- You either manually update general ledger accounts with payroll information or are using some type of export from one system and import into your financial system. Whoever does this uses a process that takes too much time. The cost associated with this process is high, and it causes inconsistency between systems or errors.
- You do not have a system to manage HR processes, such as recruitment/applicant tracking. Your HR and Payroll systems are either integrated, or if not, it takes too much time to reenter shared data. You have inconsistencies, and too much time is spent trying to reconcile and correct. On the other hand, if your systems are integrated, the way they do so is inefficient and you still find yourself doing duplicate data entry. The impact of that time spent is negative and costs too much.
- You have to set up and track certain information about your employees. It takes too long to enter this information into the system, and you find yourself entering repetitive/like information which applies to many employees, such as pay code, department name, etc. When you need to change information that applies to multiple workers, this change is made per employee record – there is no way to update all records at once.
- It is difficult to track benefits and deductions. You are unable to track all of the ones that you offer to employees, and it is not very easy to accommodate premium changes. Your method of applying these changes to all applicable employees is inefficient. You need to manually update each employee individually, and this takes too much time.
- It is difficult to capture employee hours/time. Employees fill out some type of time card that someone else then manually enters into your payroll system, and it takes too much time for the average employee to complete the time card. It is also too time-consuming for someone to enter all of these hard-copy time cards into your payroll system and to reconcile the time cards.
- You are unable to view and validate eligibility, benefit deductions, and other payroll-specific reports. You cannot generate many of the other kinds of reports that are important to you either. These are may be reports you create, or they may be part of your current system. You are unable to answer requests for information and/or questions quickly based on accurate and concrete data. It takes too long to access and compile that information.
- It takes too long to create required quarterly reports for 941 reporting. You may have multiple companies,
and, if so, it takes too long to consolidate these numbers. They may be inaccurate the first time. Your current method of compiling information for W2s is inefficient. If it is a manual process, it takes too long. Sometimes, to have to redo them due to inaccurate numbers, and you cannot produce the new year’s payroll without having finalized W2s, etc. from the previous year. There has been a high cost associated with getting them out late. - You have to pay unemployment. Your current approach to tracking/paying your unemployment liability is
inefficient. It takes too long to determine your unemployment liabilities. You have to pay workers’ compensation, but your method of tracking and paying your workers’ compensation liabilities is also
inefficient. It takes too much time to determine these liabilities. - You pay both salaries and hourly wages to employees, and may use various methods to pay them. You do not have unique pay requirements, and it is difficult for the Payroll Clerk to produce payroll checks. You cannot create checks on the fly, and it takes too much time for your organization to process checks.
- You do not offer many different payment methods, though perhaps you do offer direct deposit. If you do not currently offer direct deposit, you find that employees request this option. You have employees that are not bankable, which makes paying them more complicated, and you cannot accommodate payment by a bank card. You write manual checks as opposed to processing printed ones, and it takes too long and costs too much to create the manual checks.
- If either you or the payroll clerk is gone on vacation or sick leave, checks must be generated by someone else, but it takes too long for a new user getting started to process checks. You do not have a routine/certain steps you follow when processing payroll, or, if you do, there are ramifications for doing it out of order. You have been interrupted during the payroll process before, and as a result you did not know where you left off or how to recover and complete the work.
- You need to update the tax rates within your current system often. Your way of doing this is inefficient and
time-consuming, though, and you are not quite confident in its accuracy.
