PenSoft - Payroll Plus Accounting Edition

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From the September 2009 Review of Professional Payroll Programs

PenSoft Payroll Accounting Edition is a live payroll system designed for professionals providing payroll services to multiple clients. The program is based on the vendor’s comprehensive Platinum Edition, but with additional multi-client management capabilities, built-in invoicing functions and the ability to make global changes across clients. The system supports all states and includes federal and state compliance reporting, with the ability to process payrolls for any number of client businesses and employees.

Other features include depart-mental costing, multi-rate and multi-state employees, benefits management, and integration with common accounting systems. Pricing for Payroll Accounting Edition is based on the overall number of employee payrolls managed through the system, starting at $1,629 for new users and renewing at $1,299, inclusive of all system functions except direct deposit, which is handled through a third party for an additional fee. PenSoft also develops several levels of in-house business payroll software.

DATA ENTRY & KEY FEATURES:
Client and employee setup functions are fairly intuitive, with tabbed entry for company data forms allowing movement through various basic and payroll-related areas, including federal and state tax settings, departments, job codes, retirement plans, contact information and notes. Similar forms are used for employee setup, with tabs for entering direct deposit accounts, pay rates, tax data, deductions, benefits, assigning employees to departments or jobs, tracking education and training, and managing EEO-related human resources data. PenSoft Payroll also includes custom fields for tracking miscellaneous information. Users can create default employee settings that copy basic data across to new entries.

The program’s primary interface is a blank, slate grey window that offers menus for system functions, as well as button-style links to specific payroll activity areas, including bringing up client and employee selection screens, running payroll, managing deposits, processing checks, reporting, export functions and the backup utility. Client and employee selection lists allow sorting by various criteria, including name, department, job code and even ZIP.

Employees can be assigned any number of standard or custom deductions, including benefits like cafeteria plans, health savings accounts and 401Ks, and other deferred savings plans. Other deductions, such as garnishments, planned giving, loan repayments and union dues can also be applied to employee pay. The system can handle any type of employee, including hourly, salaried, tipped and commission, with overtime and double overtime, as well as various other pay benefits such as meals and advances. The program automatically makes all calculations during data entry, along with computing state and federal withholding. Accruals for paid time off (vacation, sick, personal) can be set by the user.

When processing payroll runs, users can enter and edit employee hours and other payroll data from detailed single-employee screens, which include YTD and net summaries at the bottom, or data can be entered in batch mode for the client, with the selected workers all appearing in a single spreadsheet data-entry form. Users can also duplicate previous payrolls and make edits, if necessary, or access employee timesheet data from the payroll screen. PenSoft’s TimeOnline utility offers web-based attendance and time entry for employees, giving them access to their payroll information. A Remote Client add-on is also available that allows client businesses to remotely submit payroll data to the firm. Payroll debit cards can also be used as an alternative to checks or direct deposit for unbanked employees.