These days, managing & handling all details of employees through a hand-operated process is not a wise option because it takes huge time & effort to prepare payroll activities and match the records at the end of the month.

Payroll Software will specifically deliver your expectations & level up your company’s productivity to an unprecedented height

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That’s why, implementing open-source payroll software can support your company to save time, avoid costly blunders, and make your management more productive.

That’s why payroll is an essential part of any business operations & especially for the HR department. Because your employees solely depend on you & your HR team to pay them on time & correctly.

However, it can be tough for small business owners to understand all the details that come with payroll processing & the time it needs to be done on time. 

To help you out in this regard, today we will be discussing everything about open-source payroll software, how it works, and what are the basic functions that can easily take your HR department to the next level.

So let’s get started with the most basic question first:-

What is Payroll Software?

In simple words, a payroll system is an essential part of any company that helps to calculate payroll properly in agreement with the taxing authority.

Use of Payroll software is an efficient way of calculating pays than a manual system

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So by integrating this system with the HR department, you can calculate taxes & salaries, allowances, deductions (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis) depending on your company’s payroll policy. Moreover, its primary task is to compute employees’ deductions & net income.

That means a payroll system can simply track information, generate different reports, and minimize manual efforts. For instance, it can automate paper-works through an automatic process to lessen costs, effort, and increase managerial workflow.

Well, if you’re eager to know some of the useful HR extensions to integrate into your HR department, you can check out the article below!

👉 Top HR Extensions That You Must Know

How Does Payroll Software Work?

Well, earlier we talked about what actually the Payroll system is. It basically helps to calculate the overall employees’ salaries, wages, taxes, and other deductions in an organized way.

Payroll software calculates the amount your employees should be paid each pay period based on the number of hours they’ve worked

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So if you’re intending to utilize the Payroll system with your HR department, it will help you know more details about it. In short, it will give you an overall idea about the process to pay your salaried employees.

According to the Fresh Books strategy, the Payroll work-process includes three stages in each of the 2 major steps.

• Pre-payroll work-process
• Post-payroll work-process

Pre-Payroll Work Process

So as a part of the payroll work process, you should know how it actually works before proceeding with the final stage. In this case, we can call it the pre-payroll work process.

Okay, so let’s see the steps below and we hope that you’ll get a better understanding of the work process.

• Creating a well-defined policy

First of all, your company must have a payroll policy before implementing it. So as a part of the policy, you can include a pay policy, leave facilities, benefits that you want to provide, attendance policy, etc. Therefore, all of these will determine your payroll policy.

• Collecting essential data

Having to manage multiple departments, and employees’ salaries in a company can be a daunting task. In that case, you need to collect all their data in an organized way. For example, employees’ salary data, attendance, pay deductions, and more.

• Checking or Examining Data

After collecting the important data, the next step is to check its validity whether it fulfills the company’s policy or not. This process will ensure that no active employee gets missed & no inactive employee gets included in the salary payment list.

• Payroll calculation

Well, this is the final stage of the pre-payroll work process. Here, HR admins input all the salary information into the payroll system. Also, this will automate the process to generate pay adjusting the necessary taxes & other expenses deductions.

Post-Payroll Work-Process

After processing the final payroll activities, HR admins need to follow and fulfill some post-payroll formalities.

Here are they:-

• Processing the payment

After calculating the final payroll like EPF (Employee Provident Fund), TDS (Tax Deduction at Source), and FA (Food Allowance), etc, the payroll admin sends the final amount to the appropriate government agencies (banks or any payment gateways)

Note: The deliverability of this process can vary depending on the overall dues

• Keeping payroll records

It’s important to keep a raw file of the financial transaction for the payroll process. It will help your company’s accountant to prepare an accounting report at the end of the month or year.

So your company’s payroll management should ensure that all salary data is perfectly entered into the company’s accounting or ERP.

• Payout

Salaries can be paid out by cash, check, or bank transfer depending on the payroll policy of that particular company. But in general cases, employers deposit salaries directly into an employee’s bank account.

Important: Once payroll is processed, accountants need to make sure their bank account has enough funds to make payments

• Reporting

After successfully completing payroll for your preferred month, the finance department of your company may ask for a report that might be for the reason to calculate overall department-wise employee costs.

