Although payroll management process should be a simple and efficient one, it’s rather problematic for most of the small businesses. A company may opt for one system that works well in the beginning stages of running the business but as it expands and the number of employees starts to grow, its methods can become paralyzing.
And if it happens to be a business with a unique set of policies and rules for employees’ salaries, complex job evaluation process,  processing payroll may take a lot of time if done manually.
Indeed, every business is in some way special when it comes to their payroll process needs, but there are certain steps that almost any company can take in order to improve the payroll management process.
If you also plan to, or happen to already be in transition to a new payroll management system, you’ll most definitely face challenges, but strategic changes will turn out to be an invaluable investment for your company.
Organize and Track your Payroll Schedules
It’s a common practice for companies to keep up multiple pay schedules like for example weekly or biweekly pay periods for employees, as well as monthly paydays for executives. However, since it can cause some major errors throughout the payroll process it’s best to minimize pay cycles as much as possible and enable for payroll department to work more efficiently. The idea is to automate the process and leave little, or ideally no space for errors.
Switch to Paperless Payroll Process
If you’re like most of the today’s business owners, no doubt you’re considering ways to cut costs, sustain your data security, go green and generally take advantage of how much technology has improved and how it can accelerate your payroll processes.
Paperless payroll process helps you eliminate time sheets, time cards as well as paper pay stubs. Furthermore, this change is likely to be welcomed by your employees as most of them prefer to  get their paycheck information electronically.
Forget About Manual, Switch to Automated
If you still happen to rely on spreadsheets, or God forbid, write down payroll information by hand, forget about it immediately, it’s 2016 and you can’t afford to be that slow and ineffective nor to increase the chances for human error. Since they are massive time savers and provide you with a more precise and complete payroll data, automated software solutions for payroll processes management are the way to go today.
Their flexibility, automated processes, no need for expertise, time saving and added security are just some of the benefits that make companies opt more and more  for specialized payroll solutions.
Another benefit of relying on cutting-edge payroll software solutions is that they also migrate to cloud making it possible for managers to approve and process payroll even if they’re not in the office. On the other hand, employees can also access their information online through a single dashboard.
Integrate!
Since payroll and HR are so closely related,  it seems natural to integrate tools for keeping track of employees’ time and  performance with your payroll processes tools. Having all information such as time, leave, payroll and schedule  unified in one central solution allow for a better accordance between this data while also making payroll processing more intuitive and straightforward.
Encourage Regular Education and Training
Given how dynamic and evolving payroll management is, constant education and training are inevitable, especially for payroll and HR professionals. Constant changes and progress in technology, as well as the ever-expanding role of HR managers, require for these professionals to always be up-to-date. Â
It turns out that an on-going education, both self-paced and formal, happens to be the essential force which drives the success of any HR professional.
Finally, it’s safe to say that by embracing new methodologies and what technology has to offer, managers can significantly improve how their payroll department performs and move the focus from technical-operational to business-influential.