How integrated payroll, HR & accounting can help West African businesses take efficiency to the next level

By integrating the golden triangle of business processes and systems—accounting, payroll & HR and payments—organisations in West Africa can achieve higher levels of automation across their businesses, save time, and gain more visibility into their performance.

That’s according to Dr. Rutendo Hwindingwi, Divisional Director for Sage East and West Africa, who says that fully integrated payments, accounting, and payroll solutions mean companies spend less time on admin and more on running their businesses. “Many Nigerian companies are still using legacy business software or even manual processes,” he adds.
“The result is that they lack visibility into business performance and need to capture certain transactions and information multiple times. Implementing modern, integrated solutions can help African organisations comply more easily with tax and labour laws, increase efficiencies, and gain more control over their business processes.”

Better planning and forecasting

With completely up-to-date payroll, HR and payments data flowing automatically to their accounting systems, companies will have access to the reports and information they need for better planning, forecasting and budgeting, Dr. Hwindingwi says. They’ll have insight into cash flow, human resource capacity and utilisation, and business growth they can use to optimise performance and plan for the future. Because there is no need to collect information from separate databases, reporting is faster and more accurate.

What’s more, an integrated solution that brings payment, payroll and accounting functionality together eliminates the need to recapture or manually import payroll data into the accounting system each month, and then reconcile financial data with bank statements. “That can save hours of work each month for the accounting and payroll teams, while also ensuring that the business always has up-to-date payroll information reflected in its financial systems,” says Dr. Hwindingwi.

Less human error

Eliminating the need to recapture data means that the possibility for human error to creep in is vastly reduced. Additionally, all of the company’s business systems draw their data from a single database, reflecting a single, accurate version of the truth. This creates trust in the business’s financial data and helps the business to avoid making costly errors in tax or payroll calculations.

Integrated payroll, HR and accounting solutions can help the financial and payroll teams to stay on top of the mountains of paperwork involved in managing the workforce, adds Dr. Hwindingwi. For example, if an employee updates his or her personal information in the HR system via employee self-service, the integrated payroll software should automatically update. This means less work for HR and payroll employees, and fewer chances for data capture errors.

A modern, integrated business system that draws together payments, payroll & HR, and accounting is also a platform for more efficient ways of working. “With accurate and up-to-date payroll and HR data available, employees can use employee self-service to access information about benefits, payroll, leave, and expenses,” Dr. Hwindingwi says. “They can even update their information themselves. This can save managers, HR, and employees a great deal for time.”

This sort of environment also means that managers can get access to up-to-date business information wherever they are. They can monitor employee and business performance from their mobile phones, knowing that they have accurate information at all times to inform their decisions.

Closing words

“As the global market leader of integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, Sage enables our customers to focus on their business and helps them to leapfrog to the future,” Dr. Hwindingwi says. “An important element in this strategy is freeing entrepreneurs from the low-level admin and data capture so that they can focus on growing their businesses. Integrated business solutions take care of the basics so that entrepreneurs and business managers can focus on strategy and growth.”