When you are managing a business, there are a lot of things to take care of. Some require intense attention and meticulous management, while some don’t need much thought and could be handled by software. Payroll is one area that does not need much input from you as a business owner, but it serves as an important aspect of your business that often goes unnoticed and ignored.
Payroll software NZ is a program that helps you to understand that your employee’s income, tax, superannuation, and any other benefits will be calculated automatically. These days this software is used by the majority of small businesses for these tasks. The main aim of New Zealand payroll software is easy to use application for paying wages to employees in a legal way.
There are a lot of things you would have to think about when choosing payroll software for your small business. How much does it cost? What can it do for me? Where is the support if I need help setting it up and using it? With the right features, the right customer service, and several other factors, some software can be great while others are just not worth what they charge. Finding the best payroll software for a small business takes research and education.
SmartPayroll
As the first PAYE intermediary developed in New Zealand, SmartPayroll is one of the most popular and rapidly growing payroll platforms in New Zealand. SmartPayroll is easy to use, web-based and prides itself on industry-leading support that’s been at the forefront of their success. Setting up SmartPayroll for processing your PAYE is straightforward and intuitive, and takes just a minute to get started.
Features:
PayHero
PayHero helps you achieve total payroll compliance with intuitive and easy-to-use online payroll software designed to let you spend less time on payroll and more time on other areas within your business. Put your payroll on autopilot and integrate with TimeDock for real-time timesheets and a seamless end-to-end experience from out on-site, right through to wages in the bank.
Features:
- HR documentation
- Automatic payroll calculation
- Web based
- Leave management
iPayroll
iPayroll helps thousands of New Zealand businesses, big and small, simplify and streamline their payroll processing for paying employees. With their cloud-based feature-rich payroll dashboard, you can run your pay runs, manage leave, tax, and employee records. They also make it easy for employees to view their payslips, pay history, tax summaries and apply for leave.
Features:
- Payday filing
- Payroll giving
- HR & document management
- Leave management
Crystal Payroll
Crystal Payroll is a feature-packed cloud-based payroll software platform with a high level of service and functionality rolled into a single payroll processing software package. Choose the payroll service option that suits your business and scale up as your organization grows. Crystal Payroll is one of the IRD accredited PAYE intermediaries and has over 80,000 users.
Features:
- Auto payday filing
- Guaranteed compliance
- Cloud-based payroll
- Tailor-made addons
SmoothPay
SmoothPay’s goPayroll is simple online payroll software featuring automatic reporting and integrations with accounting systems like MYOB, Xero, Reckon, and MoneyWorks.
The software also has a self-service functionality that gives your employees access to their attendance, pay history, and a number of leaves. They’re the only online payroll that provides a complete and downloadable database, as well as a free offline reader.
Additionally, it complies with the NZ Holidays and Parental Leave Act, so you don’t have to manually set it for everyone in the workplace.
The monthly plan is competitive starting from $22.95. However, there’s not much of a difference in price (only 4 cents less per month) if you purchase the yearly plan.
Small companies with under 5 staff members can especially benefit from their services — their rates can be as low as 138 per year. Start-ups and those who just want the best value may find this to be the best payroll system in NZ for their needs.
MYOB
As the company grows, payroll becomes harder to manage. But not with the MYOB payroll software, as it automates your payroll regardless of how many employees you have.
It has a Pay Centre, which has a neat and clean interface where you can review payslips, start a pay run, view employee information, and others. As it’s compliant with Internal Revenue regulations, the deductions for KiwiSaver and PAYE are sent to them without the slightest bit of a hassle.
With the MYOB YourPay app, you can also conveniently work on your payroll at the office, home, or your local coffee shop. They also offer a free 30-day trial for the Essentials Payroll and the comprehensive Accounting + Payroll plans.
MYOB is one of the most reliable payroll software in NZ but we really like their generous trial period. It’s enough time for you to find out if the software suits your needs, which is better than spending days looking for free payroll software in NZ.
What to Know When Buying Payroll Software in NZ
There are several things you have to consider when buying payroll software in NZ. Let’s take a closer look at each of them:
1. Cost:
Payroll software in NZ can cost from $20 to more than $100 per month. You have to check if the price includes or excludes the Goods and Services Tax (GST) too.
Additionally, you may have to pay fees for the extra features, depending on the company you’re buying them from.
Some companies offer a lower price if you get the annual plan as opposed to the monthly plan, so the former is usually better value.
2. Compliance:
Your payroll software has to comply with NZ legislation on salaries, taxes, and the like. Otherwise, you will pay a hefty sum that can shake up your company’s earnings.
Also by complying with the law, you can rest easy knowing that you’re paying your workers the right amount of salary or wages every time.
3. Features:
The features of payroll software in NZ vary from product to product. These can either be built into the software already or added in if you want.
Let’s enumerate some of the features of the best NZ payroll software and define them:
- Direct deposit – This allows you to pay your employees by transferring their salaries directly into their account, saving time and effort compared to paying by check.
- Tax filing – This is an extremely useful feature that generates and files federal and state taxes automatically through the payroll. No need to do it manually!
- Self-service -Lets your customers access their payroll information, including pay history, time-out balances, tax forms, deductions, and others.
- Integrations – Having integrations streamlines your process and presents you with analytics that provide real-time and accurate business data.
- Security – Since payroll software data is sensitive and confidential, it’s crucial to have security features that will guard against other users with bad intentions.
- Notifications – Notifications help you become more efficient in managing the payroll. These include reminders, push notifications, and email and text alerts.
4. Ease of Use:
You also need something easy to use. Aside from that, the software payroll application has to look and feel tidy. Furthermore, you have to look for payroll software that supports a mobile app so that you can use it on both your desktop and smartphone to save you time and effort.
5. Support:
Finally, it’s crucial to have customer support back you whenever you’ve stumbled upon a technical issue or need to set up your new payroll software for your company.
Benefits of online payroll software
There are numerous payroll packages available. Some are designed to run on a single office PC, but these days the newer packages are capable of running online, using the cloud. There are significant advantages to this, such as:
- Anytime, anywhere access:
If your computer crashes, all your data could be lost. There’s no such issue with cloud-based online payroll systems. Just log in from another machine and carry on. - Multiple access:
Invite your bookkeeper or accountant into your payroll system to help manage it remotely from wherever they are. - Data security:
If an office laptop is lost or stolen, all your vital payroll information might be lost. Or worse – financial details could be hacked, potentially leaving you or your staff out of pocket. Cloud-based tools use strong encryption to keep your data secure and online, reducing the chance of data loss. - Work from anywhere:
Need to check some figures at the weekend when the office is closed, or while away on a business trip? No problem – just log in remotely at any time and access what you need.
Conclusion
These days everybody seems to need payroll software. We can see companies come and go without the proper software. I guess it’s not just about the size of the business but also its function. But you need to make sure that you don’t only look at the function of the software but at a number of other vital factors too, like ease-of-use, reporting features and functions, customization options, and cost-effectiveness.
Payroll is one of the most essential aspects of running a business as it involves handling employee payments on time, but that’s not all. Payroll software also helps businesses get better control over employee information and benefits.