Migrate From PayslipMaker To Nifty Payroll 2.0

The Nifty Payroll 2.0 website: niftypayroll.com

How is Nifty Payroll 2.0 better than PayslipMaker?

After running payroll for a large organization on PayslipMaker, it became clear that users still had to do too much by hand, and the process was inefficient. Nifty Payroll 2.0 was built from the ground up, starting in 2022, to make capturing salary information and producing payroll reports far more efficient — faster to process, with less risk of error.

Microsoft Excel integration

A lot of payroll information arrives as Excel files, so Nifty includes an import tool that brings Excel data in efficiently. Payroll reports also export to Excel and CSV, better than PayslipMaker did.

Much better reports

All the upload files for statutory returns — PAYE, PAYE for Persons with Disability, NHIF, HELB, and Housing Fund — export in one click, each formatted exactly as required for upload, with no further editing needed, in either Excel or CSV as required.

Other reports, such as the muster roll, payroll summaries, audit reports, and pension reports, can all be viewed and exported to Excel or PDF. The Excel muster roll is automatically formatted after export: the top row and the employee-name column are frozen, numbers are formatted, and totals are added at the bottom of each column.

17 specialized apps

PayslipMaker captured most data directly in the Payslips form, using 7 specialized apps. Nifty separates the capture of salary information into 17 specialized apps, each suited to a different type of data — for example, one app captures daily and hourly rates, working together with another that captures days or hours worked, which is useful for prorating salaries, overtime, wages, and paid leave.

Special tax apps

Six specialized apps handle taxable benefits and reliefs: Car, House, Other Benefits (furniture, water, electricity, phone), Pension, Home Relief, and Insurance. PayslipMaker made it easy to enter this information in the wrong place, and didn't automatically enforce limits — Nifty does.

Start/stop payments and deductions

Nifty lets you set in advance which month a payment or deduction should start and which month it should stop — set it once, and it takes care of itself. Nifty calls these "Fixed" items.

Overriding a fixed item

A Fixed item can be overridden for a single month using a separate app called Varying Items — useful, for example, if a fixed SACCO contribution needs to be reduced for one month only. Nifty always checks whether a Fixed item has been varied for the current month, and uses the varied figure instead. The same approach can prorate a salary or reduce a fixed loan deduction for one month.

Flagging non-compliance

Nifty flags employees who haven't had NHIF or NSSF deductions started after two or more months in the payroll, anyone missing a PIN despite having PAYE deducted, and anyone whose deductions exceed the two-thirds rule. If you have foreign-currency salary items, it prompts you for the month's exchange rate if you haven't entered one yet.

Foreign currency salaries

You can set which currency an amount is in — for example, Basic Pay in US dollars — and add a universal monthly exchange rate to convert to KES. Payslips can be generated in KES or in the foreign currency.

Employees who leave and come back

You can set which months an employee is active and should have a salary computed, and set more than one active period — useful if someone worked for a year, left, and later returned.

Special employees

Where PayslipMaker required manually turning reliefs and allowances on or off, Nifty automates how Secondary Employees, Non-Residents, and Persons with Disability are handled, switching off reliefs an employee doesn't qualify for and applying the correct PAYE tax rate.

Complex pension arrangements

Nifty can handle multiple pension institutions within one organization, generating reports for each. It adjusts how the tax-deductible amount is computed depending on whether the organization is taxable, and pension contributions can be set as a percentage of pay or a fixed amount, computed on Basic Pay alone or a combination of pay types.

Easier cloud backup

Losing all your payroll data if something happens to your PC is one of the biggest risks with desktop software. Nifty makes it easy to email yourself a backup at any time — best done at least once a month after running payroll — using email as a free cloud storage drive you can access anytime. With a backup safe, you can reinstall Nifty Payroll 2.0 and restore it to have your payroll back within minutes of getting a new PC.

Free PayslipMaker migration

For a limited time, your payroll data can be migrated from PayslipMaker to Nifty Payroll 2.0 for free. This offer will most likely expire at the end of 2023 and is on a first come, first served basis. It covers importing all employee data and payroll data for the current year, plus remote training and support until you're up and running.

To make the switch easier, Nifty Payroll 2.0 includes a Varying Items app with a Copy Previous Month button that works the same way PayslipMaker did — so you can keep working the way you're used to at first, and move to Nifty's other ways of capturing salary data gradually.

Cost implications

The annual fee will still be invoiced as usual on your anniversary month, but at the Nifty Payroll 2.0 rate rather than the PayslipMaker rate — see the Nifty Payroll 2.0 pricing. The rate is higher because Nifty makes payroll processing significantly faster and easier, and the time saved is worth the investment.

To take advantage of this offer, get in touch by email to schedule your migration.