Payroll calculations are a
considerable headache for small
businesses.
Not only may normal pay and
overtime have to be worked out,
but there are also tax and
National Insurance contributions to contend with.
These calculations are not
usually very difficult, but they
are repetitive and time-consum
ing. Also, employees do not like
mistakes in their pay, and some
care is needed if these are to be
avoided.
Micro-Aid's Payroll could, I
think, be of considerable help to
many small businesses.
It will cater for up to 100
employees and with all tax codes
(up to a maximum of 480).
As regards National Insurance, the program deals with
non-contracted-out employees
only.
There are separate versions
for weekly and monthly earners
and for disc and cassette users.
I found Payroll easy to use
and the manual comprehensive.
It included a partial program
listing showing the variables
which are used to hold the
Inland Revenue and national
insurance data.
The user is free to alter these
when required (for example after
the Budget) or Micro-Aid offers
an update contract.
To calculate the pay of say an
hourly-paid employee, the user
would be presented with a
number of options such as enter
normal hours, overtime hours,
bonus pay and so on. The
program will work out all the
figures needed and will print a
wage-slip.
The use of a printer is, in fact,
optional and the calculated
figures could be copied manually
from the screen.
As cassette versions of the
programs are available, the
system can therefore be very
economical in hardware terms.
At the end of the run, period
and culmulative-to-datc summaries
can be printed out for
each employee and companywide.
There is an enormous variety
of payroll calculations and I
checked only a few situations. I
found all of these to be
calculated correctly.
1st July 1985
