Benefits of K-12 Schools Streamlining Their Financial Processes

K-12 schools often face financial challenges, from receiving funding to facilitating financial processes. Even with enough funding, schools can continue to struggle financially and manage complex accounting. To combat these challenges, your school district should understand how to develop an effective finance management plan for your institution, especially if you are facing budget cuts.

Schools must juggle several financial tasks, including balancing budgets, overseeing asset management, ensuring vendors are paid on time, and managing and approving contracts. Your school must meet academic standards, and without streamlined financial processes, ensuring student success can be an uphill battle. This is why MIP® offers software for K-12 schools and universities.

Challenges in Payroll for School Districts

Challenges in payroll can arise for school districts for a variety of reasons. The adoption of a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, for example, can lead to challenges with payroll, especially if the implementation is rushed. When payroll challenges arise, consequences can be significant, such as overpaying and underpaying employees.

Your school district should also be wary of payroll fraud, especially if you implement payroll software that was not designed for K-12 school districts. A purpose-built K-12 software, on the other hand, includes features that automatically track payroll processes, assign security roles, and flag suspicious transactions.

With rapid changes in technology, your district needs to adapt quickly and put a system in place that can keep up with these shifts. Without the right payroll software, your school may not be able to support large changes or grow in scale. Antiquated solutions and processes can also lead to security issues.

Challenges in payroll for school districts may include:

• Dispersed workforce: With more employees working remotely, these working arrangements can present challenges in payroll. A dispersed workforce needs to be paid properly and on time, regardless of whether they are working in the office or remotely. Issues can arise without a centralized payroll system and streamlined processes. 
• Changes in payroll legislation: Regulations are frequently changing, which can put your district at risk of being non-compliant. Between stimulus solutions, relief programs, and government grants, compliance is a bigger challenge now more than ever. Your district will need to dedicate resources and time to properly interpreting and applying changes. Fortunately, the right software can automate tax rules and ensure compliance.
• Employee financial stress: With the current state of the economy, employees are facing greater financial stress. Many may be struggling to cover expenses, and this financial stress can negatively impact the performance of your school. The proper payroll system can ensure employees are paid and keep employee satisfaction high.

Some of the other challenges your school district may face regarding payroll include:

• Maintaining compliance
• Manual process problems
• Limited or outdated systems
• Timing and accuracy of inputs
• Complex, nonstandard processes
• Employee review of reported time
• Manager approval of reported time
• Decentralized, inconsistent systems
• Payroll data integration from and to other systems

To support faculty well-being and reduce inefficiencies, your K-12 school will need to overcome these challenges. Fortunately, with the right payroll software, you can easily overcome these challenges and streamline your financial processes.

Reduce Errors With Payroll Software for Schools

Errors in payroll can lead to time-consuming efforts to resolve these errors. If your current payroll processes lead to a number of errors, your payroll team will lose time to correcting these mistakes that could otherwise be spent on strategic, value-added initiatives. The financial costs of errors in payroll can be direct, indirect, or both.

The following are some of the common costs of payroll errors:

• Unpaid or late payroll taxes may lead to extra hours worked and penalties.
• Overtime miscalculations may lead to issues with compliance or legal ramifications.
• Hours logged incorrectly must be corrected, disrupting budget accuracy and taking up valuable time.
• Issues with communication or incomplete paperwork can lead to delayed payroll approvals.
• Lost timesheets and misplaced time cards lead to time-consuming efforts to locate or replicate these items.
• Employee misclassification due to errors in data entry could result in employees being paid an incorrect amount.

The proper payroll software and process are essential to ensuring your school district can reduce errors. By reducing manual processes with automation, your school can ensure accuracy and avoid delays. With payroll software designed for K-12 schools, you can ensure important information isn’t lost. Cloud-based software will keep records backed up, remain up-to-date with overtime regulations, calculate tax payments, and submit tax information.

By automating your payroll process, you can protect your school’s funding and retain the trust of your faculty with streamlined financial processes and successful payroll management. At MIP®, we offer the payroll software your school needs.

Ease of Use

Depending on your educational institution’s needs, payroll software designed for K-12 schools can come with various features, rules, options, and policies. You can easily configure necessary accounting entries for payroll, including salary structure, attendance data, and information on lost wages. You can modify payroll for every employee with a simple click.

Whether your school needs to implement payroll software or you have a system that lacks capabilities for usability, the right software ensures ease of use is a core feature. With this ease of use, your school can ensure:

• Reliable return on investment (ROI): Payroll software can give you back your time, which is the best return on your investment. By preventing errors, you avoid losing both money and time.
• Compliance with regulations: Compliance with federal and state regulations can be challenging, especially when regulations are frequently changing. With the right payroll solution, you can maintain control of your organization and stay in compliance with regulations.
• User adoption: When you implement a payroll solution, your school staff needs to be able to use it. A system that is difficult to use will have poor user adoption, meaning staff will be less likely to use it. Fortunately, the right software will be simple for faculty to access and use daily.

Get a Demo for School Payroll Software

At MIP®, we offer accounting software and various services designed to help your K-12 school manage complex accounting processes and needs. With comprehensive financial tracking, your educational institution can engage with donors, make more informed decisions, and operate more efficiently. Since our platform was designed specifically with nonprofits in mind, it is scalable, flexible, and secure, offering every feature your school needs for fund accounting.

Our leading cloud-based solution anticipates your accountability and reporting requirements. Request a software demo of MIP Fund Accounting® to learn more about streamlining your K-12 school’s financial processes.