PenSoft — Payroll Plus Accounting Edition

From the Sept. 2010 Review of Professional Payroll Systems.

PenSoft offers several payroll processing and employee management systems geared toward use directly by small and mid-sized businesses as well as a version tailored to the needs of professionals managing the payrolls of several employers. The Accounting Edition includes all of the features found in the vendor’s comprehensive payroll systems, including benefits management, unlimited deductions, job costing, departmental management, consolidated reporting and timesheet management. It also offers client management functions for invoicing, batch processing, global settings and firm management tools. For this review, the Accounting Edition fits our “Full-Service Professional” payroll model, offering support for large client and employee bases that may be dispersed over several states, with tools for the professional firm to control all aspects of processing and managing all compliance reporting and payment functions.

BASIC SYSTEM FUNCTIONS:
PenSoft opens into a work environment that offers traditional pull-down menus across the top of the screen for general system functions, such as file management, program setup, activities, reports, utilities and Help, while the core payroll processing and management functions of the program are available via text/button links for company functions, employee management, payroll processing, deposits, check-writing, reporting, export and data backups. During company and employee setup, the system offers tabbed interfaces with some guidance for ensuring that at least basic data is entered, along with the ability to use companies or employees as templates and to make global changes across all employees and companies. Employee information screens offer de-partmental and project-based assignments for job costing functions, as well as good customization and the ability to track multiple employee types, any kind of employee and income types, unlimited deductions, retirement plans, unemployment, workers’ comp, leave accruals, multi-state taxes, training and education, and other HR-oriented data. PenSoft includes built-in support for the New Hire Act and includes required reporting, as well.

After setup, the system is fairly simple to use, with a client/employer selection list that provides limited sort and filter functions with no options for viewing data such as pending runs or due dates for multiple employers without using the reporting functions. Otherwise, the system provides good multi-client management functions, including invoicing with client letter templates and the ability to process payrolls for any number of employers with any number of employees. PenSoft Payroll can also support any number of concurrent users, with tools for preventing data overwrite.

The Accounting Edition includes pay-roll tax tables and forms preparation for federal and all states, including new hire reports, but it does not provide compliance for municipalities with payroll tax reporting requirements. It does, however, provide tools for distributing income for employees with multiple state taxation. Integrated direct deposit and pay-to-debit card is available as an add-on through partnership with Intercept EFT. The program does not offer batch processing of payrolls across multiple employer entities, but some multi-client management functions are available via overview screens and batch reporting functions.