Blink and you will miss the rest of the 2011 Financial Year. Yes that's right it's only 8 weeks till the new Financial Year.

So planning for 2012 must start NOW.

The 1st step in the planning process is to review your systems. Are they providing you with everything you need? Are there other systems that could make part of your job easier? Are there improvements that could be made to your current systems?

Over the next few weeks I'm going to give you an update on some of the new systems available on the market and how these systems can help streamline your business.....I'll start with Paycycle

Paycycle

Now traditionally most small business use the payroll built into MYOB or QuickBooks or a similar product. As the product is not an actual Payroll specific product the process tends to be accounting based as opposed to payroll based. Enter Paycycle. We at Growthwise have been using Paycycle for the last 12 months and I have to say I've never found a payroll easier. It's intuitive, very easy to setup, looks pleasing, is superfast (so far my PB is 1 minute 17 seconds for processing Growthwise Payroll) and more importantly I can process payroll from anywhere! It takes care of all the normal payroll stuff like Payslips, Automatic ABA files for uploading to your bank, calculates tax per the updated tax tables, prepares PAYG Payment summaries at the end of the year, and gives you the Monthly or Quarterly reports you need for PAYG Withholding and Superannuationn Contributions (in fact it takes care of Super Automatically for you if you are on the medium subscription). But.....by far for me the most convenient is not having to buy each year the updated tax tables and load these onto each Computer that uses MYOB or Quickbooks. The updates are done for you automatically! Oh and add the fact that you can schedule Leave in for employees when they apply not have to remember when they take it!

As the business world changes so should your internal systems. You can now have an offsite bookkeeper or an employee that works from home a couple of day a week and still process your payroll. You can even be at home sick or on holidays and process your payroll! Now that is what I can convenient.

Now some of you may be thinking yes but what about the accounting side of things. Paycycle has already considered this and integrates seemlessly with Xero.....no journals need just the click of one button and your payroll is automatically uploaded in your Xero File.

Changing Payroll systems is best done at the start of a new Financial Year. Paycycle offers a 30 day free trial so you can have a play around with the system without having to purchase anything. If you are interested in having a look at Paycycle or changing systems at the start of the year let me know. As a special we will setup your Paycycle system free of charge before the 30th June!

Next week I'll take a look at Xero the Online accounting system.......

Note: Since writing this article Xero have actually acquired Paycycle and it is now known as Xero Payroll