Don the cap and gown! It’s time to graduate your school’s outsourced payroll and human resources software and bring those systems in-house through integrated accounting software.
According to the 2023 Trends and Insights into the State of Schools Report, school administrators are exploring ways to increase efficiency through technology integration and investing in cloud-based solutions. Sixty-eight percent of respondents expect to increase their investment in technology in 2023, with 93% hoping to move their current technology to the cloud and invest in improved processes.
Education institutions that rely on third parties, non-school-specific technology, or technology that takes excessive time to generate reports or import or export data are limiting efficiency and ballooning expenses.
Bringing payroll/HR systems in-house through integrated accounting software can increase efficiency and effectiveness. Discover the benefits of integrating accounting, HR, and payroll.
Bring HR and Payroll In-house
Consider how an integrated system combining accounting with payroll and HR could solve the pain points of outsourced HR or manual, separate processes, and experience benefits like:
HR Management: A true integration between payroll and accounting systems provides the framework for efficient data integrity and reporting. Schools that have brought HR and payroll in-house realize benefits like:
- Easy HR reporting
- Tax form population and e-Filing functionality
- Efficient tracking of employee data like education and certifications, among others
- Audit trails of employee history
- Single entry source for essential personnel information
Payroll: Payroll functionality that is fully integrated with HR records can help your business office be more efficient in a few ways: including generating fully-allocated accounting entries, using distribution codes, and performing complex wage calculations across processing groups. With integrated payroll, your team can quickly generate and file W-2 taxes forms for employees and the government based on the past year’s payroll data, including key withholding amounts in a few clicks. Plus, integrated software automatically updates state tax tables giving your finance team time back for other tasks. Look for software features like audit capability to ensure your school’s finances are accurate to avoid legal ramifications.
Benefits Enrollment: Bringing benefits enrollment in house is easier than you could’ve imagined. Imagine there’s benefits package your staff has always wanted, but the plan you were enrolled in didn’t allow flexibility or customizations. Integrated accounting software can help easily create a unique benefits package, account for the complex calculations to determine base plan rules and rate tables, and employees can review, update, select, and print benefits and deductions, and your school can automatically apply benefit calculations to all employees with one click.
Employee Web Services (EWS): Does your school offer an employee portal that allows employees and managers to save time and reduce errors with the ability to securely enter, update, and approve employee timesheets and other records online? With an EWS portal that is integrated with your accounting software, employees can access and update personal information and timesheets wherever they have internet access, and managers can also review and approve submissions 24/7. The data can feed right into your accounting software, saving hundreds of hours tracking reports down, for timely reporting and payroll.
Direct Deposit: Avoid the hassles associated with lost paychecks and employees who wait extended periods before depositing their checks. Increase efficiency and make the switch to online forms and employee resources.
The Benefits of Integrated Systems
An integrated system can help your school’s business office, increase efficiency, and most importantly save time importing and exporting third-party, or self-generated data. Consolidating the number of systems your team is using could also save on IT and potential third-party costs related to outsourcing HR services and paying for report generation.
“MIP is well suited for any […] organization. With MIP, an organization would have the potential to have MIP process payroll, manage procurement and associated workflows, create budgets for the entire organization, and do all the necessary financial reporting required,”
Paul W., Aspire Public Schools
One thing to keep in mind is that an integrated system can also help reduce fraud risk associated with paper and Excel-based payroll systems which offer no audit trail, don’t properly protect financial information, and have files that are also prone to human error and can accidentally be deleted.
With an integrated accounting, payroll and HR system, like MIP Fund Accounting, your business office can reduce fraud, streamline financial reporting for business office administrators with HR and Payroll information, and help reduce the number of hours moving data between systems. Integrated accounting software also makes reporting and forecasting more complete with at-a-glance, up-to-date metrics while also pulling historical cost and compensation for comprehensive reporting to help your school improve efficiency.
Graduate inefficient systems and look for ways to increase efficiency with an accounting system that offers integrated payroll and HR functionality with MIP Cloud. Want to learn more? Schedule time to explore integrated school accounting, HR, and payroll software.
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