SmoothPay goPayroll keeps businesses across the Pacific fair and compliant
To keep the Business Link Pacific business advisory service network up to date with the highest standards for business practice, we regularly partner with cutting edge business advisors; facilitate access to the latest technology and support the professional development of future business leaders.
Our latest partnership is with SmoothPay, a New Zealand-based payroll systems company specialising in providing localised online payroll systems for small and medium sized businesses in the Pacific region.
This week we caught up with Matt Gardner, Managing Director and Senior Developer of Smoothpay, to find out more about how SmoothPay goPayroll works and to announce a special promotional offer for our BLP Partners.
Payroll systems expert Matt Gardner founded Smoothpay in 1995 after several years of working for local Government developing financial and payroll applications.
“I realised when I went and started up my own company, there really wasn’t much to choose from in the computerised payroll space. The ones I looked at weren’t comprehensive, didn’t follow the correct rules or didn’t comply with legal requirements.”
Matt and his team created SmoothPay specifically for small and medium sized businesses.
“We realised back then that even the little businesses had to comply with exactly the same rules as big businesses. Big businesses can usually afford software to do their payroll, but smaller businesses can’t always. That was the reason we started developing payroll software back in the day.”
“We built the rules into our systems, so for example you can’t process a pay if you are purposely trying to be non-compliant by evading superannuation or holiday pay legal obligations. Being non-compliant is a risk for the employer but it’s also not fair on the employee.”
“We take a great deal of care to provide compliant systems, systems that will help the employer meet their legal requirements and also ensure that the employee is getting their just reward.”
SmoothPay goPayroll is currently localised and available for 12 countries; New Zealand, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, American Samoa, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru and Kiribati.
So how does it work and what are the key benefits?
“An online payroll system means you can access it from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection. You don’t need any special software, and you don’t need to worry about backing-up or updating, this is all taken care of in the cloud.“
SmoothPay offers both desktop and online versions of goPayroll, with Desktop versions suiting locations where internet connectivity is poor. Matt explains that while most payroll services seek to lock in their clients by not allowing access to the data, SmoothPay is the exception:
“We allow the user to download a copy of their database, an entire copy, anytime they want. You simply can’t do that with any other payroll [system] that we’ve looked at. We don’t seek to lock in our clients, its their data, theirs to get a hold of whenever they want to.”
goPayroll client data is stored in a secure facility in Palmerston North, New Zealand, and is also backed-up and stored off-site.
To make the transition to SmoothPay goPayroll even easier, Matt’s team provides one on one ‘Direct-to-Desktop’ training. A SmoothPay team member will gain remote access to your computer and take you through how to use the system. The training service is provided at no extra cost, both as part of the initial set up and as needed while your SmoothPay subscription remains current.
goPayroll is designed to integrate with tax, superannuation, banking, human resource management systems (HRIS), time and attendance solutions and common accounting systems, like MYOB, Xero and Quickbooks.
“The goal was to present the information and make it easily accessible,” Matt explains. “Implementing an online payroll system has numerous advantages, because almost all of the [Pacific] Islands now have some kind of electronic reporting requirement.”
Special promotional offer for BLP Partners
goPayroll can be trialled for free for 30 days and there is no set up fee, instead a $145 (NZD) migration fee, where data from your existing payroll system is moved to goPayroll.
“As part of our new partnership with Business Link Pacific, we’re offering a special permanent promotion, a 100% Migration Discount for BLP Partners in addition to the 30 day free trial and the 1:1 free online unlimited training.”
“We will help them migrate their data and waive the migration fee – $145 is a lot of money for a small business and its at least a couple of days of work to migrate data. We can import from raw data or from a spreadsheet template (which we provide) and from most of the common payroll systems.”
Business Link Pacifc is proud to have established this new partnership with SmoothPay, New Zealand’s #1 choice for fully compliant and localised payroll systems.
If you are a registered BLP Partner* and interested in trialing goPayroll, contact Matt’s team on +64 6 353 6462 and use the Promo Code ‘BLPgoPayroll’ to access the promotional offer.