audit and take care of your employee payroll. This way, you can catch errors and eliminate them before it turns into an expense.
Engage and Empower your Employees
Give the power of self-service to your employees by integrating your payroll with an employee self-service tool. You can save massive time by reducing the dependency of employees on HRs and managers.
Engage and empower your employees by letting them fill out forms on their own on the ESS portal. You can provide them access to the employee self-service portal that tracks login and logout, attendance, and overtime. An ATS with an employee self-service portal will have all the employee records stored in the cloud. And that makes managing employee payroll much more accessible.
Link Employee Timesheets with Payroll
If you’re still using paper to track employee timesheets or attendance, you’re already too late for the show. It’s high time to switch to digital timesheets and save paper.
Okay, if you are using a timesheet management software, lucky that you can integrate it with the payroll system. Our Vultus Recruit Payroll Management users integrate their timesheets with the Timesheet management tool and prevent data loss and huge costs due to employee time theft.
Integrating timesheets with the payroll system will reduce errors, and improve accuracy and employee accountability.
Take Advantage of Automated Payments
Nearly 78% of U.S. workers live paycheck to paycheck. Manual payment processing can result in late paychecks, which puts you at risk of losing your employees.
It’s ideal to use automated payments or deposits for paying employees. This saves enormous time, paper checks costs, and the environment and boosts trust in you among employees. If you’re paying your employees weekly or thrice a month, consolidate it to once or twice a month to save the payroll costs.
Know the Rules & Play Accordingly
Lastly, it’s essential to know what you don’t know. Learn about the taxes, rules, regulations, and penalty fees to ensure you’re on the safe side. Read books or take classes to gain knowledge of this expensive part of your business. Sometimes, your ignorance may cost you huge.
Look into your books and records frequently to ensure your payroll transformation is working. In case you hired a consultant, don’t hesitate to ask doubts. There are no bad questions on the payroll.
Final Thoughts
Streamlining the payroll process is easier said than. It is time-taking and expensive. But definitely not costlier than payroll errors. Many characters and elements enter when streamlining your payroll- employees, bank, and tax agencies. Things may seem difficult at the beginning. But after you’ve streamlined your payroll, you will see your business running efficiently and effectively. Keep this quick guide handy and start saving time and money for innovating and competing.
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