Datacom streamlines SMB payroll systems
"Financial administration time for 120 Te Kōhanga Reo centres has been dramatically cut down. A process that took four hours each month, now takes less than 20 minutes with NetPay."
Solution snapshot
Customer
Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust
Industry
Not-for-profit /Education
Business need
To streamline payroll processes and systems for 120 small business users, while achieving cost and economy of scale efficiencies.
Solution
Providing an award winning hosted payroll platform, NetPay, to meet the unique needs of small businesses that significantly simplifies complex processes.
Benefits
· Significant cost and time efficiencies
· Simplicity
· Security
· Free upgrades
· Answer centre support
Case study
Understanding small business challenges
The Te Kōhanga Reo movement is considered to be one of the most exciting and powerful national initiatives undertaken by Māori people in New Zealand. As part of this movement are 450 community run entities, called Te Kōhanga Reo (not-for-profit Maori language nests), challenged with the task of managing their operations including payroll.
For many small-to-medium businesses (SMBs), payroll is an extremely complex system that is constantly changing to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. Some of these SMBs still rely on paper-based wages books, fragile spreadsheets and technically correct, but poorly supported, desktop software.
Recognising these challenges and the importance of getting its payroll systems right, Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust (which has responsibility for the centres) approached Datacom to come up with a user-friendly solution that could be easily applied across its national centres. The Trust’s key concerns included: quality; timeliness; and the amount of time and effort required to work on unsupported payroll platforms – time that could be better utilised elsewhere.
Solutions focused approach adds value
Following evaluation of the Trust’s situation, Datacom recommended and rolled out to 120 centres its award-winning internet-based payroll system – NetPay (TUANZ e-business award winner). Datacom’s early investment in software as a service (SaaS) – linked to its solid understanding of Kiwi SMBs’ needs and payroll expertise – is now paying dividends to Te Kōhanga Reo.
By adding Datacom’s PAYE intermediary service between Te Te Kōhanga Reo and the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) and its associated systems, the centres no longer have to deal with the challenging and complex IRD processes and have saved many hours of what was often a confusing and frustrating experience. When the pay runs, Datacom takes the PAYE and holds it in a trust account for the centres until it is due at the IRD.
NetPay, with its business processes and connection to banking and PAYE intermediary services,
Today, through Datacom’s payroll expertise and NetPay, the needs of more than 120 Te Kōhanga Reo centres and the IRD are now effortlessly being met. This has been achieved by the Trust investing in the right product for the centres’ needs, supported by ongoing services from Datacom.
The benefits for Te Kōhanga Reo have seen the enhancement of payroll skills for those charged with managing the centres. This is a cornerstone philosophy of the Te Kōhanga Reo movement.
Key points
· Great economy of scale: The Te Kōhanga Reo centres are able to leverage off the economies of scale Datacom’s expertise provides including continual development of the software, understanding IRD intricacies and assurance of world class services such as hosting NetPay data at Orbit, Datacom’s $40m data centre.
Software as a service (SaaS): By using this hosted service, Te Kōhanga Reo centres not only receive the benefits such as access to free centralized upgrades but also support benefits such as remote visibility in real time to assist the centres in resolving any issues, when required.
Award-winning product: NetPay is custom designed to match small business needs, and is enhanced by new functionality as well as Datacom’s PAYE intermediary services. New functionality includes e-payslips, the capture of data from time devices such as IDT and Laurenka, and IT interfaces to Xero.
This Case Study for Te Kōhanga Reo National Trust is provided by Datacom.