It’s not easy being a payroll professional today.  You are responsible for making sure that your company’s financial processes run smoothly, which includes gathering all of the time data throughout the organization, ensuring that everyone is paid correctly and on time, and preventing errors from finding their way into your records.  In fact, many payroll professionals struggle with these areas needlessly because they do not realize that Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions can be leveraged to create seamless, efficient payroll processes.

The Benefits of SaaS Technology

• Less Work

Automated systems for processes such as time, expense and project tracking save payroll professionals an enormous amount of time and effort.  They often replace inefficient, obsolete manual or paper systems, and can also prevent double data entry by integrating with other solutions.  Not only that, but if the system is offered as SaaS, your IT department does not have to lift a finger.  This takes the burden off of them and puts it on the vendor, ensuring that they are constantly working to maintain your data so that they can keep you as a satisfied customer.  In this way, SaaS systems reduce the workload for both HR and IT at the same time.

• Less Mistakes

The American Payroll Association estimates that automation reduces payroll processing costs by as much as 80%.  This savings comes from a dramatic reduction in the number of errors in invoices and paychecks, which is music to any payroll professional’s ears.  After all, increased accuracy within these processes is essential in order to receive timely payment from clients and keep both employees and management happy.  In addition, using a proven SaaS vendor allows you to keep your system up and running at all times.  You don’t have to worry about what you will do if your servers go out.  Quality SaaS vendors will have your data backed up and protected more effectively than you possibly could, since their livelihood depends on it.

• SOX Compliance

Compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley regulations is critical to the future of payroll, yet it can make life a lot more difficult for companies.  If a payroll professional allows paychecks to be calculated incorrectly, affecting the company’s financial statements and confusing stockholders, it will mean severe problems for the company.  Automated processes, however, are more likely to be consistently performed.  When the auditors come calling, you will be in a much better position if you are able to point to a SaaS solution that provides audit trails, separation of authority, and a capable reporting system.  Again, choosing the right SaaS vendor is key.  Be sure that your vendor is SAS 70 certified, which means that they have met data security standards and will keep your sensitive data completely secure.

The Future is SaaS

The last decade has seen the industry shifting to SaaS technology. It’s moving this way because customers want it to, and so do vendors.

Most software companies get their revenue from “shelfware” (software that is rarely used and ends up on the proverbial shelf). Many popular software programs are sold as shelfware and require customers to pay the total cost up front. The programs are often complicated, making them difficult to use and achieve maximum benefit from. However, once a customer has paid for these programs, there is no incentive for a company to follow up and ensure that it is working properly for the customer.

But as SaaS technology becomes more popular, many companies are also offering their software in a SaaS version, offering customers much more flexibility. In addition to this making the customers happy, the software vendors are finding great success in renting their software over the Web.

If customers sign up for a monthly SaaS service and the solution doesn’t work, customers will likely stop using the software after a month. This gives software providers an incentive to pay attention to customer usage, realize whether or not the technology is providing business value, and strive to increase its value. With this model, everybody wins.

Overall, Software-as-a-Service is a viable solution for any HR department that is struggling to manage its payroll processes.  Its low cost of entry allows customers to test it out within the department and decipher its value before rolling it out to the entire company.  The risk factor is very low, and IT doesn’t need to get involved.  SaaS vendors take care of all of the technical details, allowing everyone in the organization to focus on the profitable work which, in times like these, is more important than ever.

About Curt Finch 

Curt Finch is the CEO of Journyx. Founded in 1996, Journyx automates payroll, billing and cost accounting while easing management of employee time and expenses, and provides confidence that all resources are utilized correctly and completely. Curt earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Virginia Tech.  As a software programmer fixing bugs for IBM in the early ‘90’s, Curt found that tracking the time it took to fix each bug revealed the per-bug profitability. Curt knew that this concept of using time-tracking data to determine project profitability was a winning idea and something that companies were not doing – yet… Curt created the world's first web-based timesheet application and the foundation for the current Journyx product offerings in 1997. Learn more about Curt at http://journyx.com/company/curtfinch.   

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