Tuesday, June 26, 2012

PaymentEvolution Payroll is evolving


Cleaner, easier to read employee profile
The next major revision of our popular payroll app has been released. We’ve focused on improving the user experience and making it more intuitive to get your payroll done. Next time you login, you’ll see a new look and feel as well as some neat new features as requested by our client community. Your data is all there – no need to install anything or run a cumbersome upgrade – you’ll get all the new stuff automatically.

What’s new

  • Support for Québec

    We now have support for Québec specific calculations – like the Québec Parental Insurance Plan (QPIP),  Québec Pension Plan (RRQ/QPP) etc. While the service isn’t en Français at this time, we do support Québec-based businesses processing payroll in English.
  • Dashboard and payroll overview

    PaymentEvolution payroll dashboard
    New dashboard overview
    Getting a quick overview of your payroll account is now even easier with the new payroll dashboard. Here you’ll find important notifications (like service updates, feature changes etc), deadlines (like the next time you need to remit funds to the CRA or Revenu Québec) and a nice graph giving you details about previous pay runs. The chart is dynamic – go ahead, try it! You can tap/click an item in the legend to remove (or add it back again) so you can get a quick synopsis of your payroll history. Hover over an item and you’ll get the details.
  • Streamlined navigation

    Streamlined navigation
    Streamlined navigation
    We’ve analyzed the most common tasks that you perform in the system and have simplified access to the most frequently used features. For example, we’ve moved running a payroll from a sub-menu to a top-level item and moved other one-time functions (like setting up Add-Ons) to a sub-menu. Overall, you should find that getting in, performing your most common tasks will be faster and more intuitive.
  • Improved payroll steps

    Improved steps for processing payroll
    Fewer steps to process payroll and improved time sheet entry
    We’ve made it even easier to process complex payroll by streamlining the steps needed for a pay run. Start by selecting the date range you want to pay your staff, then select the employees to be paid, review the calculations and approve payment – that’s it! Behind the scenes we take care of important details like showing you only the employees who are eligible to be paid during that pay period, taking care of additional benefits, deductions and custom earnings and validating the payments to be made.
    View employee earnings
    Quickly view employee earnings during the pay run
    Review individual employee earnings during the pay run with a quick overview and interactive chart that shows you the breakdown of their pay.
  • Enhanced employee records

    Cleaner, easier to read employee profile
    Cleaner, easier to read employee profile
    Employee profiles also get a cleaner, easier to navigate overhaul. You’ll see the employee’s last 5 pay runs charted for you – again, in an interactive way so you can see the details you want. By entering their email address in the profile we’ll display their picture (we currently poll Gravatar for that image). As before, you can apply custom pay rules (deductions, benefits and earnings) to each employee.
  • Custom pay rules

    Custom pay rules
    Powerful custom pay rules – process any type of deduction, benefit, earning and even vacation policy
    Custom pay rules have been a feature we’ve had for some time. In this release we’ve made it easier to find and make changes to these rules. You can use this powerful feature to create custom deductions, benefits and earnings for your staff. We even support custom vacation policies.
  • Integrated help with search

    Search for payroll help
    Easily find the answers you need with the new searchable help and community forums
    We’ve improved access to our community forums and frequently asked questions. Help is now integrated and full searchable from within the app
  • Extend payroll with Add-Ons

    Extend and customize payroll by activating add-ons from our great partners
    Extend and customize payroll by activating add-ons from our great partners
    Our add-ons get easier to integrate with a central area to activate them. Whether you want to make your bookkeeper happy by integrating payroll data with your online bookkeeping system or want to start accepting credit cards in your small business – you’ll find it here.
  • Beautiful reports

    Beautiful reports
    Enhanced reports like the “update summary” which condense a lot of data into a highly visual chart that’s easy to read and navigate
    We’ve overhauled your reports to make them easier to read on screen. For example, large tables are now responsive – allowing you to easily select the columns you want to display (and automatically fit the table to your screen size). We’ve added a few reports requested by our community – an “employee report” which summarizes all your staff, an “ePay report” which details the transactions and amounts coming from your bank account and a “pay run history” which shows all your completed pay runs.
    One challenge we faced was how to display many sets of data in an intuitive way. For example, in the new “update summary” report we created a new visual chart that breaks down your current pay run and gives you a granular view into each category of deduction, earnings and benefits. The chart is interactive with tooltips that expose the detail behind the payroll pie chart.
We hope you like the enhancements we’ve made and hope you’ll keep the feedback coming on how we can continue to improve the service.

