Free Microsoft Excel Payroll or Spreadsheets for payroll, but at what cost?

By August 25, 2014 January 30th, 2018 Payroll

When it comes to payroll management, a number of small and medium businesses choose to go with creating a Payroll record in Microsoft Excel. Those who opt for Microsoft Excel for payroll may think that using spreadsheets could be cheaper and easier to work and maintain. These myths are likely to be dispelled as soon as they start growing and if they continue to use Excel for a longer duration. The problems encountered with a Microsoft Excel-based application for payroll could broadly be listed as below:

Installation and Upgrades
To use Microsoft Excel-based Payroll application, you need to have a licensed version Microsoft Excel installed on your computer. With time, you would need to make sure that your Microsoft Excel copy is upgraded to the latest version.

Maintenance and Data Backup
One of the biggest disadvantages of using Spreadsheets for payroll is that data backup is completely your responsibility. This is risky as well as time-consuming. You will either need to set up reminders to take manual backup of the records or you will need more hardware and software setup to ensure automatic backup and sync. All manual processes carry the risk of human dependencies and errors while the automatic backup mechanism cost you more.

Role-based Access
Microsoft Excel files can be password-protected by the author but there is no way to have different users open the same file but access only some specific information. It wouldn’t offer you role-based access. An Excel-based application cannot be simultaneously used as an administrator, a manager or an employee, to accomplish different objectives.

Security
Another disadvantage of using spredsheet for Payroll processing is its low security level. The security level in the case of online payroll software is high enough so that you may rest assured that your data is secure and protected.

Access to Employees
Microsoft Excel for payroll can’t be made accessible to a large number of users, round the clock irrespective of their location. It is a big limitation in the time when you would want to offer great flexibilities to your staff in accessing some information all the time, regardless of where they are located.

Sending Payslips
Generating and sending payslips is an important activity that must essentially be accurate, secure and efficient. This process could be too cumbersome if you are on Microsoft Excel-based payroll application.

Consolidating Data
Consolidating payroll data is not entirely possible in Microsoft Excel-based payroll where you have to deal with different sheets for different months, making it unmanageable and painful.

Scope for Errors
Microsoft Excel-based Payroll users generally copy the sheets from previous month for the payroll of the current month. Chances are that the user may forget to make the changes for the current month for a few records. Thus, scope for errors outweighs in case of Microsoft Excel Payroll due to heavy manual intervention.

Unfortunately, when spreadsheets are used for payroll lack a number of important and useful features that Perk Online Payroll Software offers for its users. If you decide to go with spreadsheet for maintaining your payroll now, chances are high that you may have to pay a heavy price for your decision in the future. There are many more reasons that make online payroll a definitely better deal than opting for Microsoft Excel-based payroll application.

Get in touch to realise the power you can get when you switch over to Perk Online Payroll Software.