By Stephanie Elsen

There are two things you know for sure about payroll. 1. Employees want their checks on time. 2. The government wants to receive their tax payments on time. Both are serious and important reasons for choosing wisely when selecting payroll software or a payroll service. Making the mistake of choosing the first or cheapest payroll option can result in frustration, and more importantly can hinder your ability to pay employees and the government on time! Here are some real things to look for when searching for a payroll company.

Service. Are you frequently in a hurry to get payroll completed? Many businesses are! What happens when you run into a problem the day that you are doing payroll? Maybe, at the last minute, you need to set up a brand new pay code or an employee garnishment and you need some help. Who will be there to help you? Be sure you choose a payroll company that offers excellent service. And make sure that service team is available and knows what they are doing! While you are sitting there reading this blog post, it might not seem important. But when the time actually comes, you will be thankful for choosing a payroll company that can really help you when you need it.

Options for paying employee taxes. You need to pay employee taxes by a certain date. If not, your company will be faced with dreaded fines! Be sure you can get the information you need out of your payroll system, so that you can send tax payments to the appropriate party in a timely manner. More and more states are requiring tax filing to be done online, instead of via printed forms. Make sure you have the options within your payroll software that can help you accomplish this!

Of course features are also extremely important within your payroll software or system. Once you find a payroll system that has all the features you need, be sure that company can also provide the service and tax filing capabilities you need to pay your employees and make tax payments in a timely manner!

By Stephanie Elsen

Thousands of companies nationwide are using CenterPoint Payroll Software, and there are also many companies that administer 401K/Roth investments dollars. Employers need to report employee 401K/Roth deductions and the employer matching benefits to these plan administrators. The plan administrator normally prefers to get the employee and employer matching dollars reported on a pay period or monthly basis in a unique CSV or Excel file format. The required file formats can vary among different 401K management companies. If you need to pull out a unique set of data, how will you handle it?

Red Wing Software has a tool available for use with CenterPoint Payroll that allows the Red Wing Software staff to create a file export to match your 401K/Roth administrator’s unique format. If you need a custom export for your 401K, give us a call to discuss whether the tool would work for you. Our standard tool can handle 90%+ of custom 401K exports. However if the file format required by your 401K administrator is more complex than normal, we still may be able to help. Contact Red Wing Software to learn more! Call 800-732-9464 or e-mail info@redwingsoftware.com.

By Stephanie Elsen

Today is National Clean Out Your Computer Day! Originally sponsored by the Institute for Business Technology in 2000, this day provides you an opportunity to officially go in and clean out that stuff you’ve been meaning to do for quite some time. Cleaning out your computer can make a significant difference in your computer’s speed! Take those huge files that are taking up space and save them to a separate hard drive. Uninstall programs you no longer want or need. Got lots of emails that linger on inside your ‘deleted’ box? Get rid of them. And while you’re at it, why not dust the whole system, including the bottom side of your oft-used but never-cleaned mouse. You might just be surprised how refreshed you feel with a cleaner and faster computer!

By Stephanie Elsen

If you are a Red Wing Software customer, chances are you know the benefits of a good audit trail. That’s because this feature has always been a top priority for our payroll and accounting software over the years.

A good audit trail can help prevent and detect fraud. Being able to see every action within your system by user can help you monitor their activity. If users know their activity is monitored, they are much less likely to commit fraudulent activity.

A good audit trail enables you to provide necessary documentation for third party organizations (such as banks and investors) that require it.

A good audit trail helps reconstruct events once an issue is detected.

Having a good audit trail in your accounting software provides peace of mind, knowing that events are being recorded by user and that information can be accessed anytime to look back at the history to solve problems.

By Stephanie Elsen

Are you frustrated because your accounting data entry takes so long and seems so inefficient? Do you feel you should be able to cut down on data entry time and human errors? Here are some ways accounting software can help you do just that. Check to see if your accounting software offers these time-saving functions.

Date Entry Shortcut

When entering dates into your accounting system, you should have the ability to simply type the day and it auto-fills the month and year, or enter just the month and day, and it will complete the year. It should also have an option to not enter separators (hyphens, slashes, etc.) between the month, day and year. Many systems will have an auto-fill function that intuitively knows what you are trying to enter, and provides options for you to choose and shorten your typing time.

Lookups

The majority of fields in your system should have lookup functions so you can find the information you need for the field if it doesn’t have a default value. Many systems will also allow you to decide which fields it should look for a match in when something is entered in a field. For example, if you are in a field where it’s expecting a customer code, do you have to enter the actual code, or can you enter a customer name, phone number, etc. and it will still find a match. Having this intuitive lookup capability can help you find things more quickly and reduce frustration.

Function Keys

As you might be aware, function keys (F1, F2, etc.) are available to shorten functions you perform on your computer most often. Using them can really shave off data entry time from your day! Learn how the function keys work within your accounting software and you can save several clicks per transaction, adding up to a good amount of time saved per day!

Set as Default

If you find yourself selecting the same choice in a field every time, you would likely benefit from changing the default option to the choice you select most often. Many accounting software systems will allow you to change the default to the selection you use most often, saving on data entry time, and ensuring accuracy.

Custom Columns

Some accounting programs allow you to add or remove columns of information within modules such as accounts payable and accounts receivable. This is extremely useful, since most programs must have a wide variety of fields/columns of information to meet many kinds of businesses. Remove the columns of information you don’t need to see, and add those you do need, which can really help streamline your job.

Set Tab Stops

Fields of information within your accounting software may not always be ones you choose or need to use. That’s why many applications will allow you to skip past fields you never use or fields that auto-fill with the correct information. That way when you are hitting the ‘tab’ key to get to the next field, the ones you don’t use will be skipped, and you will instead be directed to the next field you actually want to go to.

Recurring Transactions

Monthly utility bills, insurance payments, and rent payments are all examples of payments you can set up as recurring transactions. Setting them up as recurring transactions eliminates the job of entering the same details each time you need to process the transaction. Furthermore, if you bill your customers on an ongoing basis you can also set those up as recurring accounts receivable invoices. Setting up accounts payable and accounts receivable transactions as recurring transactions can not only save on work, but can also help you become more organized.

While every accounting software system is different, check out your system to see if the above time-saving functions are available. Every little savings of time can really add up!