Well, we finally made it to release!
Back in July 2009 when John and I sat down
at the pub in Canberra, I always thought that we’d make it to this day, but it certainly hasn't been easy. Having a quick look at
our timesheets, there are thousands and thousands of hours that have gone into the product to get it to where it is today. And todays release is something that we are really very proud of.
Recently, I read
Rework by
Jason Fried of
37signals fame, and I definitely buy in to some of his philosophies. One of them basically says, you do not need to do everything today. But whatever you do do, do it really well. And I think that is what we have achieved. The functionality that you see in the product today has been deliberately pared back from what may have been possible with extra people or extra time or extra money. For instance, there has been a lot of pressure for us to include leave accrual with opening balances, but we have deliberately left that out, for now.
Our goal was to make sure that we were really proud of what we delivered today. Not what could have been included or what might have been included. But just focus on making sure that what is included is the best it possible can be. Besides, we’re in the cloud. Development doesn’t stop just because we’ve launched, although it might for a day while we
go and have a drink! We can post improvements and updates at any stage.
The most important thing that we can do well of course is the payroll process itself. There have been hours and hours of thought, design and redesign that has gone in to this. The goal was to break up the components of a pay like I do in my head as I go through the process and make sure each employee's pay is correct. Ultimately making (human) errors more obvious and easier to spot. For instance, we used to use a timesheeting system in conjunction with MYOB. Sometimes those times might come in twice, and of course MYOB wouldn't care if you were paying someone for 80 hours a fortnight or 160 hours a fortnight. It's thick like that. If you're doing 60 pays, these things are easy to miss. By presenting this information in a manner that is easy to disseminate, these types of errors should be reduced. And, by the way, we're working on some rules and exceptions that would pick up things like this.
There is couple of pieces of functionality that will be coming late in April and in May that will go further in making the payroll process really just so easy. These being automatic super payments and automatic employee payments. These are the last two major pieces of the puzzle that will ultimately form the solution that represents the easiest payroll product in the Australian market place. Being able to press the big red button at the end of the payrun and know that all your employees have been paid, your journals have been posted to
Xero, and optionally your super and tax has been paid (or even set off in an
interest bearing cash management account). That's the ultimate goal.
There are two things that are released functional components that everyone has been asking about. That's reporting and the new dashboard. We have provided all the major reports that you will likely to need and they are really accessible just over the dashboard page under reports. Some of the most frequent reports are available straight off the dashboard. My idea is that you will be able to choose some favourite reports and they will permanently show on your dashboard. The dashboard is our designer's area to have a bit of fun, and provide some useful and valuable information at the same time. Soon you'll see our news come out (it's not about us, it's about you) which will be replaced with some more snapshots of the latest information about your company. Pending holidays, leave accruals and the likes are the most obvious pieces of information to show. You will notice that we will be adding charts too very soon.
So we are definitely going to enjoy celebrating, reaching our release day and we are very proud of what we have managed to achieve in what is a relatively short time frame. We hope you enjoy using the product, but by no means are we finished, we have got all kinds of things we want to do before the end of the year. Leave accrual with opening balances will be in shortly, timesheets is something that we are working on as I write this, integration with other rostering systems is also in the agenda and employee's own portal where not only pay slips will be available, but employees will be able to apply for leave, check their leave balances, is also on the table for this year.
So eventually, we see Paycycle not only just being a payroll product for small business, but the HR hub for small business. Our goal is to make the life of the small business operator, just that little bit easier. For now, if you have got any comments or questions, we would always love to hear from you.