If you only upgrade one of your legacy systems, make it payroll. Poor payroll processing impacts the most crucial parts of your business: your staff and your profits. Screw up enough paychecks and you’ll find yourself standing all alone. On the flip side, mistakes, delays, and errors can eat into your bottom line in ways that are hard to detect until it’s too late.
Let’s get one thing clear: If your payroll has errors on a regular basis, replace it. Nothing else it does makes up for getting its core function wrong. Assuming it’s working correctly, here are the three things it should also be doing to keep your business humming.
Make life easier: Seems obvious, right? You shouldn’t have to fight your own systems to get anything done. But what does “easier” look like? Being able to access all relevant documents in one place; streamlined on and offboarding processes; time-saving automations. In other words, your normal day to day interactions with payroll should be nearly frictionless.
Sync with booking: Literally everyone in your business has better things to do than add up each individual employee’s bookings. Your payroll system should sync with your booking or scheduling system to perform that time-consuming — but crucial — function for you. If your current tech isn’t automating those kinds of regular tasks for you, it’s time for an upgrade.
Include time tracking functionality: The person processing payroll for your business has better things to do than entering or confirming work hours. A modern payroll system should have recording, approving, and entering time built right into it. Bonus points if it lets all employees — admins, manages, and line staff — view and input information. Double bonus points if it’s a “smart” system that can flag errors such as an employee forgetting to clock back in after break.