Payroll is a seemingly small but integral part of running any business. The thing that employees always want to know is when they’re getting paid and how they’re getting paid, so it only makes sense why it would be so crucial to make sure that this part of your business is at its most efficient at all times.
Payroll processing is a duty of any good business owner to figure out, but it doesn’t end there. You need to make it more useful for everyone involved, which means making sure that it is effective and purposeful. Using these tips, you can figure out how to turn your payroll services into a much more efficient version of its previous iteration.
SWITCH TO DIGITAL RECORD-KEEPING
The world is going digital at a rapid rate, which means you need to keep up. Any business that is still relying on physical record-keeping is going to be lagging behind the competition in major ways, so the best solution is to take the leap of faith and go digital. The advantages of digital record keeping are numerous, with the most prominent advantages being relief on expenses and a reduction in storage space. Digital storage is a lot easier to maintain and more reliable, especially for on the go payroll documents. Cloud storage is another excellent way to safeguard against hardware failure as a backup option. In any case, going digital with payroll records is a must for the modern business model.
USE THIRD-PARTY SERVICES
Outsourcing is a business model that works well in many instances, and one, in particular, is the outsourcing of work for payroll services. If you look at the services from Zenefits, you can see how outsourcing could be a potentially useful way to clear up time and resources in your office or business to get more work done. It’s not always the best idea to take on too much responsibility, even as the employer. You need to be able to multi-task really well, but outsourcing to third-party services is a great way to get professional help on all of the major functions of payroll operations without bogging down the rest of your work. This is something to consider when you need to make your processing more efficient.
TRAIN YOUR TEAM ON PAYROLL
Outsourcing is only one piece of the puzzle and for many smaller businesses, it might be one that isn’t quite yet attainable. The problem is that a smaller business or one operating on a tight revenue-operating cost margin will not be able to spare the extra cost to hire more services, even if they are affordable, so it’s good to train from within. Training a team or individual on some of the payroll processes is necessary to make your business more successful, cost-efficient, and operationally efficient.
SWITCH TO DIRECT DEPOSIT
Going digital is obviously a major key point when it comes to advancing a business’s operations and securing its future, so you want to be sure that you are also providing a lot of incentive to the employees about this move to a more digitized system. Direct deposit for payment should be the norm going forward as it reduces costs for paper filing and processing and it gets the money into the hands of the hard-working employees faster. Direct deposit is also much simpler to manage and reduces inconsistencies in payment processing.
INCLUDE ELECTRONIC PAY STUBS
Adding on to direct deposit as a solution for more efficient payroll processing is the need to include or adopt electronic pay stubs. Electronic pay stubs are another solution to help employees track their payments and maintain a much more efficient filing of important information. Reducing the time it takes for employees to monitor their earnings is a net benefit to everyone, especially for tax filings for earnings.
SCALE YOUR SERVICES
Lastly, you need to make sure that your business is prepared for change. All of these digital trends and solutions are only as effective as the business that can support them for the future. Making sure you are running compatible systems, are willing to adopt new technologies, and are able to scale the services you use to meet your needs for growth or contraction is important for maintaining this level of efficiency in payroll processing, and other processes, for the foreseeable future.
Running a business efficiently is a key goal in changing and adapting to new systems and solutions, and payroll is an area that shouldn’t be ignored. Using these tips, you can find ways to help make your business much more efficient.
