Payroll software programs are extremely useful tools that can help your business stay compliant with payroll taxes, manage employee information, process payroll, and of course pay employees on time and accurately. Without it, you are left to manage very important and very private information using scattered spreadsheets or keeping track of it on paper.

Are you looking for payroll software programs to help you find the right one for your organization? These days we typically take to the internet as a first research step. But there are only ten results on the first results page when you search, and there are far more payroll software programs out there that could be a better fit for your business. It would be really hard to sift through pages and pages of Google search results, and in between the information you are really seeking, you will find a lot of sites that don’t even sell payroll software. Use these tips to help you narrow down your search.

CPA PracticeAdvisor.com (Previously CPA Technology Advisor)

This is a great starting point for finding a payroll software program. Each year, this publication reviews professional payroll systems in detail for five different categories, and then assigns a star rating for each category. An average star rating is assigned for each payroll program and a summary is also given. To access these reviews, visit www.cpapracticeadvisor.com and type ‘payroll software reviews’ in the search box.

Capterra.com

This Web site is dedicated to helping businesses find software and offers free tools to sort and find systems by entering your needs. You also have the option of speaking with a software expert and having vendors contact you, at no cost to you. Here is a link to see available payroll software programs.

FindAccountingSoftware.com

This site, which is mainly dedicated to the search for accounting software, also includes a comprehensive listing of payroll software programs. You can browse through available programs or use their matching service, where you speak with a software expert and get matched up with appropriate vendors. They know which questions to ask, you will receive relevant results. Here is a link to view the payroll software programs.

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Using ratio analysis can make a big difference for your farm. Incorporating a ratio module within your accounting system, can help you pinpoint areas of strength, and weakness, to help you increase profits and reverse negative trends. Here's how.

Track Financial Condition

Ratio analysis allows you to see the data behind the indicators, and trend information can be shown in meaningful ways, such as a graph or chart for any number of years available. This helps you see your financial condition in a way that is meaningful to you, so you can start making improvements where necessary, or have the confidence to continue with your efforts as they are.

Compare Your Farm to Your Competition

Looking at the trends of your competitors can be of great value to your farm. Ratio calculations allow you to view industry standards and illustrate financial trends, so you understand where your farm stands against your competition. The success, progress, or shortfalls of your farm, can be understood and addressed, so proper action can be taken. By knowing where you stand against your competitors, you know where to improve, giving you a competitive advantage.

Compare Various Time Frames

Understanding your current situation is crucial. And yet it may be even more important to compare data from two different time frames. Perhaps the past year wasn′t profitable and you want to turn it around. Or maybe you want to understand why you were struggling so much last month. Use ratio analysis as a high-level tool to see trends over longer periods of time, so you can achieve long-term financial growth.

By using Ratio analysis, you can access information and trends that you may not have noticed, so you can make changes accordingly, which will benefit your farm!

The reporting of tax liabilities to multiple state and federal agencies is one of the most onerous and scary requirements of having employees.

Over 25% of businesses experience a penalty for errors, late filings, or other mistakes filing employment tax, averaging over $700 each year.
(Source: IRS data book 2010)

Large companies may make deposits and file reports several times a week. That’s hundreds of filings in multiple states each year. Automating this process provides significant savings.

No matter what size the company, compliance to eFiling requirements, ever-changing forms, and meeting new guidelines legislated into existence during the year is difficult, and opens you to significant fines and penalties for non-compliance.

Moving to eFiling

Any change in the way your business operates should be made for the purpose of improving efficiencies, lowering expenses, limiting liabilities, or to keep up with changing requirements in regulations or marketplace.

Changing payroll reporting and payments to eFiling meets many, if not all, of these reasons. The simple interface and comprehensive nature of many of the forms and payments solutions available, provide efficiencies to virtually any other reporting and payment options. Automated error-checking functions eliminate virtually all rejections, as well as eliminating the liabilities associated with potential fines and penalties. One of the biggest changes in the business regulation environment is the stated goal of the IRS and SSA to make all communications and business practices to be conducted electronically.

Since many states take their lead from the federal standards, it will not be long before virtually all state and federal payments will be required to be sent electronically.

The Problem

Moving to electronic payments is inevitable. The question is how to go about changing over from your current process to electronic delivery.

With over 170 state and federal taxing agencies and myriad different processes, formats, forms, and deadlines, many businesses have just thrown up their hands and outsourced reporting to payroll services and paid very significant fees to do so. In many cases they simply felt they had no choice. The threat of non-compliance is just too scary.

Other companies have hired additional staff and decided to use agency websites to process payments and reports. Again the business is faced with going to several different sites, none of which have the same process. Those businesses are faced with unique logins for each site, separate tracking methods for each site, and multiple contacts to try to resolve any issues that may occur while transcribing in payroll data or attempting to export/download multiple files for the various sites.

The Solution

Find a solution that is integrated in your payroll module and does not require transcribing information, creating exported files, or transcribing to a website. The solution should provide automated payroll reports that are filled in automatically with your payroll data and can be eFiled with just a few clicks. The interface should be intuitive and simple to understand. A replica of the actual form displayed onscreen and the review process very simple. The steps required to eFile should be few and well defined.

The solution should support all of the federal and state agencies you file with and include unemployment, wage withholding, and new hire reports and payments.

There should be a single login to eFile and view all filing histories. Any filing should be time-stamped and dated to provide an audit trail.

There should be a calendar system that provides reminders for filing deadlines that could be received via email, desktop alerts, or even text messages to your cellular devices.

Compliance guarantees should be part of the service. All negotiations with state and federal agencies concerning filings should be conducted by representatives of the service. Any fines or penalties incurred because of service errors should be paid by the service.

Finally it needs to be affordable. An annual subscription that includes all of your filings for twelve months should be based on how many employees you have and should be less than outsourcing to a payroll service.

Wow, lots of these new tech startups are creating applications that can really help businesses! Global mobile payments solutions with super low fees, a new tool for people to learn JavaScript, and a way to have 17,000 PhD level scientist contribute to solving a problem. Exciting advancements in technology! Read the full story here.