1.0 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of the Study

A payroll is a company's list or records of its employees, which is often used to refer to the total amount of money that a company pays to its employees.

The term Payroll refers to a series of accounting transactions involved in the process of paying employees for the services rendered after taking all the statutory and non-statutory deductions into account, in conformance with the terms of employment, company policy and the law of the land i.e., payment of payroll taxes, insurance premiums, employee benefits and other deductions. An efficient payroll system facilitates an error-free, accurate and timely employee payment while ensuring that the employment is well within the valid work permit

A payroll system is software which organizes and arranges all the tasks of employee payment and the filing of employee taxes. These tasks may include keeping tracking of hours, calculating wages, withholding taxes and deductions,

 Net pay, Payroll software plays several roles for the user, the employees and the company, such as: giving you supper easy ways to manage employee calendar (e.g, deduction,   and overtime), gives you latest tax updates you when by notifying you when the updates arrive, allows you to quickly and easily generate payslips for all your employees, serves as a reminder. Payroll also makes deductions from employees wages for taxes, wage garnishment, health and life insurance, spending accounts and retirement investments. Payroll works with your accounting department to ensure that wage deductions and other payroll expenses are paid and properly reported. 

In an organization, there are several departments and each department has a payroll section to manage its payroll activities. Each section has to perform necessary personnel operations like data collection and preparation, entry, updates, monitoring and reporting of data. Many of these existing practices and procedures need to be reassessed at this time of changing needs, changing demands of employees and changing technologies So an organization needs an integrated web based payroll system that would integrate personnel and pay- roll related data collection, processing in individual departments and payroll audit in a more efficient and streamlined way. With this computer based payroll system, payroll section would be able to keep a record of employees including their personnel data, pay band, allowances, deductions, savings and taxes etc.. Net pay of each employee is calculated by using the information about his allowances and deductions. All these complex calculations have been incorporated herein. Many optional allowances and deductions for the employees are added by specifying the corresponding details. The individual pay slips and deduction vouchers are printed out as a receipt. Pay bands, grade pay, allowances, deductions and tax information are updated if there is an amendment in salary structure.

A payroll is a list of the employees and the payments due to each employee for a specific pay period. A pay period is the amount of time over which an employee is paid. Most businesses use weekly, biweekly (every two weeks), semimonthly (twice a month), or monthly pay periods. 

The payroll is a major expense for most companies. To ensure accurate records, most business set up a payroll system for recording and reporting employee earning information. 

Payroll is an application that lends itself well to the computer because of its repetitive procedures and calculation. A Web based payroll system can perform the same basic function as those performed manually by payroll clerk. The important differences are the computer’s speed, accuracy, reliability, and ability to easily generate reports. In a web based payroll system, the computer stores data such as an employee’s name, address, social security number, marital status, number of withholding allowances, pay rate and voluntary deductions. At the end of each pay period, the operator enters all payroll transaction data, such as regular and overtime hours for each employee and deduction into the computer. The computer calculates all withholding taxes and other deductions and accumulates and updates the earnings and withholdings.

Payroll System is a flexible compensation administration solution. It is designed to help human resource professionals as well as finance and accounting personnel to manage employee compensation, deductions, allowances, and benefits in an organization. The system is integrated with the Employee Information System, offers efficient features and functionality to manage company's expenses.

1.2 Statement of Problem  

1. Calculating salaries through manual operation is burdensome and stressful.

2. Difficulty in handling personnel records and inaccessibility of information when needed

3. Overpayment/Underpayment of salaries

4. Delay in payment of staff salaries because too much time is spent in preparation of the payroll.

5. The use of paper to keep pay details about each employee which results in too much paper work.

6. There is less security in the manual system

1.3. Objective of Study 

The objectives of  this  study is to design a computer based payroll system for an organization.

Implementation of a computer based system for calculating basic salary and allowance of staff.

Implementation of a computer based payment platform.

Implementation a system that accurately stores employee data and retrieves payment history when needed.

 Implementation of a computer based payroll system that can calculate transactions easily and summarize all the deducted contribution of the employee and net pay

1.4  Significance of the study

The purpose of this study is to have a better service for the employee and less error for their payroll system.

The study will aid in reducing errors, fraud, increase speed and also aid growth in organizations if successfully implemented. Manual payroll systems in organizations will be totally eliminated with this Web based system in place.