The hard truth is that manually processing your international payroll just won’t cut it. After all, international payroll processing involves more than computing your employees’ salaries and calculating payroll deductions

You’ll need to handle the complexities and multiple compliance requirements of each country, and the process is often resource-draining, impractical, and even costly with manual methods. 

The solution? Automate your international payroll. 

Automation allows you to streamline processing your global payroll data, compliance, and other related tasks, saving you a huge chunk of time, resources, and money. 

If you’re still on the fence about whether adopting automation is right for you, read on to learn more about the top seven reasons why you should automate your global payroll.   

1. International payroll: A quick overview

Payroll is the process of calculating employee earnings, managing expenses, commissions, and benefits, withholding social taxes and correct income, and sending accurate payments to every personnel. 

Running an international payroll is essentially the same process but with additional levels of complexity since labor and tax laws vary depending on the specific country. You’ll need to monitor many data streams, invoices, and multiple spreadsheets in various languages and units of measure. 

International payroll A quick overview

This can be a huge nightmare if you’re not automating critical parts of the process and why companies need to take steps to streamline their international payroll runs.

A reliable global payroll solution with robust automation allows you to execute the payroll steps and go through the necessary workflows simultaneously and seamlessly. 

2. Benefits of automating your international payroll 

Employing and paying people all over the world means more data to gather, input, and validate on top of handling unique compliance requirements, local laws, and currencies from each country.  

Adopting automation lets you process high-volume global payroll data and tackle related tasks efficiently. Other advantages of automating your global payroll include the following.   

a. Improved accuracy

Manually processing your global payroll data leaves a bigger room for error. 

With automation technology that easily integrates into your Human Resource Information System (HRIS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, you can eliminate potential data entry and process errors and increase accuracy. 

Automated systems can also run 24/7, allowing you to raise your capacity and cover more ground. 

Automate your global payroll using reliable software to eliminate potentially costly human errors and mitigate major payroll risks. 

b. Faster processing

Manual international payroll data gathering, entry, calculation, and validation can eat up a huge chunk of your time. 

With automation, you can handle global payroll tasks, such as inputting data, file checking, and managing workflows, in a few minutes and with a few clicks. This is a huge time-saver, especially if you’re processing payroll data volumes that include various countries.

c. Overall efficiency

Similar to how marketing automation platforms can streamline your marketing efforts, your global payroll can go beyond saving you time. It can make the entire process as efficient as possible. 

Automation speeds up inputting, validating and comparing global payroll data across multiple countries. This creates a more cohesive and streamlined process for your payroll and accounting departments. 

With an efficient global payroll system through automated workflows, you get precious time back — hours you can use to focus on other critical elements of your payroll process. 

Automation can create time in your monthly pay cycle while streamlining your payroll processing, increasing your output quality and efficiency. 

d. Enhanced security

Automation has many practical applications; for instance, marketing can enable you to auto-post your social media content to get more blog traffic. 

Automated transfers while running an international payroll ensure minimal human contact with your sensitive global payroll data, keeping the information secure and reducing potential security risks. 

A good payroll solution for companies with a global footprint will offer a secure worker portal. It will allow you to deliver payment and payslips to workers in their local currency and native language for seamless transactions. This helps boost your global payroll information and system’s security.  

e. Cost savings

Besides speeding up your global payroll process, one of the biggest benefits of automation is that it can be a cost-efficient solution over the long term. 

For instance, with reliable global payroll software, you can minimize hiring payroll contractors during busy seasons, allowing you to save some money. 

Automation also frees your in-house payroll experts from repetitive, tedious tasks. That lets them concentrate their time and energy on introducing other cost-saving initiatives to your process.

Plus, since automation increases your global payroll process’ accuracy, you can catch issues early before authorizing the payroll, processing bank payments, and generating ledger reports, reducing potentially costly errors.  

Additionally, using a global payroll solution that can automate producing multi-currency and multi-country general ledgers, including your bank file reporting, will save you significant finance time and direct fees to your local country payroll providers. 

e. Streamlined data analysis and reporting

Some automation tools can bulk check volumes of payroll data and look for errors, anomalies, and variances based on pre-configured algorithms. 

This process can take days with manual methods, and it would be easy to miss critical issues and data, leading to potentially expensive and serious errors in your global payroll. 

A true global payroll solution consolidates payroll data from multiple sources and locations; this consolidation enables you to generate reports in one place, tapping into company data that otherwise was just too difficult to find.

You won’t need to deal with multiple spreadsheets for each country. Instead, you can get consolidated worker reports in a central location for quick and easy access. This can also give you an overall view of your global workforce spending.   

f. Scalability

Automating your global payroll is critical to help your business hit the ground running in a fiercely competitive global landscape.  

Effective automation helps you establish a scalable and flexible global payroll process to support your company’s growth instead of hindering it. 

Plus, automation helps you optimize your resources while implementing a payroll process that scales and grows your business. 

3. Wrapping up the importance of automating your international payroll

Automation brings numerous benefits to your global payroll process, going beyond saving you time and money. 

Adopting automation can streamline your workflows, eliminate bottlenecks, and essentially make global payroll processing and compliance less of a difficulty and more of a seamless and effective undertaking. 

Find a reliable global payroll solution with robust features that best fit your unique business needs. 

With the right tool, you and your payroll department can break free from manual, time-consuming, and energy-draining tasks. This can significantly improve your global payroll processing, saving you precious resources and money along the way.