Sage Payroll Updates for COVID-19

What Are the Advantages to Sage 100 Payroll Updates?

The Payroll module in Sage 100 is probably one of the more critical pieces of software you use on a regular basis. Imagine writing checks by hand in order to pay employees. Ridiculous, right? Given how important the Payroll module is for Sage 100, it’s important to ensure that you have the latest updates installed, as soon as they are available. In many instances these updates are automatically pushed out but you do have the ability to control them. For example, if you are in the middle of processing your payroll, you can schedule the update for later in the day when everybody is out of system.

The biggest advantage to making sure that you always have the Payroll updates installed is simply knowing that all State and Federal changes are being taken into consideration. If any state makes a change then you will see an update for the system and be able to process it — either immediately or at a scheduled point in time. There was a point in the past when we had to schedule everything after hours in order for updates to be successfully installed. Then you would have to wait and schedule your payroll run at a later point in time. This was inconvenient and fortunately not the case anymore.

More recently, these automatic payroll updates have been particularly important due to the COVID pandemic. With “COVID pay” being a moving target you need to be sure that your compliance with the changing regulations is correct and accurate. As tax updates/changes are being talked about at the Federal level and passed rather quickly, you can ensure that proper COVID pay and tax withholdings are being accounted for when the payroll updates are applied.

So by allowing the system to update payroll files and settings in newer versions of Sage 100 (2018, 2019 and 2020) you have all of the approved changes embedded in your payroll updates which removes the guesswork.

These quick payroll updates should not be confused with larger updates like service packs issued by Sage that need to be installed after hours. These service pack updates include deeper changes like new tax profiles and bug fixes. They are separate from the updates that you can install yourself and that’s why having a company like Ardent Consulting as your Sage 100 partner really starts to pay off when it comes to larger updates and service packs.

Here is a link to the service pack release notes for Sage 100.