Looking for a payroll gizmo

**slick4591**[$] · #1 03-19-2006, 12:09 AM

I've been doing payroll with a calculator and have found that its gotten a little wonky lately and has made some calculating errors. (Or it's me and you'll never get me to admit it.

)

I've been looking and asking but there doesn't seem to be one on the market that I can find. I'm looking for a hand held something or other that I can input employee information like their wage and withholdings and be able to calculate the gross, FICA, Medi-whatever and get the net of an employee. I can write the check.

I'm told there is plenty of software for this, but I don't have an office or PC at the restaurant and my employees would like their paychecks in the correct amounts at the end of the week.

Anyone got any ideas?

brian_igo · #2 03-19-2006, 03:39 AM

Dennis, I think your best bet is going to be a PDA, either Palm or Windows Pocket PC. You can write a formula in their spreadsheet programs to calculate payroll and taxes if you want to write it, and then write the checks or import it to your home PC to write them.

I tried to dig around for a PDA version of a business accounting program like Quickbooks. I couldn't find one but I gotta believe there is one out there, somewhere. This would be a bigger investment than a handheld calculator and a checkbook, but it could save you a huge amount of time on managing your expenses and cashflow. If you could use a PDA at the restaurant to record your expenses and income in realtime, and then download the data onto your PC when you get home, you'd have a ready record for taxes and to get an overview on where the money is coming from and going to.

Hope this helped.

**mrisch**[$] · #3 03-19-2006, 11:08 AM

Have you considered outsourcing? Quicken/Quickbooks payroll will do it all for you - checks, w2's etc. for not that much, and will even get you data to plug into an accounting program.

**slick4591**[$] · #4 03-19-2006, 11:09 AM

Thanks, Brian. Somehow I had the idea that those would not work because out of several places I've been no one has suggeated a Palm. I'll look deeper into it.

Thanks!

brian_igo · #5 03-19-2006, 12:41 PM

Glad I could help. I'd recommend a PDA that has Windows instead of Palm because it makes it so much easier to move data between your PC and the PDA.

Like I said, I dug around a little and I was really surprised that no one has a business accounting program for a PDA. Microsoft does offer Money for the Windows PDA's and you can move data between that and Money Business edition. (To be fair, Quicken also offers its finance program but I didn't see if it ports to Quickbooks.)

Neither of these will do the math on your payroll. But you can write an easy formula for Excel that can calculate the required withholdings. This will let you write the checks at the store if you want, while keeping all of the information to download to your PC when you get home. You can do the same with your receipts, vendor bills and the rest of your expenses, too.

**slick4591**[$] · #6 03-20-2006, 11:53 AM

Wanna baby sit me some more?

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/458...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Is this what I need?

brian_igo · #7 03-20-2006, 04:02 PM

Quote:

slick4591 said

Wanna baby sit me some more?

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/458...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Is this what I need?

That's a good one.

The description at Fry's didn't say if it came with the Mobile Office programs, so I did a search. I found that it does come with the Pocket PC versions of Word and Excel (and some others if you need 'em) and Amazon has it for $265.99 with free shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...lance&n=172282

I didn't think I was babysitting, but I'd be glad to write the page you need for Excel. Just email me the pay scales, tax rates and whatever other deductions you want to put in. I'll send you back an Excel sheet you can load onto your home PC, plug in the hours each week and it will kick out what the check needs to be.