In Australia, paying employees unfairly can lead to business bankruptcy and criminal charges, prompting many businesses to rely on payroll software for accurate and compliant payments. This software helps with payroll calculations, deductions, and generating payslips, ensuring compliance with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). Understanding Australian rules and selecting the right payroll software is crucial for businesses.
After experimenting with twenty different payroll software options, we have identified the five best payroll software in Australia. Among these, Patriot Software stands out for its functionality and affordability. It features built-in tax tables that automatically update with changing tax rates, simplifying the deduction process.
Below, we present the five best payroll software options in Australia. If you’re in a hurry, you can choose from the list provided, or read the detailed reviews below for more information before making your decision.
The Best Payroll Software in Australia
1. PATRIOT Software - Our Top Choice
Patriot Software is a payroll management solution that ensures your employees are paid on time accordingly. It enables you to pay taxes and track whatever you paid for, create and email payslips, manage employee benefits, and create payroll reports for you.
A properly configured payroll software like patriot payroll allows organizations to maintain compliance with tax laws and other financial regulations and reduce costs. In addition, its affordable price sets it apart from competitors and makes it especially practical for small businesses and nonprofits. Patriot is based entirely online, so you can run payroll from anywhere with an internet connection and a web browser.
Core Features of Patriot Payroll
Employee self-service portal: Patriot payroll software allows employees to access and manage their personal and employment-related information. This system often sends notifications to the employee or administrator when some actions or approvals are required, enabling employees to stay engaged, be more productive, and enhance their experience with the company.
Direct deposit: Patriot payroll enables the electronic transfer of wages from your bank account to your employees’ accounts without paper cheques or cash. Aside from wages, other payments like child support, Social Security benefits, and tax refunds can be transferred through direct deposit. It also eliminates the possibility of fraudsters stealing checks from mailboxes and altering their amounts and recipients.
Automatic Tax Payment: Here, the Patriot automated payment program offers you an excellent opportunity for residents and businesses to pay their taxes in small, regular installments instead of receiving a bill for the entire amount right before the due date. If you worry about being able to pay your tax bill on time, this is a good alternative and can help prevent you from becoming delinquent.
Tax Filing: Patriot payroll systems have built-in tax tables that automatically update as tax rates change, taking the guesswork out of deductions and streamlining the tax filing process.
| Patriot's Pros | Patriot's Cons |
|---|---|
| Intuitive user interface. | Does not include benefits management. |
| Great payroll flexibility. | No separate payroll screens for hourly and salaried workers. |
| Provides excellent value for an affordable price. | |
| Excellent employee portals |
2. Gusto Payroll Software - Best for Advanced Payment
The Gusto Payroll platform helps growing businesses onboard, pay, insure, and support their hardworking teams with payroll, benefits, and more. This is the most advanced software selected from the five best payroll software in Australia, as it allows employers to release payroll funds in advance to employees to cover an unexpected expense, which cannot be delayed till payday.
Core Features Of Gusto Payroll
Onboarding: Gusto plays a vital role in helping you to follow all legal guidelines while ensuring your employees are ready to be paid, proper taxes are withheld from their paycheck, and they understand their rights policies, and procedures within your workplace.
Report: With Gusto Payroll, employers can verify their tax liabilities or cross-check financial data, which may include information such as pay rates, hours worked, overtime accrued, taxes withheld from wages, employer tax contributions, vacation balances, and more. It shows employers how much tax they’ve withheld from employee wages, how much they’ve paid government agencies, and how much they still owe.
Time Tracking: Gusto payroll software allows you to log in employee work hours and store the data as timesheets for payroll processing. Here you turn on the time tracking app in Gusto so that employees and contractors can track their hours in the platform, making it easy to run payroll tired to an hourly rate.
Accessibility: Gusto’s accessibility feature focuses on providing features that make products and services as usable for Australian employees as possible, including employees with disabilities or special needs.
| Gusto's Pros | Gusto's Cons |
|---|---|
| Exceptional user experience | Has no account receivable feature. |
| Automatic tax filing and compliance guidance. | No time tracking in the Simple plan |
| Understandable admin mobile access |
3. Onpay - Easy-To-Use Payroll Software
OnPay is an innovative payroll software in Australia designed to make it easy for business owners to navigate the platform and manage payroll efficiently to save time, reduce errors, and stay compliant with tax regulations.
80% of our customers said that OnPay is easier to use than their previous payroll platform. Onpay is the simplest to use among all the five best payroll software in Australia, even if you aren’t tech-savvy.
Core Features Of OnPay Payroll
Time tracking: Here, Onpay enables you to easily track each employee’s paid time off, including vacation time, sick leave, federal holidays, family leave, and maternity and paternity leave which forms the agreed number of days an employee can skip work.
