Payroll Reports - paperless office

Stewart

Hi everyone,
Im looking for some comments from other bureaus regarding filing there payroll reports etc.

I am a payroll bureau processing payrolls for around 3000 clients, at present we print off the payroll reports twice, one copy for the client and one for our copy, one set of the payslips for the client, and our copy are kept in the system.
However, because of the increase in business and paper work, I would like to try from next tax year to make us a paperless office.
Our payroll software lets us pdf the reports which we could save on our network, the only thing that concerns me with this is, should the network go down for a time we are not able to view payroll reports, but present we can by looking at the hard copies kept within the bureau.
I was wondering how to other bureaus file there reports? How have they over come the issues of space being a problem keeping so many hard copy reports?
Could anyone pass anything on to me concerning this? Laughing

Terry Cann · Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:11 pm Post subject: Paperless Office

Hi Stewart,

Unfortunately all forms of information storage are vulnerable to loss. Even paper reports can get damaged, misplaced or destroyed in an office disaster, though we all hope not. There are a number of solutions where you can avoid paper but they all have their little wrinkles.

1. Storing PDF files or similar on the network. This is fine as long as you accept the risk of network failure, and you have a good backup and disaster mechanism in place.
2. Store your reports on separate media like writable CD�s, Zip discs or external hard drives. These take up less space than paper, though you�ll still have to file them and search for them. But you can read them on any working PC even if the network is down.
3. Use a payroll system that retains historical data so you can view information for as far back as you have data, then you don�t need to print off reports for reference. You�ll still need a good backup and disaster recovery mechanism, and you are still vulnerable to the network going down.
4. Use a remote backup company to store your electronic reports. You send and retrieve your reports ( and any other files) over the Internet and they look after security. The risk here is losing your ISP connection for any length of time.
5. Use a remotely hosted payroll system that retains historical data (plug for us!) for the same advantages as in 3, but without the need for backups or disaster recovery. Again the risk is losing your ISP connection for any length of time.

With the size of customer base you now have storing reports as paper or on separate media will become increasingly impossible due to the administration overhead of filing and searching, so you will need to use your network or the Internet eventually I think.

But you should always have a good disaster plan in place. Even with paper�

Terry Cann
Davanter Limited
www.davanter.co.uk

keyur778 · PayPerShop Member Joined: 18 Jun 2007 Posts: 57

HMRC's intension is to make all the offices paper less.

When you keep all the document as a hard copy then it will create a proble where to store it?

You have three options.

1 Store at your place. (office)

2 Hire the storage place.

3 Store all the documents on server.

First two options are costly & it's take time to move the papers to storage place and its not handy.

Store all the documents on server.

1. Best option is keep all the record on net initially its looks costly but long term it�s cheap and easy to excess whenever and wherever you are even at your client place or revenue office. So store all your files in FTP server � WAN (Wide Area Network)

2. You can make local server and link it to your all office PC which call LAN. (Local Area Network) So every one in your office can access the previous years record easily without spend the time to search all those detail in storage place and they can save the time.

3. You can link your office server to heart bit server which you can keep it at your home so incase of your main server fail then that server will automatically link to your office PC�s. And you can use heart bit server as a disaster recovery / backup server incase of natural or manual accidents.

Keyur Patel

propay · PayPerShop Newbie Joined: 05 Jul 2007 Posts: 1

Paperless offices are unique in that you don't have to be 100% paperless to achieve paperless status. Paperless paychecks are just one way you can convert to being paperless.

Arizona Payroll Company