Octopus HR - people managing brilliantly, online
If your small to medium-sized business (SMB) is still dependent on spreadsheets, documents and filing cabinets to keep track of human resources, it is probably missing out on much better efficient and intelligent ways of recording and handling important day to day task tasks, such as managing payroll. Today, businesses have many more choices when it comes to HR payroll manager software solutions, whether they want to install it on premise, or becoming the more popular standard deployment option - to purchase it ‘on-demand’ from a payroll software vendor, also described as ‘in the cloud’ software service.
There are many choices of online pay roll Software Solutions on the market today, which need to be selected very carefully depending on your current and future requirements. The main choices include; on premise standalone payroll, outsourced payroll software and a fully managed payroll accounting service or bureau. As well as these you also have the option to integrate or interface payroll services with an HR system. Carried out correctly this has the benefit of creating a single entry of employee information thus saving on time and reducing error.
A good Payroll accounting system should provide much more than just calculate net pay from gross. Some of today’s accounting systems have been developed to both fully handle the financial aspects and provide comprehensive information that support strategic and tactical decision making for a business. Integrated with a solid HR System it provides an organisation with a powerful business reporting tool.
Good payroll software allows you to carry out many different financial tasks and calculations.
The key goal should be to enable an organisation to easily perform and process a range of pay-related and HR tasks.
Alternatively you may wish to maintain some of your payroll function in-house. All static employee information may be imported from directly to the payroll at the bureau and variable information such as overtime added. Payroll results can be checked at any point prior to processing by the bureau by running reports following approval. Once the process is complete, pay slips are dispatched to the employees both online and/or by paper printouts, and financial summary report information produced. Online Payslips allow your employees to access and download their own payslips via a standard internet browser whether they are in the UK or out of town.
Some HR solutions can provide a payroll interface to take pay data from the HR system for import into Payroll which could an external or internal payroll partner or service. With this type of interface you only need to enter data once, which saves input and checking time and reduces the likelihood of errors. Payroll users can optionally elect to view changes made to the payroll data.
On-demand HR payroll software solutions have much to offer SMBs. These Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions can dramatically reduce implementation barriers common to midsize companies by offering rapid deployment, low cost of entry and ownership, ease of use, and flexibility of usage. With particular benefit for modern HR solutions with full self-service functionality where everyone in the company may well require access to their specific information and HR tasks.
First and foremost, on-demand human resource payroll software promises to save an SMB money. Because it is laying out cash only for the subscription fee, the initial investment is low. With no hardware to purchase and maintain, ongoing overhead costs tend to be much lower than for installed software. SaaS-delivered HR software can also yield a quicker return on investment.
On-demand HR payroll software solutions offer simplified upgrades and functionality additions, as well as HR business-process standardisation. On-premises software can be more highly personalized than SaaS solutions, but giving up that flexibility means even highly configured deployments can be seamlessly upgraded at no additional cost, with on-premise upgrades often becoming extremely expensive and prone to error. If an SMB can configure its HR payroll software instead of customising it to meet business needs, it will gain easier and faster implementations and subsequent upgrades. On-demand HR software can also help SMBs standardise and centralize HR business processes by ferreting out random pockets of data that may be hidden in databases, spreadsheets and even paper notebooks around the office. So the future of HR software solutions is clear – it’s ‘in the clouds’!