Payroll

Sinclair User

Mike Wright

PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS TO TAXING PROBLEMS Mike Wright recommends some of the payroll programs on the market but not without reservations. The April Budget again made extra work for every business in the country, with changes to personal allowances and National Insurance contributions. So it seems appropriate to examine some of the payroll programs available. Programs were received from Byte One, Hilderbay, Transform and V & H Computer Services. The program marketed by Transform is Byte One. Comments regarding the Transform program should also be taken as applying to the Byte One program. In the programs reviewed two different approaches are used. The Transform program is a once-and-for-all program in which the user sets the payroll variables such as National Insurance percentages, earnings levels and tax rates, while Hilderbay and V & H Computer Services include that data in the program. Consequently changes in tax or NI rates mean that updates must be obtained before the new rates can be implemented. V & H Computer Services offers an annual maintenance contract at £5.75 which provides free updates whenever necessary. Hilderbay offers updates at £3 each The V & H program, which is also available for the 16K ZX-81, supports all tax codes and even incorporates a system of error-trapping which tries to interpret incorrect codes. Only not contracted out NI contributions are supported. Employees can be paid on an hourly or weekly basis but not monthly and there is no provision for superannuation schemes. The program is run from a main menu of six options. On first loading only one, Set up new payroll is operative. That leads to a question-and-answer session, with the user giving details of the company and then each employee in turn. Once the initial details are set up, the payroll can be run. That gives a menu of options which include specifying either the number of hours worked or the normal week. Three options allow overtime to be entered at time-and-a-quarter - T+.25 - T+.5 or 2T. Other rates for overtime are not possible to enter directly but could be entered under the pre-tax adjustment facility. Post-tax changes can also be made. Pre-tax changes are taken to be additions and post-tax changes are deductions unless prefixed by a minus sign. Both the number of hours of sick pay and holiday pay can also be entered. Sick pay is calculated at the hourly rate and holiday pay at £1 per hour. Once all employees' pay has been calculated the program leads the user automatically through printing a summary of all pay before saving the program and data for the next run. The Hilderbay program operates in a different way. There is a fixed main program with a secondary data set which contains the tax and NI information. The review copy, received before the Budget, contained only the tax and NI changes to August 1, 1983. That did not affect the operation of the program, although it would not cope with pension contributions which attract NI but not tax. That has been incorporated in later versions. Hourly or monthly pay can be handled, although not at the same time. All types of class one NI contributions are handled but are referred to as 1-5 rather than A-E. In addition, a zero option is offered for those who pay no NI contributions. All tax codes including F, D, BR and NT are supported. The program is controlled from a master menu which offers six options, three of which are concerned with loading, saving and installation details. A fourth option allows the week or month to be set at the start of a run. Program operation is reminiscent of a database, with each employee acting as a record with fields containing pay, tax and NI information as well as other options. Changes are made to the fields by a single keystroke to select the field before entering the new data. Unlike the other programs, individual details of overtime, sick pay, holiday pay are not catered for, but a total figure for 'pre-tax changes' is entered instead. Post-tax changes can also be included. A coin analysis is provided as an option in the program to give a breakdown of the numbers and types of coins needed to pay employees. Only one payslip is printed per employee and the summary totals for each employee and the whole company