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Payroll Software: Features You Should Look For

Choosing the right payroll software can streamline payroll processing, improve accuracy, and reduce compliance risks. A well-equipped system enhances efficiency, reduces administrative burdens, and ensures seamless payroll management. Here are the key features to consider when selecting payroll software:

Automated Payroll Processing

Action Points:
• Implement payroll automation to minimize manual calculations.
• Schedule recurring payroll runs to ensure timely payments.
• Regularly audit payroll automation settings to avoid discrepancies.

Tax Compliance & Auto Calculations

Action Points:
• Verify that your payroll software updates tax rates automatically.
• Integrate compliance checks to prevent miscalculations.
• Run trial payrolls before processing to detect errors early.

Integration with Accounting & HR Systems

Action Points:
• Choose software that integrates with your existing accounting and HR tools.
• Map payroll data to financial reporting structures for seamless record-keeping.
• Test system integrations regularly to ensure data consistency.

Employee Self-Service Portal

Action Points:
• Train employees on how to access and use the portal.
• Enable digital payslip downloads to reduce paper usage.
• Regularly update portal features to improve user experience.

Data Security & Cloud Backup

Action Points:
• Use multi-factor authentication to secure payroll access.
• Schedule regular data backups to prevent loss.
• Conduct periodic security audits to identify vulnerabilities.

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Hrmaster Hats Series

Hat 6- The importance of being TRUSTWORTHY!

Hat 6 — 3 Levels of Trust

When a Payroll professional joins a Payroll department, they will immediately understand – TRUST is vital and TRUST is earned! Your position in this crucial division of the company, and your access to confidential information, should make you realize how important it is that you are 100% trustworthy. However, this trust can also – quickly and easily – be broken because of one small error!

There are 3 spheres of trust in a company:

1. Management trusts the Payroll Professional

Consider this example: “Please keep this confidential”…said to the Payroll professional who has been summoned to the boardroom. Often this may mean bad news is coming. Maybe the official letter states “the company has decided to downsize, and we need you to calculate a redundancy package for Mr. X , who has been terminated with immediate effect. As a result, Mr. X wants his salary paid out immediately.”
Or maybe, there is good news on the horizon. Perhaps the organization has decided to pay a bonus, and the executive management will ask you to begin calculating facts and figures accordingly. Great news!

Employee trustThis confidential information is your opportunity, as a Payroll professional, to prove your trustworthiness. For instance, you will know to whom management has decided to award a sizeable bonus. Or maybe, who did not qualify for an increase in their salary/remuneration package. And they trust you not to disclose this information to any unauthorised person.
To put it bluntly, management trusts you, as a Payroll professional, to keep your lips sealed!

2. Employees trust the Payroll Professional

Employee trust 2As a Payroll professional, you have more information on any employee, than anyone else in the organization.
Example: 1 – A garnishee order alerts you to the fact that an employee is experiencing financial difficulties.
Example 2 – Or a divorce summons arrives at the office, and you as Payroll professional are immediately aware that an employee is undergoing personal problems. This might mean a possible change in marital status for that employee to deal with.

As a Payroll professional, you are privy to many secrets (say someone is having a baby, or they’re having an affair). Or someone might be considering a massive credit purchase, and you know because the retailer contacted your Payroll department to verify the employment and salary details of that employee.
Employees of a company expect the Payroll professional NOT to divulge their private issues, whether personal or related to their job.

3. External service providers trust the Payroll Professional

As a Payroll professional, you will be required to submit regular documents and reports to various government departments or private institutions. You have to report on taxation matters, divulge medical aid details, and even emolument (or garnishee) orders that will be deducted from an employee’s salary, and paid over to a creditor.
These institutions trust the Payroll professional to send the correct information, in the correct format,Employee trust 3 at the right time.
And remember, you as Payroll professional will often be contacted by financial institutions (such as banks and credit providers), to verify the employment and remuneration details of an employee.

In all 3 spheres mentioned above, you as Payroll professional will be trusted to be 100% truthful and honest. This develops your reputation as someone who is trustworthy!

So let me implore you to do everything in your power to retain the trust you have worked so hard to build up in your organization. One careless mistake…a word spoken out of turn…and trust will be broken in an instant!
Do everything you can to be 100% truthful and honest, so that all who deal with you can depend on you to be trustworthy. A Payroll professional who safeguards the confidential information you have access to, (and is entrusted to you), whether from management, employees or outside institutions.

