THE FUTURE, FOR NOW
For the foreseeable future the payroll sector is all about continued migration to the cloud – and that includes larger organisations, many of whom have already started the process.
For iPayroll’s Martin Gleeson the future is also about better, timelier interaction with Inland Revenue once the department’s business transformation project is complete.
“However, in the meantime a lot of work needs to be done to improve the efficiency of Inland Revenue processing times and address how and when amendments to payroll adjustments will be made.”
Businesses will also increasingly opt for integrated accounting and payroll solutions, believes MYOB’s Gardiner.
“Payroll as a function will continue to become more automated. Inputs to payroll such as online timesheets, employee self-service, HR, leave management and notifications will become mainstream,” he adds. “These solutions were once only available for large business but adoption will increase among small to medium businesses.”
Gardiner believes technology advances and payroll system improvements don’t have to come at the expense of good people either. “Payroll administrators will continue to play a vital role. Automation and streamlining tedious manual tasks and integrations with accounting software means they’ll be able to free up their time spent on payroll processing and help with employee management or other parts of the business.
“And business owners will have better, real-time access to labour costs to help them understand profitability and inform better business decisions.”
In 2017 Crystal Payroll’s Steve Nathan believes data capture and data delivery will become key components of payroll. There’ll be more tools designed to capture employee attendance data, much of which will be managed via mobile apps, as well as third party systems such as job costing, rostering, time-sheeting, leave management apps – all of which are easily distributed via the cloud.
“Mobile delivery of data such as payslips to employees, and even communication or messaging apps which allow employees to communicate with the pay office or managers, will become more prevalent.
“We live in an “always on” Facebook world where this method of communication is part of our everyday lives.”
However, Nathan does have concerns over market consolidation.
“There’re fewer independent payroll providers in the market and this trend will continue. The challenge I see with this is it reduces competition and has the potential to dumb down the market.
“The more diverse the range of products is in the market the harder the vendors have to work, which leads to innovation, better service and more cost effective solutions.” And the final word goes to Datacom’s Chris Mar. He sees a future of more flexible working arrangements. “People working more than one job, and for more than one employer will become more prevalent. Payroll systems, and the legislation for governing these new working relationships will need to adapt to suit these changing work relationships,” he says.
“It may not be too far-fetched for employees to expect to be paid at the end of each day, as opposed to waiting until the end of the week if they work multiple jobs for multiple employees.”