Outgrowing Your Payroll Software Program?

There are distinct signs when your business is ready for a new accounting software program. By recognizing the signs early, you can save yourself and your business many hours of wasted time, and you may also avoid costly mistakes that may otherwise occur if you continue to run payroll on a system you have outgrown. Here are some telltale signs it may be time to move on to a new payroll software program.

You can't calculate earnings correctly.

If your company has developed to the point that employees earn money in a variety of complex ways, you may need more earnings calculation capabilities than your current system can handle. For example, paying an employee for two different job types in the same day, or paying an employee based on piecework completed, or a whole host of other scenarios. Some systems will accommodate this by allowing you to set up custom earning codes, but some systems only have a basic set of earning codes and you must adapt your payroll to what they will allow. If you've outgrown your current payroll accounting software program's earning codes, it's time to look for a new system. Having a system that lets you perform calculations saves significant time, and also ensures data accuracy.

Employees want to be paid in ways your system cannot accommodate.

Sure, many businesses continue to print employee pay checks on paper and hand them out to employees. It's been a tradition for many years! Even though check printing still works just fine, keep in mind that there are now options for paying employees that not only make employees happy, but save your business the costs of paper and printing. Using direct deposit allows you to have employee pay deposited directly into their bank accounts, saving them trips to the bank and eliminating the possibility for lost checks. Offering employee pay to be distributed on debit cards is another way to make employees happy and become more efficient. It may also be the best way to pay employees who do not have a bank account. If your employees are requesting these types of payment methods and your current system does not allow it, you may be ready to look for a payroll software program that can.

Your current system is slow, or experiences frequent crashes.

If your system keeps freezing up, bogging down, or crashing, it may be because you have more information than your current payroll software system can handle. It could be the addition of too many employees, too much history, or other information. All software systems have their limitations, after all. If your current system is at its data capacity, it is most definitely time to move on as soon as possible. This is something you definitely shouldn't take lightly. Losing your payroll data would be horrible for so many reasons, and this is a real possibility, especially if your system is unstable. So get a good backup of your payroll data, and look for something new.

While these may not be the only signs you are outgrowing your payroll software program, they are definitely some of the most frequently experienced indicators. React to these signs quickly, and you might just save yourself the pain of inefficiency and frustration associated with trying to get an old system to work when you have outgrown it.