Free Payroll Accounting Software – Make Sure The Support Is There
If you have been running a small business for a while, and are starting to turn it from a one man band into an operation that hires staff members, it has has no doubt crossed your mind that you will need access to some sort of payroll system. Trying to keep track of your payroll data manually is a real nightmare, and there’s not many businesses out there that don’t rely on computers in some way to manage their payroll requirements. Some more than others.
If you have looked around at what software packages are out there, you will have no doubt found that the most respected accounting packages, like Quicbooks, can cost a lot of money. A lot more than a small single person operation can handle. Fortunately, if your needs aren’t too complex, you shouldn’t need all of the extra bells and whistles that a large accounting package like that offers. Quite often, a free payroll software package will more than suffice for what you need.
Of course, something as important as payroll needs to be tracked in a reliable system, and quite often by choosing a free package, you are running the risk of having limited support for your application. If something goes wrong, you need to be sure that there is someone available to troubleshoot the problems you are having, and many free packages available just don’t offer that level of support. Likewise, if you have spent a number of hours entering in data and then get stuck on a particular functionality, then you will need to at least have access a comprehensive user manual to look up queries.
In lieu of online customer support, many free software packages offer a forum instead, where users of the software can log in and talk with other users about their problems. This is a viable alternative to having access to someone face to face, as more often than not, the people that frequent these forums are active users of the software, and will be able to help you with your needs.
With these things in mind, the most important question you need to ask yourself before you start using a free payroll software package is – “What level of support is available?”. If you can’t see anything on the developers website about support (in extreme cases, some developers don’t even have websites, they just distribute their software amongst the software distribution hubs around the Internet), then it’s probably a good idea to move on and find something that offers at least a little bit of help to their customers.