are printed under a separate option. An option is provided for printing text and although initially it was awkward to use, to print extra text on a payslip it is a useful aid. The Transform program is menu driven and leads the user step by step through setting up the initial data to using the program. The response to be made to a prompt is often omitted, leaving the user to find it by trial and error. There are options allowing for employees to he paid weekly, hourly or monthly. Separate runs must be made for weekly, hourly or monthly-paid employees. Further entries can be made for overtime, holiday and sick pay and commission. Provision is also made for other additional pay and deductions either before or after tax. National Insurance contributions for contracted out and not contracted out are calculated by the program. Of the five NI contribution classes, A, B, C, D and E, only four - either A, B, C, D or A, B, D, F - can be handled at one time. All the not contracted out rates are covered but the program in setting up the NI data for contracted out cases prompts only for the earnings limits and one set of percentages. Superannuation schemes are also coped with, allowing for deductions to be made as a fixed payment based on a percentage of gross pay at a fixed date or as a fixed percentage of gross pay. Alternatively, the employer-paid scheme is also allowed for. The manual claims that all tax codes are supported when it means all four-figure tax codes are supported. Codes D and NT are not supported and in the extreme possibilities of a person's allowances falling below £1,000 or rising above £10,000, codes H and L would not be supported. Additionally the program was tested using the Latest Inland Revenue test data and found for week one an overpayment of 10 pence tax had been calculated. Having a breakdown of some of the additional items, such as holiday and sick pay, is very useful, and although it assumes the overtime rate, or rates, is based directly on the hourly rate, it allows a multiplier to be specified. That permits the overtime rate which is not based on the hourly rate but which may be based on a national minimum rate to be expressed as a multiplier of the hourly rate used in the program. Other attractive features were the printing of two copies of the employee's pay slip as well as weekly/monthly and year-to-date totals automatically, and the way in which the user is made to save and verify data at the end of each week/month run. All three packages have features to commend them in their operation - the once-and-for-all nature of the Transform package and its independent entry of sick and holiday pay as well as allowing for superannuation schemes; the Hilderbay completeness in covering all tax codes and types of NI contributions; and the V & H Computer Services coverage of all tax codes and the layout of the payslip. Of the three manuals, none was of the quality in presentation or explanation which could be expected. The Transform manual is four pages of thin dot matrix printed paper, of which two pages are used to introduce the program and tell the user how to load it. The most helpful manual was probably that of V & H but even that was printed on a dot matrix printer without true descenders. Another pet hate occurred on both the Hilderbay and Transform pay slips. It is the failure to print trailing zeros after a decimal point and also to line up amounts on the decimal point in a column of figures. Obviously accuracy plays a vital role in any financial package and while both the Hilderbay and V & H programs performed well, the Transform program made some errors in calculation. Although the occasional penny difference in NI contributions may be acceptable, the same kind of difference in an employee's basic pay - i.e., number of hours worked X hourly rate - is not, and the Transform program is prone to make such errors. The choice of program depends on the payroll system and preferences of the user. While there are reservations on the limitations on overtime rates in the V & H program and the entering of any other pay apart from regular or hourly pay as one item in the Hilderbay program, they can still be recommended for business use. Byte One, [redacted]. Hilderbay, [redacted]. Transform, [redacted]. V & H Computer Services, [redacted].

