The start of a new year is always a good time for small businesses to consider upgrading their time software. With more employees working at home than ever before due to coronavirus, thousands of small business owners understand that they must have accurate and efficient time software. As a company that has provided payroll and other support services for area small businesses for years, Palmetto Payroll understands what to look for when upgrading to new time software. We share some important factors to consider in this blog post.
Flexibility is Key
With today’s highly segregated and mobile workforce, you need multiple ways for employees, independent contractors, and your sales team to record their time. Whether you have employees working at home, in the main office under your direct supervision, or a hundred miles away at a satellite office, your time software must offer the ability to record working hours accurately.
Another reason you must have flexibility with timekeeping is that each worker earns a different rate. You must be able to adjust how your time recording system determines overtime pay for hourly employees while continuing to figure out pay for salaried employees at the same rate. If your company offers incentive pay for any reason, your timekeeping system must be flexible enough to adjust for that as well. The changing demographics in the workforce has driven the demand for mobile-friendly timekeeping options, and we expect that will only continue heading into 2021.
Look for Time Software to Help Calculate Paid Time Off and Employee Expenses
Managing a large or mobile team is challenging enough before adding payroll duties to the mix. However, employees will incur reimbursable expenses and will need to occasionally take time off for personal reasons. The best timekeeping software enables you to streamline these tasks. Employees should be able to submit their expense reports and request approval for time off from home, a satellite office, or wherever they happen to be working. You might even consider a timekeeping and payroll system that allows employees to submit receipts electronically for prompt reimbursement.
Easy to Set Up with Training and Troubleshooting Provided
Having efficient time software with multiple automated features is great, but only if you receive proper support. It should not take days or weeks to set up payroll for the first time nor should the software provider leave you on your own to figure out your own solutions to problems. Be sure to ask about support availability to give yourself assurance that a minor problem won’t slow you down to the point of delaying payroll.
Consider Outsourcing to Palmetto Payroll
You have a limited amount of time and resources as a small business owner, which means you want to spend your time wisely growing your company. While payroll is a necessity, the time you spend processing it is not billable to anyone else. Outsourcing payroll to our company allows you to focus exclusively on managing and growing your small business. This is what we do, and we do it well. We invite you to learn more about payroll and other services that we offer to support your small business.
