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Payroll Service Software
Online Payroll Service Software and CRM: How You Can Benefit From Small Business Payroll Software in Your CRM System
Word Document : Online Payroll Service Software
Everyone hates payroll systems. It’s necessary even in the smallest of businesses, and just grows more and more complicated from then on. From employees with benefits, different taxes in different states, salaried or hourly, vacation time, sick time, over time... The list is endless. Writing checks manually just simply doesn’t cut it anymore and keeping your head wrapped around all the various tax rules you need to know is just not practical. You’ve got a small business to run and money to make, why should you have to become an accountant overnight, anyway?
The good news is; you don’t. In this day and age, Small Business Payroll Software is widely available across the software industry, and conveniently also offered in an online payroll service software format. What this means is that it’s a small recurring monthly fee instead of a big upfront software license cost to your small business, which makes it more affordable and more adaptable to small businesses. But what else is there to know about payroll software for small business? Is there any difference between the options available to you now?
Here’s something to consider: What if your small business payroll software was integrated with an on demand hosted CRM software application? By integrating two integral small business software packages into each other, you’ll save time money and resources, as well as having all of your critical business information in one place. Just imagine if your payroll employees could send you an instant message through your CRM program, which was accessible anytime, any place via the internet, to tell you about any problems or questions they have with payroll. What if all your reports were all in one, easily accessible place in your on demand hosted CRM system, from payroll to sales figures, support times to customer lifecycles?
Think it’s a pipedream? Think again. Payroll software is quickly becoming the hottest commodity in integrated hosted CRM software suites, and its time you found out what your options were, and how much, if any, of a benefit it will be to your small business.
Do I Even NEED Online Payroll Service Software?
While not necessarily always the case, the answer to the aforementioned question is: quite likely. Every small business has payroll systems that they need to keep track of, and unless your employees are contract employees and they pay taxes themselves, you likely have either direct experience running payroll yourself, or you hire someone full or part time to do your payroll system for you. It can be a tedious process, and definitely not one that’s overly enjoyable for someone who’s normally focused on running a small business. So Online Payroll Service Software is one of the best options for a fledging small business, specifically in the 5-50 employee range. Since its available in the price range of $30-$50 per month, its easily affordable to almost all businesses, and the amount of time and human resources it can save make it an easy investment into the infrastructure of your small business.
That being said, many businesses that are at the very small end of the spectrum (1-5 employees) may get by fine using an Excel based system and hand written checks. The proper tax forms are available and can be filed by anyone with the knowledge of where to get them and where to send them, and this may not be a huge nuisance to some small businesses.
Where a Payroll system fits into your small business, and how it makes an impact will be different depending on how your organization is structured, and how much experience there is in payroll management on your team. But it is a critical process for every business in the world, and one that can’t be taken lightly. So with the notion that you are likely in need of a payroll system, let’s explore the benefits of finding one that works well fully integrated with an existing or new CRM application, to capitalize on lower total cost of ownership (TCO) as well as a deeper, in-depth look of all your business processes from one convenient location.
Small Business Payroll Software + Small Business CRM Software = A Winning Combination?
So now that we’ve identified that an Online Payroll Service Software package is the right step forward for your small business, we’ll explore the benefits to your business by finding a solution that’s pre-integrated with an existing on demand hosted CRM software package. These benefits can be massive and definitely require a look, especially if you’re a small business that doesn’t yet utilize an on demand hosted CRM software service, or is looking to upgrade the feature-set on a simplified solution.
- Cost Benefit – The cost benefit alone makes an integrated CRM and Payroll software solution a great system to explore to any small business. Many companies that integrate Payroll systems into their CRM applications do it for a minimal add-on cost, or even free in some of the more robust CRM service applications. Wrapping up all your software into one big bundle also saves you money in another way – there won’t be any service or support fees to try and feed information from one system into another that weren’t meant to work together. This type of integrated CRM soltution gives you an end-to-end small business software package at an affordable price – much more affordable than trying to find two separate software applications.
- One Data Silo – Having multiple data silos, or data warehouses, is a problem many small businesses are trying to cope with daily. Legacy systems don’t communicate properly with each other, and comparing data from one to the other is tedious, requires an army of consultants and a customized software package to bridge the communication gap. Looking over payroll reports can be tedious on its own, trying to dig up relevant data from another system to compare and contrast it with can be near impossible. With an integrated CRM software application, you can easily compare cost-benefit analysis data from entire departments or single employees, showing how much an entire sales team costs you, versus how much money they bring in. This is all basic functionality benefits from having all your data warehoused in one data silo.
- Learn One System for Life – With an integrated CRM system, you don’t need your payroll employees to learn various different software systems. Of course at face value this is saving you money by limiting the amount of time needed to train and familiarize your employees, but down the road the amount of efficiency gained by having ‘expert’ users of one singular system may not be as apparent in casual consideration. Each employee regardless of their department becomes a product expert on your integrated CRM system, and the data that needs to be in front of each user flows more freely and quickly. For example, if an employee has a problem with a recent pay check, they can quickly send an instant message to a payroll officer online through the integrated CRM package, which all employees are already familiar with.
- One Vendor, Fully Accountable – We’ve all been through the hassle of working with multiple vendors before. It’s bad enough if you have a network in the office with a different brand router than network adapter, with each company blaming the other for support issues. With an integrated CRM software application, you know that there’s only one company that you need to go to for any issues arising with your payroll and CRM. No more bouncing around the blame, and a quicker response time will mean you’ll spend more time using your system, and less time trying to fix it.
- Commissions Made Easy – An integrated CRM system with your payroll software is also going to alleviate pains in tracking and paying out commissions to your sales staff. By fully integrating a payroll system into your CRM software, you can easily automate the commission payout system by setting a commission rate for each employee, and letting the system track all of the sales recorded through it.
The other reward to an Online Payroll Service Software system is of course, the online part. Having your integrated CRM / Payroll software system in a hosted model creates an even stronger perk – automatic upgrades that are included for free instead of paying for updated software every 6 months; zero upfront cost; and always-on, realtime accessibility.
So What Should You Do?
Well, the answer to that question does depend on the specific nuances of your small business. There’s many solutions to solving a payroll dilemma, but the one which is most likely to bring the most benefit to your small business, in terms of both Return on Investment (ROI) and functionality; is an integrated on demand hosted CRM / Online Payroll Service Software application. By deploying an integrated CRM online, you’re really making the most secure investment into the future of your small business in terms of longevity and practicality. A low monthly fee gets you access to important CRM features as well as an accessible and functional payroll system, while you never worry about paying obscene amounts of money for upgrades the second a tax law changes or the IRS switches one of their internal business processes. Everything stays current, and your on demand hosted CRM software provider takes care of all the details.
The most functional payroll system available to you can write checks, do direct deposit, automatically deduct taxes and deposit those to the federal agency that needs them, allow options for both salaried and hourly employees, includes vacation pay, overtime pay, sick pay and bonuses, as well as tracks commissions. This type of overall solution can be found integrated into sophisticated software-based CRM systems, and can take months or years to install, and can cost into the millions of dollars.
But going with an ondemand hosted CRM provider, you can find a system that includes all or most of the features you’re looking for at an honest, affordable price point even for extremely small businesses.
The best bet for the future of your small business is finding an integrated small business payroll software suite allowing you the flexibility, and functionality, you need to succeed.