Tax compliance: The onpay tax compliance feature helps the employer to adhere to the government tax regulation by withholding taxes from employee paychecks and paying those taxes on behalf of the employee to the government timely and accurate.
Audit management: Onpay helps payroll auditors in a given Australian company to analyze the company’s payroll processes, like pay rates, wages, tax holdings, etc., to ensure accuracy and know if the process is legally compliant.
Policy management: Reducing errors, costly payroll mistakes, and the possibility of fraud can be perfectly achieved with the Onpay policy management feature. This helps you to create, maintain, and enforce policies to minimize problems in the company.
| Onpay's Pros | Onpay's Cons |
|---|---|
| Ease of use | Limited integration |
| Easily navigable interface | Inefficient customer support |
| Unlimited payroll runs | Lack automatic payroll |
| No extra fee for changing the plan | |
| Feature-rich and scalable subscription plan |
4. Multiplier Payroll - Best for Global Employment
Multiplier Payroll Software is a leading global employment platform in Australia. It allows companies to take care of their global team’s payroll, benefits, taxes, social contributions & local insurance policies without opening a local business entity. As soon as the employee is onboarded, you add the necessary details like country and employment type, and the platform will activate the employment for the new hire.
Core Features of Multiplier Payroll
Employee onboarding: Multiplier payroll is perfect for helping companies incorporate new employees into the company internationally, familiarize them with the company culture and policies, and pay them in their local currencies.
Audit management: Here, Multiplier Payroll audits and examines the business’s active employees, pay rates, wages, and tax withholdings. It also ensures that all business activities comply with applicable regulations and work within the confines of corporate policies.
Compliance tracking: Companies in Australia must structure, collect, and monitor all relevant compliance-related data and information to ensure no breaches or defects in standard business functions. Multiplier Payroll is the perfect software for that.
Employee database: Did you know that the Multiplier employee database keeps records of current and past employees, which include contact information, job titles, payroll data, and other information related to employment? Other human resources functions can be managed through this feature.
| Multiplier's Pros | Multiplier's Cons |
|---|---|
| Comprehensive platform for global employment. | The customer support is slow. |
| A seamless experience is a definite pro. | |
| Immensely engaging with dedicated support. |
5. Freshbooks Payroll - Best for Global Employment
FreshBooks is a cloud-based accounting and invoicing software that lets you create customized invoices and provides excellent customer support. It’s best for freelancers and small business owners who operate later.
This software doesn’t have built-in payroll processing. However, it seamlessly integrates with Gusto payroll software. In addition, its unique nature of excellent phone support and customizable invoicing features makes it outstanding.
Core Features of Freshbook Payroll
Customizable invoices: One of the great things about Freshbook payroll software is that it lets you create your invoice to represent your business by using one of the invoice templates in the software.
Accounting: All employees of an organization receive payments through the payroll department, so FreshBooks keeps track of employees’ wages, benefits, and payroll taxes and documents the records. This is done so employees can receive good earnings for the completed work.
Mobile Apps: Companies use mobile devices to approve time cards, review expense reports, and complete payroll administration tasks while it helps their employees access payroll and benefits.
Invoice processing: Freshbook payroll helps you receive, examine (which may include checking figures for correct entry and proper codes, performing financial calculations, filing documents, assisting with payroll, performing billing tasks, calculating tax information, processing payment), and fulfilling vendor payment requests.
| Freshbooks' Pros | Freshbooks' Cons |
|---|---|
| Ease of invoice creation | Lack of robust reporting tools |
| User-friendly interface | Limited customization |
| Good accounting software | The pricing is relatively expensive. |
| Ease of invoice status tracking | |
| FreshBooks has several time-saving features that can speed up payment. |
Conclusion
Businesses in Australia must make the right choice of the payroll solution they should use to be in line with the government rules. With cost-effective and seamless payroll like Patriot Payroll, the complexities of running payroll services for your employees and staying compliant at all times would be tackled.
Frequently Asked Questions
These tested five best Payroll software in Australia are built on the cloud to enable the vendor to respond quickly to threats. A set of technologies are utilized to safeguard your data. Policies are executed to ensure that these technologies are adequately maintained. For example, the Patriot payroll software Security & Systems Team is notified immediately when monitoring systems detect abnormal activity.
The payroll software you choose should be adept at factoring in earnings, salary revisions, bonuses, one-time deductions, leave, and attendance so you can process payroll with a single click. You should also look for software that automatically and securely mails payslips and tax documents to employees. Our best is Patriot payroll software, which carries out all these functions at a very low price tag, unlike other payroll software.