Some useful tips to keep in mind:

  • Don’t be tempted to talk out of turn
  • Never divulge someone’s sensitive, private information (without their permission)
  • Never say “yes” when you know the right answer is “no”
  • Never be underhand in your words or behaviour (especially if it’s against the law, or a breach of company policy)
  • Be mindful of what you post on social media
  • Guard confidential documents carefully – don’t leave them open for prying eyes to see

As a Payroll professional, take pride in the trust your company puts in you, Trusted employeeand always act with integrity! This is an essential part of your job. Don’t let one careless mistake destroy all you have worked for. Remember, trust is EARNED, and very hard to restore once lost!

Coming next… Hat 7: The Payroll Professional as Counsellor

The payroll professional — boosting your ‘relevance factor’ in an information-hungry business world

Relevance on screenDoes the Payroll Professional know everything?

Yes, the payroll professional does know everything because we are expected to know everything! We know all about that which is happening in our organisation: from employee overtime, to employee leave and sometimes, even advance warnings of retrenchments too.

Sometimes, we’re also privy to sensitive information related to employees’ personal lives: sensitive information such as garnishee order details, it88a’s, turbulence in marriages and sometimes, the soon-to-be birth of an employee’s new baby.

In addition, it is without doubt, also essential for the payroll professional to be well acquainted with his/her organisation’s company policies and procedures.

Importantly, although our ‘knowing everything’ is of value to our organisation, the overriding ability to wisely utilise this all-knowing knowledge is the true differentiator that determines our ‘relevance factor’ within our organisation. In the eyes of management, this fact certainly does encourage the payroll professional to be highly relevant at all times.

As a payroll professional, if you wish to boost your ‘relevance factor’, why not try focussing on the following 5 pointers:

Staying relevantBe able to provide an analysis of your organisation’s payroll information

The ability to deliver a 100% accurately-processed payroll (that is always 100% on time) is the absolute minimum standard for your department. This is what senior management expect of the payroll professional.  The  payroll professional’s relevance is boosted, for example, by their ability to present a meaningful analysis of the most recent payroll-run. Be ready to provided insights on:

  • New employees
  • Resignations
  • Overtime hours and cost breakdowns
  • Leave provision numbers
  • Gross salary costs
  • Highlighting areas of concern and challenges
  • A full expense line-by-line expense analysis

Be able to provide an analysis of relevant trends in the workplace

The printing of management reports is usually automated. These reports however, merely provide data that has been summarised in a viewable or printable format. Your relevance factor increases when value is added by proposing insights that have been extracted from these reports owing to the payroll professional’s discerning interpretation and analysis. This is done by, for example:

  • Looking at the trends and proposing pre-emptive solutions.
  • Highlighting discrepancies on a month to month basis.
  • Comparing your company’s performance to some sort of industry norm or benchmark.
  • Providing an analysis of past performance (e.g. last year’s numbers) versus current performance (this year’s numbers), including the ability to provide credible reasons for differences and discrepancies.

Acquire a solid knowledge (and understanding) of the statutory laws that impact your organisation’s workforce

Never forget that the payroll professional ought to be the favoured ‘go-to-person’ when the management team wishes to know anything about:

  • fringe benefit taxes
  • the basic conditions of employment act
  • tax filing procedures
  • retrenchment calculations

Consequently, the payroll professional needs to be certain that he/she is up-to-date and fully knowledgeable on the relevant legislation. This will facilitate the ability to readily (and competently) offer good advice to your management team. Be sure too, to ensure that when providing information, that it is accurate and without calculation error.

Acquire a solid knowledge (and understanding) of your organisation’s internal policies and proceduresI want to be relevant

That Policies and Procedures manual should be your most loved resource. Operational practices in the payroll department should not be allowed if it falls outside of the allowable parameters set out in this manual. Payroll departments do not bend policy! If policy does indeed need some degree of discretionary bending, leave it to senior management to decide on this course of action.

The payroll professional however, strictly enforces policies and procedures at all times. Consistency is what this is all about too. Be sure to treat all employees fairly: according to their allotted entitlements and not according to their likeability, or their lack thereof.

Understand your organisation’s employees — strive to truly get to ‘know’ your employees

More often than not, the payroll professional is first to know when there are individual challenges that employees may be facing on a personal (or work) level. We have access to sensitive personal information. For this very reason, the payroll professional is well-positioned to intervene early, often enabling them to ward off potential calamity or disaster in the process.

The payroll professional’s ‘relevance factor’ is founded upon the need for excellent operational systems, a thorough understanding of legislation, and full conversance with company policies and procedures. Relevance factors are even more greatly boosted when one works hard to regularly provide meaningful analysis and insights.

In our information-hungry business world, the payroll professional’s relevance factor is a primary determinant of organisational success.

What’s your relevance factor?