Payroll software for accountancy practice

cal60

Been using Collsoft for a long time but considering alternatives for 2018 - either Brightpay or Payback . Does anybody know which is most popular payroll software for accountancy practices or have experience with either of these ?

duffysfarm

I have been using collsoft for a long time now also and find it brilliant. their support is good but the staff can be abrupt. the only thing that I am disappointed with is that it is still computer based and not in the cloud.

I looked at the payback site and I see that they have an online package so I may look at this. I use surf accounts for online accounting and they have been promising to bring out an online package for a long time now so must follow up with them

Synode

Another Collsoft user. No plans to move to the cloud so will be sticking with it

exaisle

I've been using Thesaurus for the past few years. I find the support staff very helpful.

L.Jenkins

Use Brightpay and I love it. Fairly handy to use and great support.

EamonOSullivan

We use Thesaurus here in the Bureau version. Easy to use and easy to explain.

It has good facilities to convert data from an excel sheet in to hours if you are running larger payrolls.

It has all the features we need to run a good few payrolls every week.

J.Ryan

I've used Thesaurus in 2 former employments and Collsoft in another and have used Collsoft since opening my doors, quiet happy with it, from recent CPD, the whole payroll system may change in 2019, so perhaps hold off on changing your software.

Soulsun

J.Ryan wrote: »

I've used Thesaurus in 2 former employments and Collsoft in another and have used Collsoft since opening my doors, quiet happy with it, from recent CPD, the whole payroll system may change in 2019, so perhaps hold off on changing your software.

When you say change can you shed more light

J.Ryan

Soulsun wrote: »

When you say change can you shed more light

The discussion from the guy giving the lecture was that they expect it to move more towards the RCT system.

Revenue have been sending a lot of circulars about the modernisation of the PAYE system.

capefear

https://www.revenue.ie/en/online-services/support/software-developers/paye-modernisation-technical-overview.aspx

It will be the same as current rct system.

cal60

I have been quite happy with Collsoft up to now . I used thesaurus before that and found rounding differences where e.g. the total PRSI for the various weeks might not add to the same figure as the cumulatives on the tax deduction card . This was very irritating ( for us anyway)when preparing payroll summaries for accounts postings. I trialled payback last year and found some similar issues.

As I said I found Collsoft to be the most accurate up to now but last year had troublesome complications with importing P2C where there were only two USC rates to be applied and also issues ( in specific cases) where employees were moving from temporary/emergency to cumulative whereby the system still defaulted to disallowing refunds. I believe both issues have now been fixed but felt it was a good time to have a look at alternatives.

I appreciate that there are major changes coming in 2019 which was also part of the reason for thinking it might be better to change now if necessary so as to make the 2019 change less disruptive

EamonOSullivan

J.Ryan wrote: »

I've used Thesaurus in 2 former employments and Collsoft in another and have used Collsoft since opening my doors, quiet happy with it, from recent CPD, the whole payroll system may change in 2019, so perhaps hold off on changing your software.

As I understand it, every PAYE return will have all details for all employees, with Pay, PAYE deducted, PRSI and USC, plus PPS ( tax ) number for everyone. This sort of work is only possible when everyone is filing on ROS, and all employers use payroll packages.

There will be a transition period, and there is a ''stocktake'' of all employees in the country planned for mid-2018.

I'd imagine any payroll software package worthy of the name will be able to link in to Revenue's system.