Payroll Trends to Watch in 2021

December 1, 2020

Traditional methods of payroll management involve the need to handle lots of paperwork and are no longer efficient. Data can get scattered across your organisation, and payroll management can be a complex and labor-intensive process.

Historical payroll systems leave HR and Finance professionals with numerous manual processes in processing payroll, filing taxes, and reporting job costs. Moreover, complying with regulations such as HMRC, and ensuring accuracy while dealing with adjustments, means ever-changing processes. The good news: your organisation can benefit by connecting payroll to your ERP solution since it makes payroll simple by combining your finances and employee data in a single solution.

As your trusted advisors, we have listed down these five payroll trends that will help you thrive in the digital age:

1. Increased use of cloud technology

“The cloud-based payroll software market is expected to grow over $13.3 million by 2026”. – Zion Market Research

As working from home and working remotely, becomes the new norm, cloud-based payroll is particularly useful for finance and HR departments to manage payroll remotely. Cloud-based payroll allows you to access data from anywhere and on any device of your choice. Moreover, functionalities in cloud-based software like managers and employee self-service empowers your staff to access their payroll information in real-time, including their pension and pending leave balance.

Likewise, cloud-based computing also ensures data protection and provides regular software updates that save you the burden of security issues. Furthermore, you will not have to worry about replacing your system as you grow since ERP integrated solutions like SiriusPayroll365 will allow you to scale as your business grows.

2. Automate complex legislation and compliance

Technology and the growing gig economy can be a huge benefit to employers since it allows you to find and leverage the best and brightest talent around the world. However, this also introduces a wide array of regulatory compliance challenges.

Even for workers within the UK, compliance can be a big challenge. For many businesses, HMRC compliance and reporting are an additional source of confusion and potential fines. The good news is – you can ensure that your payroll is legally compliant by investing in an HMRC-compliant payroll solution that connects to HMRC and retrieves tax codes automatically. This helps you reduce errors and eliminate manual processes in HMRC reporting.

3. Embrace automation, integration, and AI

Excel spreadsheets, repetitive data entry, and paper-based payroll will only make your payroll management mundane and error-prone. Companies are ditching these manual processes in favor of automated solutions that are quicker, more accurate, and allow for an integrated flow of employee data throughout the business. With the increasing need to analyse and use data, more and more companies are investing in payroll solutions that integrate with their CRM and ERP systems. For example, Dogma Group’s SiriusPayroll365 integrates seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and Dynamics 365 for HR.

In this data-driven world, it has become crucial to analyse the vast amount of payroll data collected. This analysis can provide valuable insights, help shape the company’s budget, identify unnecessary expenses, and contribute to the overall growth of your organisation.

Moreover, AI is becoming more useful as a built-in feature of payroll solutions. AI functionality improves compliance and makes it much easier to process payroll without the risk of errors.

4. Integration with HR technology

Payroll and HR must work in synergy. By integrating payroll solution to your human resources system, you can increase efficiency in managing employee data and unlock the full ‘hire to retire’ cycle of your employees effectively. There are many benefits associated with integrating payroll and HR software. You can set up new employees, create benefit plans, and manage appraisals and performance, review models. An HR integrated payroll solution will also enable your managers and staff members to access all essential information from a single dashboard, making data sharing across teams a breeze!

Furthermore, the secured employee self-service portal is also on the rise. With this functionality, you will be able to empower your employees and payroll staff to collaborate effectively. Features like time-tracking and scheduling ensures that the working hours of employees, is accurately tracked, so no one gets underpaid or overpaid for hours worked.

Besides, when you have all your data within a single solution, you can pool together appropriate data to generate actionable insights. With the help of HR and payroll system integration, you can generate personalised reports that include details about your employees and make better strategic decisions.

5. Increased demand from the gig economy

Technology has enabled people to work from anywhere, and this has given rise to the number of freelancers. The shift from full-time employment to a mixture of third-party and gig workers has resulted in a dynamic workforce. Old, legacy systems are not well-equipped to handle such diversity.

A good payroll software makes it easy to efficiently handle and manage the perfect blend of full-time employees and gig workers. Therefore, organisations need flexible payroll solutions to manage multiple types of workers without any hassle. It’s crucial to have a solution that makes it easy to deal with compliance and taxation issues, as well as have the flexibility to adjust payroll changes in situations where gig workers come and go or get hired on as full-time employee!

Looking for an integrated payroll solution?

As your trusted advisors, we keep up with the latest payroll trends to help make sure your company is able to benefit from the latest technology and help you work smarter.

SiriusPayroll365 is a fully HMRC-compliant solution that manages your organisation’s payroll easily. SiriusPayroll365 streamlines your payroll processes, so your HR and Finance departments can ensure accuracy, timeliness, and compliance.

The latest version of HMRC-compliant payroll solution for D365 Business Central with a simplified interface and better user experience is coming in early 2021! Stay tuned as the Power Platform version will be available for public release! Sign-up here for updates

For more information on SiriusPayroll365, visit our webpage: https://siriusapp.co.uk/apps/siriuspayroll365/