Five Payroll Management Software Features You Can't Live Without

Forget charismatic CEOs and company founders, millions of dollars in funding, or rapid gloabl expansion with cutting-edge tech. Real sucess is built on people. So, staff happiness and welfare have become key to driving your success. But is that all you need? 

In today's world, even the happiest staff will need digital support to get work done. There's only so much anyone can do in eight hours. So, where's the benefit in manually doing reptitive administrative tasks that could be automated? Letting you free your people to work on more complex and meaningful projects. 

Payroll management does more than simply track everyone's salaries. The problem is the amount it does is inconsistent every year. As businesses pick up the pace, so must their payroll software and the people using it. But what if the software could do this on its own and let you do more? But how?

When looking at payroll management software, business in Asia need to consider five specific features when reviewing their own prcoesses.

1. Automation 

Why stop at one or a few tasks when you could automate them all? Payroll management covers much more than most people realize.

In a nutshell, modern Human Resources (HR) and payroll software must hav a built-in salary calculator that deals with the following input, as ell as different rules per employee hierarchy:

• Gross monthly salary 
• Monthly and annual taxes
• Deductions due to additional absences or penalties 
• Annual employee bonuses
• Reimbursements for employee claims and related out-of-pocket expenses
• Staff benefits - including medical, overtime pay, and available paid time off

The other concern here is record-keeping for every fiscal year. People come and go, get promoted or demoted, move within their departments or transfer to others. Job descriptions change, evolve, or disappear. Departments expand, shrink, or combine. It's a normal part of every year, and you need to keep track of it all. 

Whatever the activity, every cent must be accounted for as it happens. Surely your system shoud do this automatically?

Lastly, good payroll software should remove any worry about printing payslips or salary statements, as well as conducting automatic payouts. And it should be able to do this on its own. 

2. Wide coverage 

Payroll isn't just about payroll. This part of HR also uses data from personnel records, daily attendance, and work hours (including overtime) information, availed and available leaves and absences, and employee claims.

Without this data, HR and payroll people can't calculate salaries and other benefits, so this data needs to be easily accessible, or there goes your employee confidence!

Like automation, payroll management software should cover all aspects of HR and accounting straight out of the box. It's all about the financial and human cost. Extra software adds to your total business expenses, which for small or new businesses squeezes finances even tighter. So any additional time spent on training employees to use new software and create new workflows is wasted time and money. 

3. Regional compliance 

In recent year, regulatory and regional compliance has become especially important. The problem is that it's costly and time-consuming for companies and employees to follow changes in industry rules, business requirements, salary deductions, government contributions, and tax laws. And this is true whether you operate in one country or many.

This also ties back to your first concern: automation. Asia Pacific-compliant payroll software must be able to implement localized changes as they happen, and without intervention by HR and accounting staff. Getting flagged by governments on compliance matters is something no company ever wants. 

4. Data visualization and presentation 

Recording your financial movements is one thing. Reviewing them is another one altogether. Your people simply don't have time or patience to sift through long reports or do a series of left-clicks just to find the information they need on-screen. 

Your HR and payroll software needs to deliver usable reports and insights for one employee, several employees, and entire departments and management groups instantly. And these reports have strike a delicate balance between being comprehensive, but also direct and easy to read. 

The goal is to give decision-makers everything they need quickly, so they can make the calls that keep the company running and profitable. 

Meaning your HR and accounting staff in charge of your payroll management software need to see these basics fast and in a well-designed dashboard. By well-designed, we mean it shows useful employee data in an easy and digestible way, in one place, and without the need to click on more menus and tabs. 

5. Long-term view 

A company's success and value aren't determined by profts. The real dealmaker? Human talent. If your people enjoy what they do and feel supported by you, they will stay - and give more every day. 

In return, you must nurture their talent and clearly communicate with them. It's just another form of investment, and it signals to people that you mean business. 

However, this is about more than just recording the results of their hard work, your software must have configurable modules that accommodate people's development and future progress. Think of appraisals and training, survey forms to see their real opinions, and HR insights to assist in their departments' resource planning and budgets. 

Which HR payroll software scores 5/5 here?

Payroll is just one aspect of your HR and accounting operations, but it's a critical part. Pulling information from across your company, it has the heavy burden of making sure everyone is compensated fairly, legally, and on time. 

One could say the same thing about payroll managment software. It must allow for automation, but with enough data for individual actions. It has to cover every business task, but also allow for selective use. It needs to work in one country and many, if and when required. And of course, it needs to be user-friendly, 

Unit4's Prosoft HRMS and Payroll Software ticks every box on this list. It automates your standard HR duties, powers a wide range of administrative and strategic tasks, makes you compliant with international laws for 10 Asia-Pacific markets, delivers condensed and glanceable data and reports, and has configurable modules for targeting future company and employee growth.

Aside from offering comprehensive payroll software, companies across Asia can call on Unit4 for HR and payroll outsourcing at any time. Our software and expert knowledge give you an end-to-end solution for your back-office functions. 

For help with any software deployment or to find out how our HR Payroll software can help you, contact us today.