Payroll management can be a cumbersome and time-consuming task for businesses, especially startups who have just rolled their business operations.

Newly launched startups have a lot to do initially - right from analyzing market conditions, operating procedures to deciding how to make business profits. Considering all this, the task of payroll management can be extremely tricky for new businesses.

Many businesses believe finding or recruiting the right talent is more important than payroll management for their business. But, the reality is you have to pay salaries on time for your employees, so they can work with motivation.

Putting the payroll process in place is very important before you start hiring people. This makes the task for payment management easier as your business grows.

What is Payroll Management?

Payroll management refers to the process of maintaining the financial records of employees of a company. These payroll records contain details like employee’s salaries, bonuses, incentives, deductions or net pay. From the company’s perspective, these records should be maintained in a proper format as directed by the local laws.

In case, a company fails to maintain payroll records as per mandatory income tax laws of a country, it might face legal consequences.

Payroll Management Ways For Small Business:

Manual Payroll Management:

For a business of fewer than 10 people, payroll management isn’t that big an issue. You can manually calculate the salary slabs and taxes, assuming you know everything you need to deduct. Whether you’re deducting PF or leaves, getting the accurate amount to be deducted every time is critical. Subtracting the amount incorrectly could lead to some serious issues.

Small businesses with limited employees do have the option to manage their payroll operations manually. Companies having fewer than 10 employees can keep a track of employee salaries, deductions, bonuses, and PF without taking the help of a payroll automation tool.

Although, while calculating salaries or deducting PF of employees, a small calculation mistake can cause serious issues for you.

To avoid such payroll errors, companies can take the help of payroll management related blogs, articles or videos available online. You, as a startup owner, can also utilize calculators or excel sheets to get complete control over payroll calculation tasks.

Although, the main disadvantage of handling payroll tasks on your own is the liability that comes with it. Any salary calculation errors from your end can harm your reputation badly and can also result in loss of employee trust on you Yo might know about the payroll processes completely, but one small mistake during calculation can change the scenario completely for you.

Hiring an Accountant:

Delegating all salary calculation and employee record management duties to an accountant can be a solution to payroll problems for your business. Accountants are skilled enough to understand your business and doing activities that simply payroll tasks for you. Although, they also come with a certain cost and possibility of human error.

Also, with an accountant at work, payroll tasks will still be slow as they would be while doing it on your own. It is always better to choose a quality online payroll software like Gen Payroll rather than doing it manually or delegating it to someone else as a small business.

Payroll Management Software:

Using payroll processing & management software like Gen Payroll can be a solution to all HR and employee administration problems for companies, right from startups to large scale enterprises. Although finding quality payroll software at affordable prices can be a challenging task for small businesses. Payroll software is absolutely best when it comes to keeping an accurate track of important employee salary and attendance records.

Gen payroll software is highly effective for small businesses as it helps them minimize paperwork, boost employee productivity and manage the workforce effectively by bringing automation in payroll administration tasks.

Right from calculating employee’s leaves, bonus, incentives, checking to leave balance to calculating the final employee salary after deduction, you can do it all using a quality payroll software. For small businesses, payroll software like Gen Payroll is highly useful as it helps them save their valuable time and focus on their core business functions, which enables them to outpace the competition and grow faster.

Gen Payroll Software enables the company HR professionals to stop worrying about the latest government policies or tax deduction policies, as this software update everything automatically while managing payroll.

Gen Payroll complies with all the latest payroll and tax deduction-related guidelines or policies passed by the Indian government, making payroll administration tasks smoother and hassle-free for small businesses in India. Calculating estimated TDS, income tax, bonuses, salary deductions and working hours is also a way to easy with Gen Payroll for HR personnel of companies.

Using reliable HR management software like Gen Payroll, companies can save an enormous amount of time every month. With a few easy clicks, payroll processing gets done for companies.

Simplify Your Payroll Management Tasks using these Simple Steps (for Small Businesses)

1. Collect Employee’s Documents Properly

Once you hire a new employee, gather all his important documents, i.e., past salary proof, experience certificate, educational documents, relieving letter, etc. properly.

Add all such data into your payroll records or system if you are having one. Storing such employee information in a paper or electronic personal file is also a great idea to avoid any hassle.

2. Record Employee Work Hours Properly

As your business grows in size, it becomes important for you to record the total work hours of your employees each day in a calendar month to avoid any salary or payroll errors at the end of the month.

To calculate employee work hours properly, you can start with simple timesheets or choose a quality time & attendance system for recording employee work hours, break times or middle breaks, etc.

3. Calculate CTC Accurately

Gross pay calculation for employees is as simple as adding daily works hours in an employee timesheet for you.

However, to calculate the cost to company (CTC) properly, you must know about the payroll deductions that you are going to make before calculating the actual salaries of employees.

Deductions like health benefits, government taxes, PF, etc. should be known by you and must be done accurately before proceeding with payroll. Once you subtract all deductions from the gross salaries, the remaining amount should be received by employees as their paychecks.

4. Store Payroll Records at a Confidential Place

Payroll records contain confidential employee information; hence, you should always store them in a private area or upload them into an online storage space in your own network with high security.