Payroll is an important part of any business that should be made as effective as possible with well-designed processes. If you own a business and want to increase the efficiency of your payroll practices, you will likely be presented with several options on how to do this. Regardless of payroll system you are considering using, there are several things you should do to ensure that your new system is implemented in the best possible way. Below are some tips on how to get through this implementation process successfully.
Involve Your Employees in the Payroll System Evaluation Process
No one knows the features your payroll system must have better than the employees who will use them every day. Take time to ask your employees what they would like to see as an improvement to your existing payroll process and take their input seriously. Once you have decided on the system to use, involve your employees in the training process as early as possible. The sooner they learn how to use it, the sooner you will see positive changes in your payroll practices.
Find Manual Tasks In Your Payroll That Can Be Automated
Many businesses today still do the majority of their payroll manually, which means that employees do the calculations and record information manually. This is not only very time consuming, but requires storage space for the documents involved when payroll is done in such a way. Take some time to take an in-depth look at the tasks your employees need to complete and list the things that can be automated with your new system. Doing so will save a lot of time down the line, meaning your employees will be able to focus on other tasks that can benefit your business more than doing the tedious payroll work.
Pay attention to the Rules and Legal Requirements
There are many government regulations that you as an employer need to follow, which is one of the main problems causing inefficiencies in business payroll systems. The solution to this is to take the time to choose a new payroll system that makes it easy to stay compliant with these legal requirements to limit fines and wasted time. Any good payroll system these days will automatically update itself with the latest regulations, as they are always changing, so keep this in mind when you evaluate them.
Have Your Payroll Information Ready Now
As you get closer to implementing your new payroll system, you will want to ensure that all existing payroll information that needs to be imported into it is properly organized and in the correct format. This was part of implementing a new payroll system that was notorious for causing a lot of delays. Thus, you can significantly reduce the risk of hang ups with just a little preparation. Another thing to keep in mind when importing information into your new system is that it is very important to make sure that everything is imported correctly. The last thing you want is to get rid of your old system only to realize you’ve lost important information along with it.
Thoroughly Test Your New System
Spend as much time as you need to test your new payroll system before fully implementing it. Business owners usually find that this is the best way to resolve the kinks that must exist after making major changes to the way your organization operates. While it is tempting to skip this step, it is not recommended, as errors uncovered during the testing phase are not dangerous, while doing the same in real business situations can potentially be very costly.
As long as you keep these few things in mind, you will be successful in implementing a new payroll system into your business. Doing so will allow your business to work more efficiently in a number of ways, which will reduce wasted time and increase profits.
Rebecca White Side. Find more helpful HR tips at HR Payroll System Blog
