For business owners with employers, payroll is a necessary task that can slow your day and tie you down if you let it. Here are five ideas to make payroll less time-consuming:
Employee Onboarding
If you hire a lot, empower your new hires by letting them do their paperwork for you. A good payroll system allows employees to “onboard” themselves, completing the I-9, W-4, and direct deposit authorizations electronically. You’ll still need to ask for ID on their first working day, but at least you won’t have to do their paperwork for them.
Integrate Employee Benefits
Rather than hire several separate companies to handle benefits, some payroll systems allow you to integrate benefits solutions right in their dashboard. That way, you won’t have to re-enter employee data in multiple systems, which often gets out of sync. Deductions and payments can also be integrated to save accounting time.
Delegate Timesheet Entry
Require non-exempt employees to enter their own time; all you should have to do is approve it. A great timesheet application will allow employees to enter time from multiple options, including timecard, cell phone, and others.
Eliminate the Annual Worker’s Compensation Audit
Tie your worker’s compensation vendor to your accounting system, and you’ll be able to avoid that time-consuming annual reconciliation report required by your worker’s compensation insurance company. Large annual payments can be avoided because the insurance will be taken out each payroll cycle.
Reduce the Frequency of Payroll
Finally, paying employees less frequently, might help cut your payroll time in half. Pay weekly employees every two weeks or pay bi-weekly employees monthly. Reducing payroll frequency boosts cash flow as well.
Try one of these five ideas to streamline your payroll time and costs in your business. And as always, let us know if we can help.