Pastel Payroll breaks the ice internationally

Payroll software developed locally by leading software developer Softline Pastel Payroll is gaining ground in international markets, achieving consistent sales into 22 countries with the latest breakthrough being the chilly, glacial island state of Iceland in the far North Atlantic Ocean.

Pastel Payroll`s distribution network also sells and supports the software in the tropical West Indian island of Jamaica, the Mediterranean island of Malta and the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, with the other 19 countries being predominantly in Africa and the Middle East.

"We have a strategic plan to expand our export markets and Iceland represents just the tip of the iceberg for us," says Softline Pastel Payroll managing director Stephen Corrigan. "It demonstrates that the work we have put into developing functionality that internationalises the software and allows it to be easily customised to suit the language and tax requirements of any country, is achieving the desired results."

Although the international norm is for accounting and payroll software to function with English as the default language, Corrigan says the Pastel Payroll payslip and transaction functionality has been developed to easily accommodate conversion to other languages through a translation feature.

"This feature is user-defined and it is very simple to convert the standard transaction terminology to the local language required. On the Icelandic payslip, for example, the feature converts the term `Basic Salary` to the Icelandic equivalent, which is `Grunnlaun`. On a Xhosa payslip, `Basic Salary` is converted to `Umvuzo Osisimiselo`. It is a most useful feature and there are many benefits to employees receiving payslips with the relevant details in their home language."

Locally, Pastel Payroll allows you to print payslips in all of the 11 official languages: English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Ndebele, Sepedi, Setswane, Siswati, Sesotho, Tshivenda, Xitsonga and Zulu.

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"Softline Pastel Payroll`s international distribution network keeps us abreast of tax and legislation changes so that businesses in other countries using our software receive upgrades each year that ensure their payroll is conducted in full accord with the legal requirements of the country in which they are operating," adds Corrigan.

"Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are realising, more than ever before the need for a dedicated payroll software to reap the immense benefits that derive from automation: easy, full compliance with all of the tax and legal issues as well as accurate processing of individually complicated employee portions of the payroll."

He believes it no longer makes sense to manually attempt salary or wage tax deductions and statutory payments to unemployment insurance funds and government levies. Just the issue of employee remuneration and tax paid certificates places a huge burden on payroll administrators and then there`s the problem of keeping up to date with the latest changes in legislation or taxation codes.

"So our goal is to sell one payroll package for every accounting package out there. There`s no reason we shouldn`t achieve that because the international distributors are reporting increased demand for payroll solutions. The Pastel accounting and payroll products are complementary and have the same look, feel and intuitiveness, which is what people both here and overseas want as it greatly reduces the learning curve involved in moving from one application to the other. Such integrated solutions appeal to businesses because of the ease with which they can be implemented.

"SMEs in most countries are also realising that automating the payroll process means the system correctly makes all of the necessary calculations for the administrators and at the same time ensures that employers are not paying more than they should. That`s a strong motivator for doing away with manual systems and installing dedicated payroll software."