Choosing a Payroll Software Solution

While payroll solutions used to be about ease of generating payslips at the end of the month, they are becoming increasingly sophisticated and software companies can nowadays offer you programs that integrate all paperwork regarding personnel management.

Solutions that integrate payroll and personnel management in one database, saves you the time of duplicating information and speeds up the process when you need to create employee reports.

Here is a checklist of what to look out for when searching for payroll solutions that will best fit your company’s needs:

1. Payroll solutions should cater for electronic banking with all major banking institutions in South Africa. Some systems even allow for third party payments such as home loans on the employee’s side to be transferred directly to his or her banking institution.
2. Becoming increasingly important in payroll is to have a system that will reconcile employees’ tax withheld and paid over to SARS. Businesses that do not do it run the risk of attracting forensic audits from SARS.
3. Payroll solutions should be able to accommodate employee data on leave, attendance, and payment details, including cost to company and deductions.
4. Strong security settings are vital. The ideal would be to have a payroll solution which is password protected. This comes in handy in businesses that prefer to email payslips, but still want to ensure confidentiality.
5. Reporting on payroll information is also important, and therefore it is crucial that you look for payroll solutions that have a reporting tool.
6. In an integrated system this reporting tool will draw up all employee information, including job description, promotions and previous appraisals, training records and union information, among others, in no time.