Better Payroll Software Options

Managing the accounts for a small business can, in many ways, be more challenging than a similar position at a large corporation. Small-business payroll software can help level the playing field. There are a lot of options out there, though, so it's important to find the payroll processing software that fits your company's size, needs, and unique market position. Here are some of the options you have when you're looking for small-business payroll software that can put your accounting on par with a much larger firm.

For very small businesses, sole proprietorships, and independent contractors who find it advantageous to handle their own accounting, there's hardly a better option than one of the packaged, commercially available small-business payroll software products already on the market. Quicken, and its related family of payroll processing software, dominates the small-business payroll software market for a reason. It's fast and simple and comes bundled with features that help you keep the books straight.

There comes a time when your business has outgrown a one-size-fits-most solution such as Quicken. When that happens, many small businesses will opt to outsource their books to a full-time accounting professional. Others—perhaps the more adventurous ones—will try designing custom packages of their own. Excel is good for this. It's a simple spreadsheet program that doesn't call for much special training, and it's so widely available that you'll be able to migrate data to other small-business payroll software programs easily. However, Excel, along with similar basic spreadsheet programs, should really be thought of as a stop on the journey to more sophisticated small-business payroll software.

When your business has grown beyond spreadsheets, you'll find several small-business payroll software options fighting for your attention. One outstanding option is to integrate your small-business payroll software with your other tracked data in a simple relational database such as SQL Server. This small-business payroll software, developed by Microsoft, allows sophisticated analysis of your accounts, integrates beautifully with a custom-designed front end for inputs, and comes ready for cloud applications that will save space on your servers and automatically back up your data. It also scales very well, allowing your company to move seamlessly from a dozen or so employees to several hundred without a serious small-business payroll software overhaul.

Beyond these options lies the realm of big business. While small-business payroll software has been steadily improving for decades, it can only go so far. With any luck, someday your company will outgrow the small-business payroll software it started with and move to a fully customized platform. Until then, the right small-business payroll software can afford you some of the economies enjoyed by larger players.

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