Running payroll manually sucks. I mean it really sucks. You can spend hours, thousands of dollars and still risk making mistakes. Thankfully, intuitive cloud-based payroll software can spare businesses the expense and the hassle.

Payroll software and integrations have numerous benefits. Let’s take a look at ones that stand out the most:
 

Reduce mistakes and say goodbye to payroll headaches

Doing payroll manually is an obstacle course of potential mistakes. You may, for instance, miss payroll deadlines or forget to send in 1099s. You could misclassify employees or miscalculate taxes. And, you could even log hours incorrectly, too. Talk about a headache!

We have a saying at Hubdoc: ABA - Always Be Automating. We follow this as a mantra for our product as well as an important part of our culture. Software can complete tasks much faster than we ever could. This helps us scale as a business and become better as a team. The same goes for you as a business owner.

Going from a manual payroll process to an automated one is a great example of ABA. Payroll software drastically reduces the chance for human error. Software can schedule payments and the sending out of forms. It can also automatically look for tax updates and make adjustments to any tax calculations for you. And more!

Requiring only minimal data entry to start, software vastly reduces the likelihood of errors. It won’t misread a data field because it is tired, or miscalculate taxes, or forget due dates. It eliminates the payroll obstacle course.
 

Create an audit trail & centralize key information

Paper-based audit trails can be fraught with errors. Once the arduous task of running a manual payroll is complete, papers often get shuffled into a desk drawer or filing cabinet. It’s pretty hard to identify where a mistake has been made in this way.

Software makes it easy to see changes made and who made them. Also, if you’re a small business with an accountant or bookkeeper, changes no longer have to be communicated via email (or get lost in your email!). All changes happen in one place, in real-time - thanks to payroll software. No more delays, repeated requests for confirmations, and even more email traffic if there are any questions.

This was once the reality for business Dijital Fix, as founder David Auerbach explained in a case study with Gusto. Now, using cloud-based payroll software, he can check payroll himself, and read reports presented in layman’s terms. He can also give others access to the payroll system. This means no more email tag and allowing him to scale his time through delegation.
 

Customize payroll based on your needs

Payroll is complicated. There are many factors to consider to accurately run it, including: Taxes, deductions for benefits, wage garnishment, form preparation, time tracking, overtime, commissions, bonuses, raises, payments and reimbursements.

Modern payroll software is built with customization in mind and removing this headache. It takes all these complex calculations and does them for you, based on what you need. It requires only basic data entry to start with. You can utilize the available bells and whistles to keep you from tearing your hair out trying to manually figure out payroll minutiae.

For example, by leveraging an awesome time-tracking solution, like TSheets, you can simplify payroll dramatically. Leak Eliminators, a construction company that uses TSheets, went from spending 15-20 hours every week tracking down and entering employee hours to 10 minutes per week (here’s the case study). They have an audit trail and a solution that fits their needs. It’s even increased team morale!

Automation can make a massive difference to your business

Adopting modern payroll software will save you plenty of time and money that would otherwise be lost in a manual environment. Payroll is necessary and it doesn't need to be a pain.

What do you think is the greatest benefit of payroll software? Drop us a comment or tweet at us @Hubdoc! And if you enjoyed this article, subscribe to our blog to get more sent straight to your inbox!

Any questions or recommendations for future articles? Feel free to send me an email at hedy@hubdoc.com.