Sneak peek at our upcoming release: part III

JUNE 15, 2012
Upcoming enhancements to your payroll dashboard
Upcoming enhancements to your payroll dashboard
We’ve heard from a lot of folks that having a quick overview of their payroll would really help them better manage their finances. Our challenge was to condense a lot of pertinent information into a concise and easy to read format that was legible at a glance but also contained the “drill-down” data you need to run your business.
As part of our next release we’re beefing up the account dashboard to show you dynamic (and beautiful!) charts which you can use to get a quick overview of your payroll history. Important notifications like cutoff dates are also displayed prominently so you can take action if needed.
It’s functional and highly visual – making your payroll experience amazing (yes, I said “payroll” and “amazing” in the same sentence!)

Sneak peek at our upcoming release: part II

JUNE 13, 2012
Enhanced payroll process
A better way to get your payroll done
Better managing the payroll process and making it easier to get your payroll done – that’s what we’re aiming to do with our upcoming release. We’ve streamlined the payroll process while maintaining advanced features your accountant will love. It’s simple enough for your startup with just a few employees and can scale to meet the needs of your kick-ass, rapidly growing business when you add ten, fifty or even hundreds of employees.
Here you’ll see a functional but rich way to see individual employee earnings during the payroll process. You’ll get a clear indication of their net pay and as much detail as you need for their custom earnings, deductions and benefits.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Sneak peek at our upcoming release: part III

Upcoming enhancements to your payroll dashboard
Upcoming enhancements to your payroll dashboard
We’ve heard from a lot of folks that having a quick overview of their payroll would really help them better manage their finances. Our challenge was to condense a lot of pertinent information into a concise and easy to read format that was legible at a glance but also contained the “drill-down” data you need to run your business.
As part of our next release we’re beefing up the account dashboard to show you dynamic (and beautiful!) charts which you can use to get a quick overview of your payroll history. Important notifications like cutoff dates are also displayed prominently so you can take action if needed.
It’s functional and highly visual – making your payroll experience amazing (yes, I said “payroll” and “amazing” in the same sentence!)

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Sneak peek at our upcoming release: part II


Enhanced payroll process
A better way to get your payroll done
Better managing the payroll process and making it easier to get your payroll done – that’s what we’re aiming to do with our upcoming release. We’ve streamlined the payroll process while maintaining advanced features your accountant will love. It’s simple enough for your startup with just a few employees and can scale to meet the needs of your kick-ass, rapidly growing business when you add ten, fifty or even hundreds of employees.
Here you’ll see a functional but rich way to see individual employee earnings during the payroll process. You’ll get a clear indication of their net pay and as much detail as you need for their custom earnings, deductions and benefits.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Sneak peek at our upcoming release: part I


Upcoming enhancements to managing employees
Upcoming enhancements to managing employees

We’re putting the finishing touches on some big changes to PaymentEvolution Payroll. It’s an exciting release with some much needed user-experience enhancements and some major new features that our thousands of clients have asked for. When we first started the concept of a free payroll service we always envisioned a continuously improving service guided by the feedback from our user community. This release builds on our robust rules engine and focuses on three major areas of improvement that we’ve heard from our clients:
  • User experience - quicker access to core payroll processing, streamlined options and better visual cues
  • Reporting - enhanced visualization of reports
  • Extensions - tailoring your payroll service to work with your favourite apps
Here’s a quick look at our upcoming employee enhancements – better history, cleaner interface and faster workflow.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Faster electronic payments


