Your legacy payroll and HR systems are a ticking time bomb

Businesses that don’t embrace cloud-based payroll and HR solutions are putting themselves at severe risk of an unexpected crisis.

Leading Sage Platinum partner AWCape has seen businesses suffer first-hand, and encourages all organisations to run their payroll and HR solutions in the cloud to avoid this “ticking time bomb”.

• Click here to transform your HR and payroll in the cloud with Sage.

“Many businesses think their outdated payroll and HR solutions are sufficient until something goes wrong,” said AWCape Managing Director Jeff Ryan.

“They then realise just how inefficiently their payroll and HR have been managed, and are left with a costly mess to fix.”

Incorrect data and load-shedding

A good example of this is how outdated payroll and HR solutions can result in incorrect payments caused by human error.

“What often happens is the people responsible don’t perform the relevant updates in time, meaning the payroll will be on the incorrect version come payday,” said AWCape HR & Payroll Team Divisional Manager Angelique Cant.

“This results in incorrect tax calculations, which must be recalculated the following month – leading to unhappy employees with more money coming off their paycheque.”

Businesses must also consider the impact of load-shedding on their payroll and HR systems, as outages can inhibit your ability to pay your employees.

Employees who are not paid on time or are paid inaccurately will be unhappy, which has severe ramifications on staff retention.

“The best form of marketing is happy employees,” said Ryan.

“By paying your employees on time, and for the correct amount, you avoid unhappy employees who could diminish your workplace morale or even leave your business.”

Flawed security

Another issue AWCape has seen is when payroll professionals don’t want to perform backups, they will ask the IT team to do this instead.

Without the appropriate security checks in place, these IT professionals could manipulate payment data undetected.

While businesses would like to trust all of their employees, it is best to be proactive when protecting your business payroll systems and play it safe.

“This provides you with a clear line of accountability and an audit trail, as well as improved accuracy, faster payments, and instant reconciliation,” said Yolandi Esterhuizen, Director of Product Compliance at Sage Africa & Middle East.

“Furthermore, an HR and payroll solution can make the process of paying staff and tax authorities less painful. Today, there are flexible and affordable online payroll solutions that even the smallest business can save hours of effort while helping to remain compliant with tax regulations.”

AWCape and Sage

Based on many years of experience and thousands of implementations, Sage’s cloud payroll and HR solutions are the best choice for any business that doesn’t want to be caught out by its legacy (older) systems. Also, AWCape is here to help you implement them and provide training to users so you get the most out of the solution.

In addition, AWCape will migrate your year-to-date payroll data to the cloud– ensuring you don’t need to wait until the financial year-end to transform your systems.

“Running your payroll and HR processes on the cloud is the most efficient method to keep your employees happy and your business running smoothly, enabling seamless integration.”

“It also allows users to create and monitor invoices quickly and efficiently, track cash flow, take payments, record transactions, automate admin, capture expenses, and much more,” said Sage Africa and Middle East VP of Medium Business, Gerhard Hartman.

“As the trusted provider of technology that thousands of SMBs across the world rely on, Sage is committed to making it easier for SMBs to get work done so they can be resilient and productive in the face of challenges.”

Click here to transform your HR and payroll in the cloud with Sage.