What Is Payroll Software?

Payroll software is the one which computes the employee salaries every month. The employee may be paid by hourly rate / daily rate/ monthly fixed salary. The employee may have some additions and deductions in every month like overtime pay, daily allowances, advance payment, medical claim, special allowance, etc… And the employee unpaid leave, lateness & early leaving pay needs to be deducted from his salary.

Every month the payroll software should able to generate the pay slip for the employees. And payroll software must have useful management reports like, Monthly Salary Summary Report, Overtime Payment Report, Taxation Report, Yearly Summary Report, and Monthly Reconciliation Report.

And different countries have their own computation for taxation & provident funds. So the payroll system should comply with the local government regulation for salary calculation.

Payroll for Singapore:

Payroll in Singapore country should be complying with Singapore government regulations as below.

CPF - CENTRAL PROVIDENT FUND:

An employee who is Singaporean / permanent resident of Singapore must contribute CPF to the CPF board. The CPF amount comprises of employer & employee contribution. There are different percentage of calculation based on the employee salary and age. The information can be found in CPF BOARD website.

Ethnic Funds: (SINDA / CDAC / MBMF / ECF):

Based on the employee ethnic group there is a need of ethnic fund needs to be contributed by the employee. This contribution amount will be deducted from the employee salary every month and this fund directly goes to the relevant ethnic group welfare. The ethnic funds are SINDA (for Indians) CDAC (for Chinese), MBMF (for Malays), ECF (for Eurasians). The contribution amount will vary depends on the employee salary. The information can be found at the relevant ethnic group web sites.

SDL- (SKILL DEVELOPMENT LEVY):

This levy must be paid for all the employees working in Singapore. Currently the SDL is 0.25% for salary up to S$4500 (as of 2010). This amount must be paid by the employer to the SDL board. The SDL board uses this fund to provide subsidy for employees training programs / upgrade skills, etc… Usually there are many training courses will be run by SDL approved vendors. A company can able to get up to 90% subsidy from SDL board while the company sends their employees for training.

FWL- (FOREIGN WORKERS LEVY):

This levy must be paid by employer for the foreign workers working in their company based on the worker skill level. Currently (as of 2010) LOW / MEDIUM /HIGH levels of levy need to be paid by the employer. The levy amount can be found from the FWL website.

Income Tax:

Based on the employee salary, income taxes are needed to be paid by the employee. Currently Singapore income tax board makes mandatory condition that the employer must submit their employee’s yearly income details to the income tax board directly which is called auto inclusion. There are various forms like IR8A, IR21, IR8S, APPENDIX-A needs to be submitted based on the requirement.

National Service:

It is mandatory that the all eligible Singaporean & permanent resident must go for the national service on request. During the national service period the employee salary will be paid by the government (MINDEF – Ministry of Defense) and the relevant CPF must be paid by the employer.

Leaves – (Annual Leave, Medical Leave, Child care Leave, Maternity Leave):

There are certain types of leaves mandatorily provided as employee’s benefit. Like annual leave (7 days), Medical Leave (14 days), Child care Leave (6 days for Singaporean & 2 days for non Singaporean), Maternity leave (60 days)

Payroll Software for Singapore:

Payroll software suitable for Singapore should have all the above features built-in. In addition to that a good payroll software for Singapore should have the below additional features.

Remainders:

There are many foreigners working in Singapore. Those foreigners having work permit pass / employment pass / professional pass. Usually this passes is valid for certain years. So the payroll software should show the remainders when it is due.

Online Bank GIRO:

For employee salaries Writing cheques / paying cash are very outdated. The payroll software should able to generate the interface file to the banks with their employees’ salary details. Then the bank can directly credit their salaries to their account.

Multi Company:

There are companies having subsidiaries as well. So the payroll software should be capable to create multiple companies records in the system and the reports must be separated accordingly.

Concurrent Multi User Access & User Rights:

Payroll is always in-charged by the HR department and there may be more than one HR user accessing the system. And company bosses also want to access the system directly without always depend on the HR executive reports. So the payroll software should have concurrent multi accessing capabilities with different access rights.

Backup & Restore

Audit Trial – To monitor the changes done by other users

Reports like 1. Payroll Summary report, 2. Year to Date Summary Report, 3. Overtime Summary Report, 4. Reconciliation / Salary comparison Report, 5. Allowance / Deduction Report, 6. Custom Report Writer to generate the reports needed by the user.

Conclusion:

Singapore Government insists to have all kind of employee related transaction like income tax, provident fund, ethnic fund contribution, Skill Development Levy, Foreign Workers Levy, etc… via online rather than paper / manual. Also as per government law a company should keep all those payroll records at least for 7 years for audit checking.

It is very difficult to do all those kind of calculation & transaction by manual and keep all the papers. It becomes mandatory than important to have the payroll software in any company for efficient & accurate payroll processing.