Admin aspirin: Software for pain relief

Pro

1 April 2005

You’re the manager of a small business. Your company has weathered last year’s dip in the economy and you’re looking to the upturn promised by the ESRI for increased business activity, and even expansion.

However, IBEC has indicated that although talk of recovery is common, all the main indicators of economic activity had fallen very sharply throughout 2001, and the level of activity at the beginning of this year was very low. With that in mind, you want to get full value from every employee and replace the manual bookkeeping and paper file system with an automated accounts and payroll solution.

Carry out an internal audit

According to Orla Stewart, product strategy manager, Sage Ireland, there are some basic questions that must be answered before choosing one particular solution over another. For example, will the package integrate with your banking software? Can you upload payment to the bank and download and reconcile statements? Do you transact in only one currency, or will you need to invoice or pay suppliers in several currencies? Do you hold stock and do you want to record stock movement on a system? Is there a purchasing element to the package where you can record purchases and integrate this with your product costs?

Having identified your own requirements you must also comply with current legislation, she says. Whichever package you choose should contain some very basic features: It should conform to Irish VAT regulations. It should produce standard VAT reports and company accounts in a format to make returns to the companies office; it should be easy to install and easy to use. It should also have features that allow for easy invoicing, purchasing, stock management, as well as an easy to use reporting facility. In this respect, entry level products like Sage’s TAS and Instant for accounting and Quickpay for payroll require little or no training to set up and use.

Look to Line 50

Sage also produces Line 50 which, although requiring more training than TAS, is the type of product bought by someone who has accounting experience and who is no longer ‘doing the books’ but ‘producing accounts’ for the company.

One of the advantages of Line 50 is that it accepts all manner of information from Microsoft Office, as does Instant Plus. Padraig Gill of Intelligo, which produces VIP Manager and Megapay software for small businesses, agrees that one of the principal features of payroll and accounts software is that it should conform with current Irish VAT and tax regulations. Payroll is, by its very nature, complex and not very easy to understand—particularly with all the changes to the PRSI system and also now with the introduction of the tax credits based system. Reporting must be clear, concise and understandable. With the every changing conditions of employment in a buoyant labour market, payroll must be flexible in terms of being able to handle a variety of pay elements, deductions and variations—it must be adaptable as your business grows. Key features, he adds, should include facilities to pay staff by paypath, communicate with Revenue Commissioners via ROS, payroll journal upload to nominal ledger, job costing and a payslip history.

Good payroll is important

While Intelligo is currently using its own Megapay payroll system, this product is really aimed at companies employing more than 400. Especially designed for small firms, VIP Manager is a comprehensive, easy-to-use system for holding all employee details and costs around €500. Working like Windows explorer—with the navigator on the left—you can navigate through your company with the relevant files/employees appearing on the right.

Both the VIP HR Manager and VIP Payroll Manager are out-of-the-box solutions with very little training involved and both are fully compatible with Word, Excel, Outlook and Internet Explorer. The Word and Outlook compatibility is particularly useful for generating salary increase letters, end of probation letters etc. While in combinations with Excel ‘what-if?’ exercises, become relatively easy, he says.

Another payroll/accounts package designed specifically for small companies is FoundationsXP produced by Access-Accounts. Easy to install, easy to learn and easy to use, Access Account’s Ken Dooley says FoundationsXP is designed specifically for small companies which require access for three concurrent users and upwards. Designed to handle all of the complex procedures associated with double entry bookkeeping automatically, FoundationsXP features easy-to-use installation and set up wizards ensure that you can be up and running as quickly as possible with little or no training. All of the products in the Access Accounts range can offer a direct, completely reliable two-way link between Microsoft applications like Excel and live accounts data. In Excel, for example, FoundationsXP will appear on your main menu. You can refresh your chosen spreadsheet with up-to-the minute accounts data, instantly—leaving you free to concentrate on using the information to your advantage. The Microsoft Word link enables the user to produce letters using information extracted directly from your Customer and Supplier records, and to attach a copy of each item sent to any number of account records.

Outsource and reduce risk

Finally, rather than looking to technology to take the pain out of company administration, businesses may consider outsourcing both payroll and other HR functions either in part or in their entirety to an outside company.

Carapeople is one such a company. By outsourcing payroll to Carapeople, the risks associated with making costly technology and implementation errors are eliminated. The company processes and reports on payroll and executes electronic funds transfers. Carapeople has developed interfaces between its operating systems and most industry standard financial packages that eliminate duplication and facilitate the sharing of data between departments. Typically, no additional training is required. Innovations like online payslips and electronic workflow for expenses and overtime input, are some of the elements a company like Carapeople can offer.

Efficiencies like these can be brought to bear throughout an organisation and are in addition to the cost savings generated by outsourcing payroll and other aspects of HR. Companies that fall into this category generally deliver tailor-made solutions to individual companies and, as far as payroll is concerned, can range from a simple bureau service to full outsourcing.

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