So, this is how an open-source Payroll software works to reduce error and streamline the company’s workflow.

👉Also read: 7 Most Popular Open Source HRIS Software to Look for Now – An Easy Comparison

Benefits of an Open Source Payroll Software

Well, the benefits of an automated system are endless. It always adds fuel to accelerating the company’s growth & forms a proper structure for it. Hence, open-source payroll software is such a system that helps HR managers to perform different payroll-related managerial activities in an easy way.

In this regard, The Digital Group shared an infographic where they said,

Companies that outsource payroll software saves 18% as compared to the ones that don’t

So, perfectly calculating the salaries can build trust among employees. Also, it increases team productivity if employees get the payment on time. Therefore we can say the role of open-source payroll software in a compay is quite handy in terms of accomplishing your payroll needs quickly.

However, let’s check out some more benefits that you’ll get after utilizing a payroll system:-

• Simplifies procedures & increases productivity
• It can easily foster growth
• Helps to reduce human error
• Handles multiple transactions of different departments
• Calculates bonuses, commissions, dues, deductions & advance payments
• Easily generates various operational reports
• Provides perfect calculation
• Helpful for maintaining employee’s profile

Features That You Should Look for in an Open Source Payroll Software

As an HR admin, you may have to make different decisions for the welfare of your company’s growth. And if you fail to make a better decision in time, then your company’s business management progress may fall back.

This is why Deliver Practice expressed (HR consultancy Group from Melbourne) that:-

Companies that have formalized employee management programs have 26% higher annual revenue growth than those that don’t have formalized management programs.

So while thinking about implementing a payroll system, you should research it. And this will help you to understand the kind of features that you’re looking for. In fact, you can choose such a compact solution where all the necessary features are in it.

Therefore, to help you out, we have compiled some of the best features that you should look for in a payroll system.

• Easy payroll processing & management
• A direct deposit feature to improve efficiency
• Tax calculation
• Compensation administration & compliance management
• Employee Self-Service
• Easy reporting system
• Should have the ability to cater to your requirements
• A cloud-based solution
• Budget-friendly

So these are the features that you should look for before utilizing any open source payroll software to your HR deparment.

👉Also read: Human Aspects of Strategy Implementation Process

Introducing WP ERP Payroll:- An Open Source Payroll Software

WP ERP HR Payroll is a compact feature-rich extension of WP ERP that easily manages and controls the overall employee salary management system. Also, it can facilitate you to create employee lists, control their salaries, prepare all the essential formalities in a simple way.

Top Features of the WP ERP HRM Payroll at a Glance

So, let’s take a look at some of the useful features of WP ERP HR Payroll extension:

• Manage complete employee salaries in a computerized way
• Get a bird’s eye overview of the payroll system from the dashboard
• Setup bank & tax information for each employee
• Create your own dynamic pay calendars
• Options to choose specific payment methods for your employees
• Employee remuneration & other fixed payments definition (allowance or deduction)
• Retrieve employee information from the HR module
• Generate detailed payroll reports
• Create, print, & email salary invoices to each employee

Now if you’re thinking how can I use payroll extension with my WordPress site? Then you don’t have to worry about it at all because the process of it is a lot easier than you think.

First of all, you need to have a WordPress site, then install WP ERP. After that activate the WP ERP HRM module. Then just simply activate the Payroll extension. Finally, you can start using the tool directly from your WordPress dashboard.

Here is the complete guide to activate WP ERP Premium extensions. Or you can check out the video tutorial below to get detailed information.

Final Thought

Well, to sum up, Payroll software provides multiple facilities for your organization to grow fast. On a regular basis, it consistently helps in various matters & boosts productivity at a more extensive level.

In short, it’s simple, flexible & offers customized features for your business requirements. Here, we have tried our best to discuss everything related to the payroll software, how it works, and what are the facts that you should look for it.

And we hope that you will bring maximum benefits for your company’s growth if you could smartly utilize the open-source payroll software.

Anyways, if you’re still not using WP ERP for your business, so it’s high time that you should use it to turn your WordPress site into a full-fledged ERP management platform & handle complex operations smartly.