Businesses in the current generation have a significant reliance on payroll software. Even small enterprises have shifted their reliance on payroll software processing. However, with technological advancements, this reliance on payroll software among businesses and enterprises has moved from the traditional processing approaches to the most technological ones, in this case, Cloud Payroll Software. Therefore, we shift a significant focus to Cloud Payroll Software Development. But before diving deeper into many details, let us first dive into some reasons why you need to incorporate a Cloud-Based Payroll system into your corporate enterprise or business.

Reasons for developing and incorporating a Cloud-Based Payroll System

Many businesses and enterprises are moving from traditional payroll systems to the most stable and cloud-powered software options. All these are for specific reasons. Some migrate to advance their security and improve services and storage. Some critical reasons for the transition to cloud-based payroll software systems are the need for advanced security and ensuring achievement or meeting the needs for employee acceptance concerns. More importantly, digitalization has been a significant source of opportunities that have pushed businesses to advance payroll operations to the cloud.

Benefits of Cloud-Payroll System Development

• Foreseen expenses

With cloud based payroll software, it is easier to foresee the approximate charges or costs related to given expenses. Unlike the offline payroll systems, which to some extent are difficult to predict their costs, the cloud-based counterparts ensure more accessible and more accurate prediction of expenses thanks to a subscription model attached to it. There are also fewer to no manual processes involved with cloud-based payroll software, and therefore, no extra costs are incurred on manual processes. Manual processes also come with challenges and limitations, including compliance violations and easier chances of making mistakes.

• Great scalability

One of the greatest determinant factors that pushes a business to greater levels is scalability. Therefore, scalability in payroll software brought about by cloud-based solutions helps enhance scalability in most businesses. Unlike traditional systems, cloud-based solutions reduce complexity in operations, making the services and functionalities under them much more scalable. Cloud payroll software development ensures that business growth goes hand in hand with the system and, therefore, no difficulties in future advancements.

• Increased efficiency

It is always essential that payroll software achieves a greater level of efficiency. Cloud Payroll software solutions ensure a high level of efficiency with few cases of errors happening. With cloud payroll software development, there are greater chances of achieving a smooth path in automating complex payroll tasks. Furthermore, repeated tasks are easily solved through the Cloud Payroll Software. The automation is precise and primarily close to error-free so that the entire payroll service achieves more significant efficiency. There are also limited to no streamlines in businesses with cloud payroll software incorporated into their day-to-day services.

• Greater accessibility

As opposed to the traditional form of payroll software operations, cloud-based payroll software operations have better accessibility. That means a client or customer can easily access a payroll software service from any mobile device with just the internet as a significant requirement for any cloud-based payroll software. With such levels of accessibility, it is often easier for employees such as the finance teams to access payroll data from any location. Remote access to payroll operations makes work easier for finance experts and customers. It is a better way of enhancing flexibility in payroll business operations. Compared to the traditional payroll process approach, this cloud-based solution tries to eliminate all the challenges associated with the flexibility and accessibility of user and payroll data. A better enhancement, a perfect combo, is the integration of AI into this cloud-based solution. With AI in payroll software, automation, accessibility, and streamlined processing will be greater.

Key features of Cloud Payroll software

Before diving into the development of Cloud Payroll software, it is good to understand the features to incorporate into the software. It is necessary to understand that incorporating critical features into the software will significantly impact the business it will serve. Some of the features to integrate into a cloud-based payroll software during development include:

• Expense management feature-incorporation 

Developers must integrate expense management features into the system so that users can easily manage expenses right from within the system. The integration will be helpful, especially when the business relates its operations with reimbursable employee expenses such as meals, travel, and lodging. It is also essential that the cloud-based payroll software supports significant capabilities such as attaching documents. Therefore, developers should always strive to integrate document attachment support into such a system. Other important expense management features to incorporate into such a system include the support for automation of expense reports along with payment cycles.

• Employee Self-Service features

Employees are among the major entities in implementing or developing the cloud Payroll Software. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that the development team focus on integrating features that adequately meet and smoothen the needs of the employee on the Cloud Payroll Software. One significant way to do so is to incorporate an employee self-service feature. It is essential to understand that incorporating this key feature during development brings more critical benefits, including allowing employees to modify their details, such as addresses and account numbers. Employees can also easily access pay stubs and other crucial payment forms. All these functionality makes work easier for employees and finance officers, hence enhancing the employee engagement and retention.

• Tax filing feature incorporation

Tax filing is one of the most critical operations, especially when dealing with most payroll software. Therefore, it is essential to incorporate the tax filing module when building the cloud-based payroll processing software. Consequently, it is necessary to integrate built-in tax tables and related rate charges. Incorporating the tax filing module means a smooth and streamlined tax filing process with more straightforward tax calculations just done from within the system. It is also essential to offer a feature under this module to auto-generate w-2 forms.

Global Payroll features

The world of cloud-based payroll processing software is expanding to greater scales. Adding global features to the system makes it even more outstanding. Therefore, developers should incorporate a global payroll feature to allow businesses to amicably solve the complications related to international employee hiring. Such a feature is also helpful in managing foreign currencies, international regulatory compliances, and even time zones.

During development, many features must be incorporated into the cloud payroll software.

• Time-tracking features

Time is one of the most significant entities, especially when working with any services related to payrolls. You will need to track a proper record of employee working times so that it is easier to calculate their payrolls. Therefore, the developing team should incorporate a time-tracking feature to track the time-ins and time-outs for all the employees. Incorporating such a feature into the system breaks the need for manual operations like attendance tracking. It increases the accuracy of the attendance records.

• Corporate bank integration

Linking the cloud-based payroll software with a related bank is one of the major operations and functionalities a developer needs to add to such software. Doing so makes it much easier for the finance team to complete payment-related tasks. They can easily make salary disbursements to employees with just a click. Employees can also enjoy quicker access to salary histories and their paychecks.

• Payroll report features and functionalities

C-suite executives must have a clear view of the payroll report. An excellent corporate payroll management software solution should have customized report-generation capabilities. Customize because the reporting elements may vary from one company to another and will have different integration requirements.

Other key features include on-demand payment support and payroll integration.

The Cloud Payroll Software Development Cost and Stages

Apart from understanding features to incorporate when you want to develop a cloud payroll software, it is essential that you also establish the costs linked to the whole development process. Let’s quickly break down the approximate costs for developing a fully operational cloud payroll software. First, understanding the development stages will lead us to estimate the costs. However, fees vary extensively concerning various considerations like the complexity of the cloud payroll software, project management approach, and even the development team rates. The cost of development of the Cloud Payroll Software may also be impacted by factors such as security and scalability.

However, the development stages start with the planning phase, which includes collecting and understanding the client’s project requirements. This phase is expected to cost a rough estimate of $5,000 – $15,000.

Another critical development phase is the design phase, which entails establishing the system architecture. The phrase might cost approximately around $10,000 – $30,000. The development phase has a rough estimated cost of $30,000 – $100,000. The testing, deployment, and maintenance phases do not exceed $30,000, $15,000, and $220,000, respectively.

Conclusion

Developing cloud payroll software is one of the major tasks that a developer can undertake. It is essential that the developer understands the ins and outs of such software and also has an in-depth overview of the associated benefits. Doing so allows him to properly integrate the desired features into the system and provide the approximate development durations and costs, as illustrated in this piece.

Want to develop a cloud payroll software? Connect with our software development company – Aalpha information systems!