Technology

Payroll challenges eased by software solutions

By Andie Burjek

May. 15, 2020

Payroll can be a complicated and time consuming process. If employers fail to be compliant —  intentionally or not — they may face potentially debilitating business consequences.     

Workforce management professionals can use technology solutions to address complicated payroll challenges. 

Challenge: Maintaining tax compliance

Tax compliance challenges come in many flavors. The Federal Unemployment Tax Act poses potential complications for employers, and employers must be careful to compute their FUTA tax liability correctly. 

Further, certain flexible work arrangements may introduce tax complexities to employers who must figure out how, when and where to withhold state taxes for their employees. Remote work is mostly a positive trend. Employees are generally more productive working outside the office, and employers can consider a larger pool of candidates for a job. But the company must make sure they have an effective system that takes state and local tax laws into account, especially if it manages a geographically scattered workforce. 

The right payroll system will help employers do this by allowing them to input all relevant tax laws in the system. Then managers don’t need to worry that the laws aren’t being addressed in their payroll, and they can continue benefiting from a flexible, remote workforce. 

Challenge: Balancing federal, state and local compliance laws

An “overwhelming alphabet soup of laws, regulations and agencies” govern the workplace — and not just regarding tax compliance. Federal agencies like the EEOC and OSHA and regulations like FMLA and COBRA affect workplace decisions on everything from payroll to health care to time off and beyond.

Managers may have a lot on their plate in addition to payroll, like creating effective schedules, controlling wage costs and taking overtime in account. While they deal with everything on their plate, they also have many legal responsibilities to balance. 

Labor management software can take on the most difficult part of this process, knowing how to apply different laws and regulations to every payroll decision. This leaves time and mental energy for workforce management professionals to focus on other parts of their job, rather than getting bogged down by compliance concerns. 

Benefits of payroll software

Payroll is a baseline, necessary duty of many managers’ jobs. Still, they have many other responsibilities that occupy their time and attention. Technology allows them to automate what is taking up too much of their time and energy and increasing efficiency at the organization.

Try Workforce.com software for your payroll and scheduling needs, which has saved managers: several hours a week by automating time consuming tasks like payroll. 

Andie Burjek is an associate editor at Workforce.com.

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