Hilderbay

Transform / Byte One

V & H Computer Services

'The Transform program made some errors in calculation.'

SUMMARY TABLE OF PAYROLL PROGRAMS Transform Price: £19.95 Memory: 48K No. of employees: 40 Full Tax Codes: No NI contributions - Not Contracted Out: Yes NI contributions - Contracted Out: One rate only Length of company name: 14 chars Length of employee name: 14 chars Print user's text: No Add or remove employees: Yes Coin analysis: No Hilderbay Price: £25 Memory: 48K No. of employees: 50 Full Tax Codes: Yes NI contributions - Not Contracted Out: Yes NI contributions - Contracted Out: Yes Length of company name: n.a. Length of employee name: 21 chars Print user's text: Yes Add or remove employees: Yes Coin analysis: Yes V & H Computing Price: £14.50 Memory: 48K (16K ZX-81) No. of employees: 200 Full Tax Codes: Yes NI contributions - Not Contracted Out: Yes NI contributions - Contracted Out: No Length of company name: 32 chars Length of employee name: 15 chars Print user's text: No Add or remove employees: Yes Coin analysis: Yes - separate program

Sinclair User

John Gilbert

EASY WAYS OF MINDING YOUR OWN BUSINESS John Gilbert looks at some examples in the growing library of business software. The variety of business software on the market for both ZX computers seems to be almost endless, as well as being confusing. It is difficult for a beginner to decide which program is best for certain applications without becoming too involved with the technicalities of the business world. Business programs should teach the user who is also a beginner, as well as being an aid for the hardened businessman. Hilderbay, run by Mike Salem, produces programs to cover a diverse area of business applications which can be used in the home and at work. Salem stresses that the programs were made as simple as possible to use. One program which would be useful to anybody interested in buying a house, taking a loan, or working-out VAT, is Financial Pack 1. The cassette has three programs on it - Loan, Mortgage and VAT. Mortgage deals with bank and building society. It has two main uses. The first is seeing the effect of small changes in the mortgage rate on payments before deciding to take the mortgage. Second, it is possible to discover how much has to be paid in interest at the end of the month. The program will calculate either the term or the instalment of the mortgage, depending on what information is available at the time. The loan program will compute any of the terms involved in loan repayment - principal, interest, number of instalments - depending on the other factors available. With VAT you may enter prices with or without VAT. The program will display price, VAT totals, and VAT rate. Financial Pack 1 costs £5. Another program from Hilderbay is Budget. The program will help the user to keep track of expenses incurred during the year. It is possible to keep expenses under 50 headings. Information on each item of expenditure can be entered but only the monthly running totals are kept. The program will produce a bar chart of expenditure, budget plan, or difference between the budget plan and expenditure to date. The amount spent can be compared to the budget plan for the month. The program with data can be saved on tape in the usual way. Budget costs £5. Finally from Hilderbay there is Payroll. The program will keep a record of employees and their pay for a small company. Payments can be entered on a weekly or monthly basis. After entering all the employee data and altering anything which needs to be changed, the program will calculate the present payroll. The program includes a security routine which allows only a person who knows the correct code name to enter the program. Investment on the stock market is becoming more and more popular. Micromega has produced a program which will keep track of the user's portfolio of stock and share investments. It is called Comp-U-Share. It monitors the most important factors measuring investment performance. Once the relevant data is entered, it is possible to obtain reports on percentage gain and loss, price-earnings ratio, percentage nett gain or loss, and totals. Records of shares can be indexed with numbers. When initiating a report it is possible to obtain an analysis of only those records which you desire by entering the relevant index numbers. The program stores data files separately so that the user does not have to waste time storing both program and variables every time the program is used. It is also possible to verify the data stored on the tape in the same way as with the Spectrum. The program costs £9.95. Micromega also produces a program to help with income tax. It may not decrease the amount paid but it can make the business of filling-in a tax form simpler. The program will run on both the 1K and 16K versions of the ZX-81. The 1K version is loaded in stages. The Income Tax package is a mock-up of a tax form and a user guide which takes you through the business of filling-in a form with your tax data step by step. The program has been checked by chartered accountants and can be used for the tax year ending April 5, 1982. Income Tax costs £9.95 and there will be a 15 percent discount for updates. Hestcrest provides a program called Accounts which will be of use to anyone preparing accounts from incomplete records. The program is menu-driven and when a client's income and expenses have been entered satisfactorily a profit-and-loss account and balance sheet can be displayed. It costs £17.50. Vu-Calc and Vu-File are two programs which were commissioned by Sinclair Research and produced by Psion. They are easy to use, extremely flexible, and convenient for displaying expenditure at the press of a button. The programs are part of a group of software cassettes sold by W H Smith alongside the ZX-81. Vu-Calc can be used to display such items as income, expenditure and tax in a table displayed on the TV screen. It will also perform calculations on the data displayed from formulae entered to the table. Vu-File can be used to store information such as club membership records, populations around the world, and time-tables. On the other side of the cassette is an example program which has in-store information on every country in the world. Vu-File and Vu-Calc are available for £7.95. All the programs mentioned are for use only on the ZX-81, except those from Hilderbay which are also available for the Spectrum. Almost every business application has been covered during the last year and the quality of it is very high - surprisingly high for such a small machine as the ZX-81. It has been proved that the small system many people thought was of no use for serious applications is far more versatile than they imagined. Hilderbay, [redacted]. Micromega, [redacted]. Hestacrest, [redacted]. Sinclair Research, [redacted].