Save on overhead costs and bring your payroll in-house

With the COVID-19 restrictions finally eased, business owners all over Ireland are enjoying a permanent return to normal business operations after two years of repeated openings and closures. It’s been an incredibly costly two years for businesses, not only in revenue lost due to closure but also in money spent on adapting their infrastructure to suit social distancing rules.

Although we’ve moved back to normality, COVID-19 remains a lurking threat and it’s not surprising that businesses are looking to save costs where they can. One overhead that employers will be looking at reducing is payroll. They can do this by switching from outsourced payroll services to doing it themselves in-house. The good news for businesses looking to bring their payroll in-house is the availability of great payroll software that can help them achieve this.

Payroll software, such as BrightPay, offers employers an intuitive, easy-to-use application, which even the most inexperienced payroll processor can, in a short time, get to grips with. It will keep you up to date with changes to payroll and tax legislation as well as provide you with free support including online demos, webinars, and video tutorials.

If you haven’t processed payroll before or have very little experience with it, here are some points to consider when bringing your payroll in-house:

1. Work with your accountant:

Although you’re making the decision to bring payroll in-house, you’ll still likely be working with your accountant to help manage your finances and prepare your accounts. If they managed your payroll previously, they will likely be able to transfer files to facilitate you in setting up on your own. With BrightPay you can set up at any time, start partway of the tax year or continue partway in the tax year.

BrightPay currently offers direct import options for a number of different payroll software providers, allowing you to quickly import your company and employee details. If your accountant uses a different software, BrightPay can facilitate the import of employee information in CSV format or through the use of Revenue Payroll Notifications.

2. Trial it out:

If you’re unsure about how well you will manage payroll on your own, don’t commit to it yet. Instead, try out the software. Trialling it out can allow you to conduct a test payroll run while at the same time your accountant can continue to run the payroll separately. This means that if you do make a mistake, it won’t have an impact on your employees. It also gives you the chance to compare the payroll information in parallel, to see if and where you went wrong.

BrightPay offers a 60-day free trial of its payroll software, an ideal way to test out the software to see if it’s the right fit for your business. The free trial version has full functionality with no limitations to any of the features.

3. Use the opportunity to add new HR features

BrightPay Connect, the cloud extension to BrightPay, offers an employer and employee self-service portals that can help streamline HR tasks and better integrate it with payroll. With BrightPay Connect, you can:

• Share payslips directly to employees using the BrightPay Connect app
• Manage annual leave requests made by employees using the app
• Share confidential documents with employees such as their contract of employment
• View and access payroll reports
• View amounts paid and due to Revenue

4. Consider the accounting software:

If you do decide to bring payroll in-house, you will still need to send payroll journals and payroll data to your accountant. Choosing a payroll software that offers integration with accounting software can save you and your accountant time and hassle. API integration allows you to send this information directly to the general ledger in the accounting package. BrightPay includes direct API integration with the following accounting software: AccountsIQ, QuickBooks Online, Sage Business Cloud Accounting, Xero, and Surf Accounts.

Discover more:
Bringing payroll in-house is entirely do-able. While there are challenges associated with it, more and more businesses are seeing the benefits of it. To help you understand the full benefits that a business can gain by bringing their payroll in-house, book an online demo of BrightPay and speak to a member of our team today.

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