On 25th April 2017, Sage officially announced its online software for integrated accounting and payroll, Sage One Payroll. The cloud-based software has seen successful implementation in other markets, which is why the company is expanding its turf in Sub-Saharan Africa. Its regional headquarter is in South Africa.
The announcement made reference to a few interesting numbers. To begin with, it has been established that 76% of businesses are using social media as one of their goal in 2017. At the same time of the study, 72% cited increased productivity due to the use of smart mobile devices as a driving factor, and were pushing for more adoption of such gadgets. Lastly, 92% reported their contentment with cloud-based solutions.
During the official unveiling of the product for the Kenyan market (it will primarily focus on meeting accounting needs for small businesses and startups that may not be able to afford hiring accountants), we were able to ascertain the tool’s mastery in filing earnings (fees owed to the employees) as well as deductions (money owed by the employee) based on how it automatically calculated all statutory deductions. With a demo company of a few employees, Sage One Payroll was used to showcase how deductions, which include National Social Security Fund (NSSF) National Health Insurance Fund and income tax, among others, can be easily be made.
It is apparent that the tool alleviates the engaging nature of manual accounting that may be riddled with human errors and is time-consuming when preparing salary details for employees.
According to Nikki Summers, the Regional Director for Sage in East Africa, owners and managers of SMEs and startups can oversee their payroll concerns with a tool that has been tailored to meet the financial definitions of their businesses.
For instance, assuming a business has 10 employees, the company offers a special introductory price of KES 17,000 for an annual subscription.
“For as little as KES 100 per employee per month, Sage One Payroll streamlines the capturing of transactions, automates payroll calculations and brings visibility to the business. Startups and SMEs now have the ability to file statutory returns, automatically update the payroll general ledger in Sage One Accounting and produce professional electronic pay slips which is a major time saver,” said Nikki Summers.
Often, many businesses and startups, as well as individuals have expressed their concern about the financial and tax language. Phrases such as tax credits, standard and itemized deductions, tax exemption, taxable income and voluntary compliance, among many others can be disorienting to persons who are not well-versed with financial talk.
In other words, the number of people who are unaware of their tax obligations is considerably high, which is why Sage Payroll integrates a solution that can track annual variations about tax regulations that affect how payroll tax calculations are arrived at. As such, it eliminates the hassle of keeping up with the latest definitions of tax regulations owing to the fact that it is cloud-based and will always be up to date. The online payroll solution giant promises to avail these services at an affordable and flexible pricing model that is dependent on the number of employees an SME or startup has.
Furthermore, performing accounting operations using Sage’s cloud-based system comes in handy because it eliminates several challenges that are reminiscent of local SMEs, startups and any other business in general. Such challenges are multi-faceted, and they include non-compliance to tax obligations, Payroll fraud, in addition to improper accounting practices.
Sage One Payroll is built to get rid of these setbacks with an inbuilt tool that performs audit trails, and reconciles input and output based on predefined controls. All in all, these add-ons showcase the comprehensive nature of the cloud-based software, which it manages to uphold by providing enhanced and better visibility of all business transactions.
The company hopes to make the performance of these functions a behind-the-scenes activity by 2020. By making automating such tasks, a business will have more time on strategies and implementations that will boost productivity, revenue and missions.
“Business builders and entrepreneurs don’t go into business to manage admin and red tape. Our vision is to make those tasks invisible by 2020 by automating the back-office functions so that they can focus on business strategy and more creative tasks that will enable them to follow their dreams,” concluded Nikki Summers.
Sage One Payroll and Accounting online software can be taken for a trial spin until 31st May 2017. Afterwards, and depending on the number of employees an employer has, it can be purchased on annual subscription basis that covers new and existing Sage clients. Pricing details can be found here.
