With the rising complexity of employee payroll and the multitude of statutory regulations, processing staff salaries has become cumbersome for the HR department. Hence, they take advantage of dedicated software called ‘benefits of using cloud payroll software’ to ensure accurate, on-time paychecks.
Payroll software has become quite common nowadays, with the easy availability of scalable solutions. As a result, even start-ups can deploy good payroll software that can undertake the payroll tasks of their limited staff in no time.
With the introduction of 4G and 5G mobile networks and high-speed broadband connections, companies can afford to deploy their payroll software on the cloud. It is especially relevant in 2024 since technology is constantly evolving. With the advancement of cloud technologies, businesses are employing artificial intelligence-based payroll software to gain maximum returns on their investment.
Hence, let us understand the benefits of using cloud software in 2024.
What is payroll software?
To understand the relevance of payroll software, one needs to understand its functions. “Payroll software’ is responsible for the following:
- Collating attendance data and calculating the wages of each employee
- Taking the ‘monthly input’ data into consideration while calculating payroll
- Taking the statutory compliance data into consideration while calculating payroll
- Generating the payslip for each employee
- And disbursing the payroll for each employee.
Software that can undertake all these tasks efficiently is called ‘payroll software’. Since the advent of broadband internet, companies have deployed online versions of this software that are generally deployed on the cloud.
Shipping Software Purchase
A cloud-based payroll system has several advantages over a legacy client-server system. Some of the most common advantages are:
- Round-the-clock Availability
- Remote Access
- Data security and integrity
- Hardware Independence
- Automated software updates
Advantages of Cloud Payroll Software
There are several advantages to using cloud-based payroll software in 2023, such as:
Accurate Attendance
Capturing accurate attendance is one of the most hectic tasks in manual payroll processing. There are multiple issues, such as incorrect time entries, buddy-punching, irregular entries, and others, when attendance is maintained manually with the help of registers. Additionally, the collated data cannot be deemed accurate without cross-verifying the same using other methods of identifying whether the employee was in the company at the time and date mentioned on the physical records.
All the issues mentioned above can be remedied with a payroll system since it records the attendance data with the help of advanced technologies such as fingerprint scanning, facial recognition, or other forms of foolproof biometric authentication. Hence, the captured data remains accurate for calculations. It also provides an easier option to collate the necessary time and attendance data, as the employees’ timings are already present in the database. Hence, HRs need not spend additional time and energy curating it manually.
Automated Compliance
In the older days of client-server-based payroll software, each client machine and the server machine were required to be updated manually whenever there was any update in the statutory regulations. As a result, downtime was commonplace and hampered the HR department’s productivity. Additionally, in cases of lapses, the business was always at risk of heavy penalization.
With modern cloud-based systems, the scenario has changed considerably. Since the software stays in the cloud, it can be easily updated by the software vendor with minimal to no downtime. As a result, any lapse in updating the new regulatory rules and regulations and the resulting fines are the responsibility of the vendor providing the payroll software services.
Precise Calculations
Any HR professional would vouch that manual calculations are much more error-prone than automated calculations. With the help of payroll software, almost all payroll-related calculations become automated. As a result, it improves the HR team’s efficiency in calculating the employees’ monthly salaries. Additionally, since the software takes care of the statutory deductions, it is easier for HR to provide the monthly inputs and process the employee salaries at the click of a button.
There is no time wasted on manual cross-verifications and error corrections since the software deals with accurate time and attendance data. The payroll software also minimizes the possibility of manual errors since the system undertakes the calculations with minimal to no input from HR personnel. It dramatically improves HR efficiency, leading to on-time, accurate payroll every time.
Mobile ESS Portal
Being cloud-based software, payroll software vendors have started developing dedicated mobile apps for employees to access their employee data anytime, anywhere, using any connected device. Access to their data at their fingertips vastly enhances the transparency of the company’s undertakings and helps amass the employees’ trust.
Additionally, the added convenience of downloading their payslips, applying for leaves and on-duty, travel reimbursement, etc., from their mobile phones helps improve the employees’ engagement rate with their company. The mobile-friendly approach also ensures that employees can use the app without training.
Data security and integrity
With the advance of mobile and internet technologies, data has become more valuable than ever. Hence, payroll software vendors emphasize the database’s data security and integrity aspect and provide the necessary security features such as high-end encryption, user access control, error correction, additional backups, and more to ensure that their client data remains safe.
Additionally, data integrity was a significant concern with manual methods since multiple HR personnel would be handling the same spreadsheets. However, cloud payroll software has numerous checks to ensure no ambiguity regarding employee and payroll data. Similarly, it also protects users from unauthorized access with secure credentials.
Conclusion
While cloud payroll software has helped HR departments undertake payroll-related tasks efficiently, they still require the advanced capabilities of a comprehensive HRMS platform to ensure completely efficient work. As a result, many software vendors provide complete HRMS solutions with their payroll software.
Such HRMS solutions ensure that the HR team can improve its efficiency in other administrative tasks and reallocate its time to creative tasks, such as strategizing new employee engagement initiatives. It helps them focus on creative tasks by automating their clerical work. As a result, deploying an AI-based complete HRMS would be the ideal solution to end the HR woes in 2024.
Author Bio
John Paul Davis is a content writer with Pocket HRMS, an innovative AI-driven cloud-based HR software provider in India with over a decade of loyal clientele. His handiwork usually reflects the latest technologies in the HR domain.
