Payroll software is a very handy tool. It is not something you actually need to purchase. If you wanted you could track all of the employee hours and hourly rates and hand calculate the information. In addition to this, you will need to calculate all of the taxes that need to be withheld and keep track of all the taxes your company will need to pay. If you have more than a couple employees, this would be an absolute nightmare.
If you don’t outsource your payroll to another company, then we highly recommend obtaining some form of payroll software. With payroll software you simply enter the employees’ information once and the software will automatically calculate the amount owed and the taxes that need to be withheld and paid. This will save you a lot of time.
Honestly we think you should probably drop a few bucks for your payroll software, but for those of you who are extremely cheap we provide a few free options below.
Open Office: This is like Excel, but it is free. The truth is if you set up some spreadsheets to track all of your payroll information you would save a lot of time over doing it manually. There are a few free templates out there already that you could use or modify.
QuickBooks Online Payroll: QuickBooks offers a free payroll software option at https://pws.quickbooks.com/sub/dispatchFreePayroll.do
The basic idea is that you can use the software for one employee for as long as you want. If you add more than one employee, then you have to pay $10 a month for the software. If your company only has one employee, then this might be a good option for you. $10 a month for some pretty good software isn’t a bad deal either.
Note: QuickBooks also has some online payroll software that is relatively inexpensive. You can find out more at http://payroll.intuit.com/. It does come with a 30 day free trial.
Brothersoft.com offers free payroll software downloads. However, this site is extremely spammy. We have seen a lot of spammy websites in the past, but this one might just be the worst we have ever seen. If you are the type of person that doesn’t mind sifting through a lot of spam and maybe picking up a few viruses along the way, then this might be a good payroll option for you.
Freedownloadscenter.com also claims to be offering payroll software for free. They are less spammy than Brothersoft, but not by much.
Medlin Software also offers a free trial version. They don’t state how long the trial version lasts or what other limitations may come with it. We wouldn’t even mention Medlin, but they only charge $50 per year which seems like a good deal.
That sums up our discussion of free payroll software. If you know of any other good options out there please list them in the comment box below.
