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Evo-ERP and DBA Classic >> Payroll >> What are you using for Payroll?
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Message started by GasGiant on 12/04/06 at 13:23:34

Title: What are you using for Payroll?
Post by GasGiant on 12/04/06 at 13:23:34

My question is not just academic. We gave up using a service when we went to 100% direct deposit. We do payroll in-house for 70 employees, but the Payroll module is fairly painful to use regularly (bi-weekly). Anyone have good experiences with an elegant alternative? Is there something that you do to significantly reduce the time it takes?

We do not gather time or even labor info. All info is transferred from timesheets into a spreadsheet for the bank from which they process the direct deposits, then we enter the info into the payroll module and print stubs. We use a separate company for processing, then post summary entries into accounting.

Title: Re: What are using for Payroll?
Post by Tommy Johnson on 12/04/06 at 19:47:42

We use Checkmark Payroll since the DBA payroll was not available at the time we purchased DBA. It's inexpensive and easy to use. Our accounting/HR people like it. There is a DBA export from Checkmark to import into DBA, but we do not use that since we do need all of that detail data in the GL. I believe accounting just makes one GL entry for the payroll total.

We collect hourly time in a custom time clock application I developed. The users have a badge with a barcode they swipe in and out with at one of three networked PC stations, and then their time is loaded into a weekly time sheet. The time sheet application is internal web based. Managers can add sick, vacation, holiday time and then approve. Salary employees enter their time sheets for manager approval. The two week time totals are exported into a file that Checkmark imports. Check stubs are printed from Checkmark, and the payroll info is sent to the bank for direct deposit payments.

Email me direct if anyone is interested in the time clock/sheet applications.

Title: Re: What are using for Payroll?
Post by David Waldmann on 12/05/06 at 04:59:13

GasGiant wrote:

the Payroll module is fairly painful to use regularly (bi-weekly

Granted, we don't have 70 employees, but we do PR weekly and I've always thought it was fairly painless and quick. What is so time consuming or don't you like about it?

Title: pe: What are you using for Payroll?
Post by deburr on 12/05/06 at 09:51:31

We also do payroll weekly for about 60 and find the DBA program works well for us. My question to GasGiant is, does the bank do the tax and other deductions for you and then you have to do a reverse engineering of the payroll into DBA? That would be very cumbersome. If that is what is happenning, I think it would be far better to have DBA do the payroll and export the data to a spreadsheet for the bank.

Title: Re: What are you using for Payroll?
Post by cathyh on 12/05/06 at 11:59:06

We currently use Quickbooks (not my choice but put in place by the person (not here any more) doing payroll back when DBA Payroll was not functioning well enough.
I would like to see us switch to DBA/Evo for our payroll and I would like to hear from others also about positive or negative experience with it, or alternatives to what we are using currently. Quickbooks is a very expensive program to purchase yearly when we only use the Payroll part of it.
Our accounting /payroll personel are not receptive to change, so I need to be sure the change will work for them, so more input on this would be very helpful to me also.

Title: Re: What are you using for Payroll?
Post by David Waldmann on 12/06/06 at 05:59:28

For me, figuring up the hours is the most time intensive part of the job, as we use a time clock and cards.

We use direct deposit for all, and do the ACH batches manually using our banks online ACH service. Every week we just do a "Quick Edit" of the batch - every employee on one screen, go down and enter the net pay for each one and the total against our account.

We also do an ACH batch for PR taxes.

We have 13 employees and I doubt it takes a half hour altogether.

The only thing DBA doesn't do is give us on the PR Register is the the PR tax breakdowns (it doesn't add the employee and employer parts together) or grand total (total SS/MC + withheld). Maybe there's a report somewhere or a feature we're not using, but it only takes another 30 seconds to figure it out.

Overall I am extremely happy with DBA PR - though I'm not sure how it would work if we didn't have the option of online ACH creation. Try it out in your SandBox company if you're not sure.

Title: Re: What are you using for Payroll?
Post by deburr on 12/07/06 at 11:21:54

Cathy

DBA payroll works great but reports leave much to be desired.

We use crystal to produce reports so this is not an issue. If you will rely on DBA reports, you will not be happy.

Initail setup takes some thought in whether you want the system to automatically create employer contributions in the user deductions. In health insurance deductions, we just do the employer share through accounts payable, manually each month. In 401k match, we let the system do the match but there is a short coming. The system does not do a 2 tier match like "100% of first 3% of salary and 50% of next 2% of salary" so there are adjustments made at plan year end.

Sick pay can get ugly with any system when there split tax liabilities and third party payers. We use Crystal to do W-2's, pension plan reports etc..., but DBA does provide enough fields in data base to track the data.

Like Dave says, thry it in the test company before going live.

Steve