Masonry Magazine May 2003 Page. 38
Accounting
An invoice adjustment program would also be nice, nobody is perfect. The AP system should track non-employee compensation (1099s).
Payroll (PR)
The person doing payroll should never have to worry about what taxes are to be withheld for each employee. Since all tax calculations are based on where the employee lives and where the employee is working, the payroll system should have no problem calculating the taxes automatically, both on an employee and employer level.
The payroll system should accrue labor burden items such as taxes, insurance and fringe benefits. For owner controlled insurance programs (OCIP) or contractor controlled insurance programs (CCIP) there should be the facility to turn off the insurance accrual at the job level. Oftentimes there is a requirement to report your monthly payroll related to OCIP/CCIP projects. For this reason, there should be the facility to easily retrieve and report the payroll by classification for the OCIP/CCIP projects.
Some other things to consider: On your wish list may also be an automatic accrual of that portion of a week's payroll that crosses into the next accounting period.
At the end of the year, there should be no closing of the year before being allowed to process payroll transactions for the next year.
If you process a lot of expenses for your employees, you may want to add those types of reimbursements to the net payroll check, eliminating the need to cut an additional AP check.
If you operate in multiple states, and your employees work in multiple states during the course of the year, check out the way the payroll system handles unemployment tax for those individuals. Some states will not require you to pay additional unemployment tax if the employee already earned the base wage amount in a previous state. In other words, wages earned in other states can sometimes be used when computing the taxable wage base in another state.
Check out the various programs that may come with the system for handling payroll adjustments. This process should be made easy since in the construction world we constantly deal with layoff checks, adjustments due to underpayment, voids and re-issues of checks, etc.
Check out the various reports that come with the system and be sure that there is a certified payroll report. There should also be reports to facilitate reporting of taxes weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, etc.
Some information, such as W-2s, may have to be filed on magnetic media. Some states are moving toward the electronic filing of reports via the Internet.
"Direct Deposit" is a nice feature for your employees that choose this method of payment.
When writing checks, you need to be able to write out of multiple bank accounts.
It's nice when checks come off the printer grouped by the last job each person worked, facilitating the distribution of those checks.