Payroll software solutions sorted into the four types that matter: the types of payroll software and types of payroll systems on sale, and what makes different payroll software and different payroll systems genuinely different rather than differently branded

Identifying which type you need

1. Decide who files. You, the vendor, or a person at a bureau. This answer alone selects the type, and it is a question about your appetite for risk and your available hours rather than about software.
2. Decide how unusual your payroll is. Several jurisdictions, unusual contracts, union agreements or complex benefits push you towards bureau or suite. Straightforward monthly payroll is well served by the cheaper types.
3. Decide what else has to agree with it. Time and attendance, accounting, and HR. Where two of those are already fixed, the payroll type is often chosen for you and the shortlist is short.

Calculation only, and full service

Calculation products work out gross to net and produce payslips, leaving you to make the deposits and the returns. They are cheap, and they leave the deadline risk with you. Full service products file on your behalf and usually take some responsibility for getting it right.

The gap between them is small in price and large in consequence. Employers who do their own filings should be confident about the calendar rather than the software, because the calendar is what generates penalties.

Bureau services, where a person does the work

A bureau is a payroll department you rent. You send changes, they run the payroll, file and produce the reports. The software you see is a portal onto their process rather than a product you operate, and the quality of the service is the quality of the people.

This suits employers with awkward payroll and no specialist, and employers who want somebody accountable by name. It costs more and removes a class of problem entirely. Judge it on responsiveness and on what happens when your usual contact is away.

The payroll module inside a suite

Where HR, time and payroll share one record, the reconciliation between them disappears and that is a genuine saving. The cost is depth: suite payroll modules are often strong in their home market and weaker outside it, and you are tied to one vendor's roadmap.

Test the module against your hardest jurisdiction rather than your largest. Suites tend to be excellent where most of their customers are and thin at the edges, and the edges are where your exceptions live.

Common questions

Is a bureau the same as outsourcing payroll?

In practice yes, with software included. The distinction people draw is whether you retain any operation of the system or hand the whole process over.

Can you move between types later?

Yes, and a quarter boundary is the clean moment. Moving from a bureau back in house is the hardest direction because the knowledge sits with them.

Which type is cheapest?

Calculation only on paper, and frequently not once the hours and the penalty risk are counted. The honest comparison includes the time of whoever files.

Do different payroll systems calculate differently?

They should not, and small differences do appear in rounding, benefit treatment and mid period changes. That is exactly what a parallel run exists to surface.

Coverage by country

• Employer of record vendors covering Singapore
• Employer of record vendors covering Mexico
• Employer of record vendors covering Spain
• Employer of record vendors covering Colombia
• Employer of record vendors covering United Kingdom
• Employer of record vendors covering France
• Employer of record vendors covering Hungary
• Employer of record vendors covering New Zealand