Optimizing Payroll Process

Keep Your Payroll in Order and Your Employees Happy

If you’re like most companies, whether you’re a commercial business or a not for profit organization, employees are your most valued assets. In order to attract and retain a strong employee base, it’s important to get your Payroll process running right. Here are some tips to optimizing Payroll process:

Use a third party Payroll service provider: You may be doing Payroll in-house now using some type of software. However, as you grow, there are benefits to having a Payroll service provider do this work, since the process is often detailed and tedious, and can cause major issues if not done correctly. Outsourcing your payroll function saves you the cost of an internal staff person. Or, if you’re a smaller company, you may be doing this pain-staking process yourself; think of all the time you could free up to focus on growing your business.

There are several companies who specialize in providing full services for Payroll, including the processing of benefits, W-2’s and government tax filings. Since Payroll is their key competency, you can rely on their expertise and feel confident that they are using the most up-to-date software and tax tables. And, if you’re like many companies who worry about the security of your in-house technologies, you can gain peace of mind by outsourcing to a company with more state of the art security protocols. You can also minimize the likelihood of IRS penalties for late or inaccurate filings, since these professionals are experts at what they do, and can facilitate your proper compliance with the appropriate external authorities.

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Streamline and enhance your Payroll process: To make your Payroll process run as effectively as possible, consider the following:

• Integrate with your Accounting system: Consider a payroll service that can integrates with your accounting system. For example, many small businesses who use QuickBooks Online also use its Payroll solution. This enables you to automatically update your books for Payroll-related activity, which eliminates the extra steps of having to import data files and do double data entry.

• Understand your People costs: People costs are often the largest line item expense on a company’s financial statements. Managing and accounting for this time is an important priority for successful businesses. If you aren’t currently allocating and tracking staff’s time spent on programs, customers, jobs, or other important categories relevant to your business, you are likely missing out on some important information. Consider implementing a time management system that integrates with your Payroll and Accounting systems. This enables you to see actionable information, and can inform your decisions about staffing and pricing strategies.

• Don’t forget about internal controls: Even if you outsource your Payroll process, you’re still responsible for ensuring strong internal controls for your organization. Therefore, when searching for payroll service providers, be prepared with specific questions that deal with access and security and disaster recovery controls. Once you choose a provider, make sure your contract addresses those areas. Encourage your employees to choose direct deposits, since paper checks are more vulnerable to fraudulent transactions. And, to prevent payroll errors, institute review steps in the process, such as management review and approval of time cards and changes to your payroll information (e.g., new employees, changes in salary, etc.).

How Consultance Accounting can help: As a virtual accounting firm who performs outsourced accounting services for small and medium-sized businesses, we can perform your bookkeeping and accounting services, to include processing, recording and reconciling your Payroll. We use cloud-based technologies that integrate with each other to streamline the process. This includes automating your time-tracking process, using Tsheets, and customizing it to your company’s specific needs and industry requirements. We can also set up mobile option, which provides flexibility for employees who are on the road. We’ll implement job costing and ensure your timekeeping system is integrated with your Payroll and accounting systems. We’ll show you to generate and interpret meaningful reports so that you can make better business decisions.

Contact Us if you have questions and/or need more assistance.

Consultance leverages exceptional talent, proven processes, and top technology platforms to deliver timely & accurate financial solutions that help small and medium-sized organizations improve productivity, increase profitability, optimizing payroll process, and achieve their goals.