Integrity Data doesn’t just develop payroll solutions for and , we use them every day! We are lucky to have Marla Bennett as our Employee Experience and HR Manager. Marla came to us as a seasoned HR professional and has used many payroll solutions over the years. She recently helped us with our own internal upgrade from GP Payroll to Payroll NOW.
So we figured, why not ask Marla to share her upgrade and user experience and some tips with all of you who may be exploring a migration from GP to Business Central or wondering if Payroll NOW is a good fit for your organization? Here are a few of her reflections, comparisons, and favorite features.
Upgrading GP Payroll to Payroll NOW
When Marla joined Integrity Data, we were using GP Payroll. Just as soon as she completed her GP Payroll learning curve, we threw her a curve of our own with an upgrade to Payroll NOW! Marla was supportive and cooperative (as usual). She found the transition to be a smooth one with minimal training needed.
“GP was harder to learn coming from payroll tools like ADP and Paycor. Payroll NOW was much simpler to learn and use. Everything is streamlined and in one spot instead of having to go several places to set up and see things like reports and employee benefits. In Payroll NOW, it’s all attached to one employee card so it’s very fast and easy to manage,” Marla shared.
Now that she’s a pro, Marla says what used to take several windows and multiple clicks in GP is now usually one click on one screen. And the whole payroll process is completed in fewer steps than any other solution she has worked with. The best part is she can without having to come into the office—a real perk for payroll administrators and smaller companies.
Now let’s get to the good stuff—how to save time (and stress) with payroll! Here are some of Marla’s favorite features.
Top 10 Payroll NOW Time Savers
1. New Employee Wizard: Marla’s top favorite feature is the new employee wizard. It makes it simple and speedy to add new employees. The wizard steps you through all the required fields so you don’t make any mistakes or omissions. You can enter just the core information to get an employee set up quickly and add more details later.
2. Quick Templates: You can use built-in templates or create custom templates to set up employees in one click, great for assigning specific benefits to specific employees. Then you can easily add and adjust from the employee card.
3. Flexible Expense Allocations: Dimensions in Business Central and Payroll NOW enable you to allocate expenses accurately. For example, an employee could be 100% for one product on one team, or allocated across multiple products, departments, projects, states, etc. You can set up dimensions any way you need to allocate, track, and report on expenses.
4. PTO Support: Adjusting PTO is easy with built-in templates and reports on ledger entries so you can make any needed adjustments for salaried or hourly employees, by individual or group.
5. Simplified Benefits Setup: Employee and employer deductions are on the same screen so you don’t have to go searching for any information like payments and status codes or enter anything in a different place. You can set up benefits and employee/employer formulas once and they are automatically applied.
6. State Tax ID: Payroll NOW takes the stress out of managing changes to unemployment percentages every year. Changes are easy to add and edit.
7. Automated Communications and Reports: And Power BI reports can be sent to people who don’t have access to payroll such as government reports to leadership, and mangers who need to review benefits. All reports are customizable.
8. Automated Communications and Self-Serve Options: Marla loves being able to securely email paystubs to all employees—no more printing, delivering, or mailing paystubs! With self-service tools, employees can log in and view and download paystubs and W2s across multiple pay periods, enroll or update benefits, and much more. This can save loads of time answering questions and fulfilling special requests.
9. Employee Codes: Assign codes for EEOC, Ethnicity, Workers Comp, etc. making it easy to run reports for audits.
10. Flexible Payroll Batching: If you don’t like the limitations of many payroll systems on how and when you can run payroll batches (who wants to pay extra just to run another batch?)—this is a huge benefit of Payroll NOW. You can run payroll how it makes sense for your business with no extra effort or charges. If you want to run salaried separately from hourly, no problem. Need to run a special bonus for one employee? Go ahead. You can even add new employees to run in their own batch.
Wish you could save time like Marla?
Integrity Data has been a leader in providing Microsoft Dynamics payroll and human capital management solutions for more than 25 years. We know how to make payroll faster, easier, and a more strategic part of your business. to learn more about Payroll Now or any time to get answers to your questions.
