5 Common Payroll Mistakes Made by Business Owners

For startup or small business owner, managing payroll can be seem easy, after all you just need to pay employees, right? Right?

Payroll management actually take up more time, effort, and expertise than one would think. Some big companies aren’t even up to standard with their attendance and payroll, using manual attendance taking and computing. If bigger companies still find it hard to manage payroll properly, what more fledgling businesses? In this article, we’ll take a closer look at common mistakes that startups and small businesses make when it comes to payroll management.

Calculating Employee Hours and Wages

Business owners need to ensure that employee hours are accurately tracked and that wages are calculated correctly. This process might be among the most time time-consuming even for HR specialists. This is more complicated for businesses that have more employees or if the payroll is processed manually.

You will need to consider more things than hours worked when computing pay. Not only do you need to compute time worked against daily wages, you have to compute them after deductions, and minus non-taxable items. it isn’t a cake walk as others may think.

Preparing and Processing Payroll

Once employee hours and wages are calculated, business owners need to prepare and process payroll. This involves generating paychecks or direct deposits. At face value, it looks preety straight forward. However, it’s also important to take into account that payroll funds might eat into other disbursements that could affect business. Not only that, but bank transactions can take a long time. This is especially try for brick-and-mortar and mom-and-pops shops since these types for business still deal with plenty of cash payments on the daily.

Payroll that Complies with Policies

Business owners need to ensure that they are complying with all labor laws related to payroll. This includes withholding the correct amount of taxes, remitting taxes, remitting the proper contributions on time, and even paying employees on time.

Mistakes in payroll would merit businesses more than just a slap in the hand. All misgivings when it comes to payroll are admissible for DOLE, and HRs know that DOLE will always decide in the favor of employees. Not only that, but payroll mistakes can be demoralizing for employees especially if it affects their quality of life.

Addressing Employee Concerns

One of the most common inquiry that HRs get are employee concerns regarding their payroll, benefits, leaves, and more. Employees will always questions about their paychecks, benefits, or deductions. If you don’t have an HR, addressing these concerns promptly will fall on your shoulders.

Payroll is Paperwork

Payroll involves a lot of paperwork, including tax forms, employee records, and payroll reports. Business owners need to process and keep track of all of this paperwork. In hindsight, not only are you a business owner, you also have to be your own HR and accountant.

The upfront solution is to have help when it comes to payroll and compliance by hiring an HR or an accountant. However, startups already have to juggle payroll for procurement, wages, and upkeep without the added expense of hiring administrative employees.

Another solution is to automate payroll. There are sophisticated payroll systems that take attendance, are updated with government regulated deductions, compute payroll accordingly and accurately, and even auto generates both payslips as well as government reports. In short, the system can be both your HR and accounting stand in while you focus on growing your business.

If you’re looking for a system that has all of these features, try Salarium for free today. You can start automating your attendance, payslip, and government forms generation, and even see how convenient our one-touch payroll can be. Focus on growing your business and leave payroll to Salarium.