Bulk ‘Big Company’ Salary Handling For The Rest Of Us

This blog entry has been two years in preparation, we think we have solved a major issue for most businesses in a very elegant way.

Interested? You should be - we decided to make a system that normally costs tens of thousands of dollars free for all our clients, at least for now.

Paying salaries and time based reward-for-effort in any size business is a time consuming task.

We have this need here at Saasu.com for our own team and pretty much all of our clients face the same issues - it is a long wish list but if you are a business owner I am sure most of the items on it will resonate with you.

We think the most important point is doing all of the things on the list while keeping it simplified for the average business to setup and use in minutes so it pays for itself today not next year in reduced time, hassles, training costs, errors and in so many other ways including a happy team that gets paid correctly and on time.

That is the hardest thing to do, the reason we are blogging about it is we have just released Saasu Advanced Payroll.

Top 12 Payroll Tips - Making The Right Decision

These are our tips - consider them a check list when deciding on your next system -they represent what a good scalable but simplified payroll service must cover at a minimum.

1. Standard Payments Should Take No Extra Time - Setting up standard payments each week, fortnight or month, additional staff one an existing scheme or in an existing group should add no extra time to the regular pay run.
2. One Off Exception Payments Should Be Easy - Handling all those exceptions from the standard pays with minimal fuss for just the next pay but not other pays
3. Entitlement Tracking Should Be Automatic - Tracking and accumulating holiday leave entitlements and other entitlements depending on where/when/how they are working
4. Time Based Pay - Tracking time and paying employees based on time worked as well as invoicing based on time
5. Groups (Also Called Batches or Runs) - Minimising effort for similar categories of employees by grouping them together for processing by type or location or grade or something else
6. Payslips & Tax - Distributing payslips or salary confirmation sheets to individual employees who are often geographically dispersed - email is best for payslips. At end of year the production of taxation certificates (also called group certificates in many countries) is also essential
7. Banking - Getting the instructions to the bank with the right employee account details (often at other banks) - an automated bulk transaction file is best.
8. Approvals & Controls - Making sure it all happens without errors - so you need some sort of draft approval process
9. Fast - Making sure it all happens in a timely way so the money hits employee accounts when they need or expect it - must be highly automated
10. Zones - Handling the vast variety of different conditions and calculations around the world in different jurisdictions (we call them zones) - must be configurable (we are just supporting Australia for now but other countries will be rolled out progressively based on demand).
11. Integrated - No duplicate information - it must share records with existing HR or employee tracking systems and timesheets and expense handling systems.
12. Self Service - Your team must be learn the system themselves without paying for training and be able to enter their own time or see their own payslips - online via the web when ever they want

We didn’t add ‘Make sure it is software-as-a-service not old-style-on-premise-software’ because it goes without saying

The Best Bit

• Get It Now - You can have efficient payroll in your business in just minutes with Saasu Advanced Payroll
• Free - We are providing this service free to existing business subscribers and new clients who join before Christmas on our standard business plan - just tell us and we will turn it on for your business.
• Already Proven - we have already processed thousand of salaries this way (paying tens of millions of dollars) and it has been a very smooth experience.
• It Is Unique - There are a few other services like this out there but we believe there are no others at this price point and none as simple to use.

Update From Service Team - After One Week Of Free Offer…

Advanced Payroll Is A VERY Popular New Feature, we have had a rush from clients looking for access and using it in their business. Thanks. It is nice to know people like our stuff!

Just to repeat -as a reward for existing business clients (and new business clients who join before Xmas) we are offering this new module free.

The offer of free access will run until at least March 2008, thereafter advanced payroll will be part of a higher subscription plan (probably called business plus although we are still deciding plans and their names).

Pricing has not been determined but we expect the difference won’t be very large at all, it will depend amongst other things on the service/support costs we incur for an average client using the new module.

This price setting is part of a complete plan review to introduce lower plans with reduced price and functionality for entry level and higher plans for corporates - all of which is part our ongoing efforts to deliver great value software as a service to simplify your business life.

By using plans we can stage complexity (and hence simplify use for you) according to the scale of your business.

Payroll entries made via standard payroll and advanced payroll will be accessible for all payroll users (business or business plus if you will). So if you decide not to use advanced payroll later that is fine, you can still see all payroll the in the same consistent way, you just can not process them in bulk.

And of course we always ensure you are protected with the saasu.com satisfaction guarantee.