Faster electronic paymentsWe’ve introduced faster electronic payment processing
Finish your payroll on Monday, staff get paid that Friday
You asked, we listened: You can now process payroll by NoonET Mondaysand still have your staff paid that week onFriday. We’ve shortened the payment processing window to so you can now process payroll the same week you want your staff paid.
Why are we doing this? Some of our clients were not able to process payroll on Fridays to accomodate time-based staff. Others needed the weekend to get the extra work done. We’ve worked with the Canadian payments industry to reduce the processing time and are now able to offer a shortened 4 day payment window.
What about semi-monthly payments? Just finish your payroll 4 days prior by NoonET. For example, if you want your staff paid for Mar 15, 2012 – then process your payroll by NoonET Mar 9 (normally this would be Mar 11, but it falls on a weekend, so you should process your payroll by the next earliest business day)
Will this cost more? NO, we’ve kept our processing fees and transaction costs to just 50 cents per transaction.
How do I get started? If you are already using electronic payments then just process your payroll as normal (and enjoy the extra time to get it done!) If you haven’t setup electronic payments yet, it’s easy – just visit http://paymentevolution.com/epay and request the documents to get started.

Thursday, February 09, 2012

Integration with Kashoo


We’re excited to welcome our latest integration partner – Kashoo! 

KashooKashoo is simple, powerful online accounting software for your small business. Built for the way we work today – the service is cloud-based and accessible from any modern web browser. With Kashoo you’re able to track expenses, send invoices, create reports – all the essential tasks of any small business.
And now, we’re bringing full-featured Canadian payroll services to one of the best online accounting apps available. Stating today, all existing Kashoo clients will get free payroll services from PaymentEvolution. Check it out – you’ll see a new PAYROLL link in your Kashoo session. Just click it to start integrating payroll.
Get payroll right in Kashoo
And all existing PaymentEvolution clients will also get free online accounting software from Kashoo. It’s our small way of saying thank you for being loyal Kashoo and PaymentEvolution clients.
Not using Kashoo or PaymentEvolution yet? We’ve got you covered too! Sign up before Feb 29, 2012 and you’ll get Kashoo Entrepreneur and PaymentEvolution Payroll for free. This is the first truly free online accounting service with payroll available in Canada.
With PaymentEvolution Payroll you’ll get easy to use yet full-featured payroll that can grow with your small business:
  • Payroll calculations effortlessly done for you
  • True custom deductions, benefits and earnings – run your payroll the way you like
  • Always up to date with full record keeping 
  • A super employee site where they can get their full pay history and even tax information like T4 slips – all electronic!
  • Integration with Kashoo for easy posting of all your payroll transactions
Grab it now – the first truly free online accounting and payroll service for your small business.
Thanks to Jim, Chuck, Scott and the amazing team at Kashoo for championing the idea of giving great software tools to Canadian small businesses.

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Free payroll for your micro-business – and the features you need as you grow


When we launched PaymentEvolution Payroll almost 2 years ago we wanted to give micro and small businesses the tools they needed to quickly and easily pay their employees. Since then, thousands of businesses across Canada have joined us in solving their payroll frustrations. 
We’ve taken a complex problem and made it really simple for small business owners, entrepreneurs, accountants and bookkeepers to get payroll done – in a as little as 30 seconds. Oh, did I mention? It’s free.
Image
Photograph by Martin Cathrae
It’s full-featured payroll – and you won’t get stuck in the waves of a payroll service that can’t grow with you. We built the service with super-advanced functions that are always available when you need them – but not, when you don’t. 
We’re honest about pricing and we don’t sell your data or target you with ads. After all, we’re one of the earliest advocates of the data portability movement and have a strict privacy policy. We know we’re dealing with sensitive financial information and treat your data with the respect it deserves.
And we’re serious about features – stuff that you need now and stuff you’ll need as you grow your business. For example, we have simple integration with online accounting services – your payroll transactions can be posted in your bookkeeping service. If you’ve ever run your own books, you’ll love this automated posting. 
More advanced features are also included at no extra cost:
  • Always up to date tax calculations – no more “updates”, patches etc
  • True reverse or “gross-up” calculations – very useful if all you want to do is pay someone and determine your tax obligations. If you’ve ever had a pay a nanny, you’ll love the feature.
  • Secure, online employee portal with their full pay history, electronic paystubs, tax information etc
  • T4 slips, records of employment and many other advanced services – all included and easy to do
  • True calculations of your remittance amounts – and automated payment to the government if needed
  • Fully flexible available payment services including direct deposit. Pay your staff the way they want to get paid for less than the cost of a stamp. No more cheques!
If you’re serious about payroll and integration with your books, you’ll love our simple to use service with all the features you need and none of the complexity you don’t.
Get it now and let us know what you think