Frequently asked payroll questions.

Payroll software has the following fundamental functions:

• Establish the employees' total taxable pay
• Calculate any taxes arising for both the employer and employee
• Communicate these values to the local tax authority
• Document and record the above and issue a payslip to the employee

Additional features can include pensions, benefits, vehicles and other items that make up an employees total pay package.

Not at all, you can calculate payroll manually using spreadsheets and submit manually to Revenue via ROS. However, this is a very labour intensive process and is prone to error. 

Most employers will either engage a payroll professional, use a book keeper/accountant, or make use of payroll software such as Parolla.

The Republic of Ireland operates a real-time Pay As You Earn reporting system. It is a legal requirement that the employer calculates PAYE deductions for each pay run and submits those to The Revenue Commissioner on or before the day the money appears in the employees account.

You can use whatever means best suits you to determine the amount of tax to deduct from an employee's wages. This could be an excel spreadsheet or from payroll software.

The amount of tax deducted, pension contributions, benefits etc must then be communicated to Revenue.

This can be done manually via the ROS website, or using payroll software.

Cloud software operates through a web browser from anywhere and any device. The software provider manages the software and data. Anyone with appropriate permissions can be given access to the software.

Desktop software is installed on your own computer, and can only be accessed from that computer, or through complicated remote connections. You have to update the software and backup the data.

Payroll software is priced on a few different models.

Typically you will pay an annual license for desktop software, or a monthly/annual subscription for online software.

There can be different pricing points based on the number of companies, employees and the features that the software supports.

For online systems, costs can range from around ‎€1 per employee per month to ‎€700 per year.

Desktop systems tend to be cheaper and offer more deals on unlimited companies and employees, however this comes with the drawback of maintaining your own data and equipment.

The best payroll software really depends on the best for your needs. You want to look for features such as:

• Suitability, can the system handle your staff levels with room to grow? Does it have all the pay frequencies and options that you need?
• Accuracy, are the results consistent and correct?
• Ease of use, is the software intuitive and easy to navigate?
• Availability, can you access the payroll from anywhere at any time?
• Direct connection with Revenue, this reduces workload and makes reporting simple.
• Emailing of payslips, can the software bulk email payslips to employees securely?
• Security, does the software respect and care for your sensitive data?
• Documentation, is there comprehensive documentation available to you?
• Support, can you get in touch with the company? Is there a chat system, email address or a phone number to talk to someone?

Of course you can. The real question is, do you want to?

Modern software make the processing of payroll a simple task. A weekly payroll for 10 employees takes 5 minutes to run in Parolla.

However, there are still legal issues and requirements that need to be met. Some people like the peace of mind of having payroll professional running their payroll.

Most people can run their own payroll for 90% of the time. However, you might occasionally come up against the odd unusual scenario. This is where we can provide that little bit of extra support that you might need at those times.

Yes you can. However some systems are easier than others to change over.

If your original system can produce good reports, and your new system can import those reports, then changing mid year is easy.

At Parolla we extract a lot of the employee data directly from Revenue. Any additional information that we require can be imported using our file upload tools, or by our optical character recognition systems.

Cloud systems are available anywhere, at any time of the day, on any device.

Cloud payroll software is always up to date, no need to download and install new versions. Parolla also updates your employee tax positions (RPN's) automatically.

Data stored in the cloud is typically backed up at 3 hourly intervals automatically, and held in disaster recovery centres. 

You can give multiple people access to the payroll system. If the payroll administrator is unexpectedly ill, you can get an accountant or the owner to run the payroll. If you're in a tight spot, we can also lend a hand.

No need to worry about the keeping your software up to date, the desktop PC dying, or loosing your data, it's always available.

A ROS user certificate is the key that allows payroll software to unlock your data on the Revenue ROS servers.

All payroll software systems, cloud or desktop, will require a ROS user certificate of some type.

In the interests of data minimisation we prefer to use a Sub-User certificate. This type of certificate can be configured to only access PAYE related information, and can be revoked at any time by the ROS user.

If you can log into the ROS portal, then you will have a ROS digital certificate loaded on your browser already. You can save a copy of this certificate, and even transfer it, by using the Manage Certificates link in the ROS login screen.

Otherwise, you can contact Revenue and request a digital certificate here.

With any payroll system you should check for new employee tax details (RPN's) before each run.

Parolla automatically checks for new RPN's every time you open a pay run.

The system is always up to date with the latest RPN's. That's one less thing to think about each pay run.

That depends on which functions the software has chosen to connect to at ROS.

Parolla makes use of every available system that Revenue have created for PAYE integration.

You can view RPN's, payslip submissions, pay run submissions and period returns.

You can invite other users into your Parolla account and provide them different roles.

There are roles for Advisers, timekeepers, HR, and managers. Each has a slightly different view on the data.

There is no real limit on the number employees in a business. However, from a management perspective it is simpler if you break large businesses down into departments or regions.

As of September 2020 our largest individual pay run contained 110 employees.

You never need to update our software, it's always up to date.

You cannot miss an update, or get caught out with 'out of date' software versions.

We automatically backup your data every three hours, as well as taking daily, weekly, monthly and three monthly snapshots.