Payroll, by the Push of a Button (page 1 of 2)

And on payday, no calls from the employee base for a corrected checks! WOW wouldn't that make payroll easy! This technology exists but the legislation is not quiet there yet. How close are we to a paperless payroll? Let's see.

Not a Myth or Fantasy
Payroll information can be paperless today, thanks to technology. Recruiting systems enable applicants to apply online, and the information they enter automatically populates their employee records upon hire. The employees are the experts and enter their own data, ensuring the data entered is correct -- at the source by the source! Employees can enter their own address, W-4 (this is one place legislation is not quite there yet, not all states are accepting online entry), time entry, and direct deposit information.

Deposits can be made to bank accounts in any country in any currency, investment funds, or cash cards; the choice belongs to the employee. Soon employees will push a button on their online payslip and have the data download into their personal finance systems. At year-end, thanks to recent legislation, employees can receive their W-2 online and with a push of a button complete their 1040 e-filing. Current technology provides full-cycle, paperless, 360-degree employee processing.

These are benefits you can provide to your employees make their lives easier. and yours, too.

For the employer, there are also many exciting things happening.

Hurry up and Wait
Historically, the payroll manager gathers time, massages data, and rushes to process the payroll in the last few days of the pay period. Then as the payroll manager finishes one cycle, distributes checks, the calls start for corrections.... then more corrections... and the fun starts all over again.

Today, you can run your payroll at the beginning of the cycle, for instance you can process all salary employees at the beginning of the cycle. This allows you to pick up any changes to the employees record and reprocess only those employees with changes -- along with your timecard employee base -- at the end of the cycle. This type of payroll process management allows for reduced processing time at the end of the cycle. You can spread the load during normally hectic processing times. You no longer need to have someone monitor your payroll runs overnight and submit successive jobs to complete the payroll run.

You can string together the applicable payroll processes with checkpoints after each process to look for any exceptions based own your own policies, and then automatically page the appropriate party when run time, business policy violations, or other unacceptable limits are exceeded. Such a technology-based payroll system checks that an entry is retro active and performs the appropriate retroactive calculations; it recognizes that a W-4 filed exceeds the federal/state exemption limits and is automatically selected for filing with the government.

With employees and managers performing self-service transactions, payroll managers no longer need to audit changes in the same manner as before ; you can rely on technology to perform the checks and actions that used to be done by people.

These are just a few examples of what is being done today by software system to fully automate the payroll process.

However, E-business software alone is not enough for today's payroll professionals. Information is available from many sources to assist today's Payroll and Payroll Tax Professionals.