Looking for the best payroll software for education? Here are the top payroll software for educational institutions, covering their features, pricing, and more.
Nearly every industry brings its own challenges to payroll. Few, though, offer the level of complexity that education does. As a broad professional industry that covers everything from public elementary schools to Ivy League colleges and every job from tenured professor to cafeteria staff, it’s a use case with plentiful nuances and particular details.
To help you better identify a software solution that will meet your organization’s needs (or, at least, help you jumpstart your search for such a solution), we’ve put together this handy comparison of the top education-ready payroll software.
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| Pricing | Free trial | Native time tracking | Employee self-service | Tax filing | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OnPay | $40/mo.+$6/person/mo. | Yes | Integration only | Yes | Yes | |
| ADP Workforce Now | Custom quote | No | Premium only | Yes | Yes | |
| Paylocity | Custom quote | No | No | No | Yes | |
| Paycom | Custom quote | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Paycor | Custom quote | No | Add-on only | Yes | Yes | |
| Paychex | Custom quote | No | Add-on only | Yes | Yes |
OnPay is a full-service solution for payroll, HR and benefits. Of the competitors in this list, it offers the most complete feature set related to core education payroll concerns, and it was the only one with pricing information available online. The platform’s excellent user experience, first-class customer support and mobile functionality set it at the front of the pack for tools that serve non-profits and educational organizations.
For more information, read the full OnPay review.
ADP Workforce Now is the frontrunner on our list for larger teams and organizations. It has a personalized onboarding experience to help integrate the application into the system and get staff and faculty up to speed on its use. It also offers full support for tax processing and filing and facilitates automated payroll. What’s more, premium subscriptions include time tracking and attendance, along with a host of other critical HR functions.
For more information, read the full ADP Workforce Now review.
Paylocity bills itself as a full Human Capital Management (HCM) solution, covering everything from payroll to talent acquisition to even compliance management. The clean, aesthetic and intuitive UI is a welcome comfort to any users averse to obtuse systems or interfaces that look like a Windows ‘95 program. Its biggest value-add, however, is the team engagement functionality, as it can help organizations build a sense of community and camaraderie.
For more information, read the full Paylocity review.
As tech stacks grow to untenable sizes, many organizations are desperate to find a way to limit the number of applications that have to be managed and maintained for sustained operations. Schools, colleges and other educational institutions are no exception. That’s where Paycor comes in. With a feature set that includes all the usual suspects, plus expense management, scheduling software and compliance, it covers a wide range of operational concerns, allowing teams to use a single app for most of their day-to-day needs.
For more information, read the full Paycor review.
Paychex offers quite a few core payroll capabilities, such as automated payroll calculations, tax management, compliance support and multiple pay methods. However, it also provides a pretty decent variety of HR features for payroll software, like applicant tracking, employee development and benefits, so you can manage more in one centralized place.
On top of all that, Paychex provides analytics and reporting as well as built-in attendance and time tracking. It even has a highly rated mobile app for on-the-go management.
For more information, read the full Paychex review.
In addition to the standard features that nearly every organization is looking for in payroll software, the field of education comes with some additional concerns that aren’t always met by out-of-the-box solutions. And while even those vary by institution, location, organization size and a number of other factors, there are a few that most looking for software in this niche should be aware of.
Depending on the size and complexity of the educational institution, running payroll manually may or may not be a major concern. Some solutions provide a great deal of functionality and added efficiency, but depending on the use case, if payroll has to be run manually each time (even if that’s only a few button presses away), that may be a deal-breaker.
With educational institutions, tax filing isn’t always straightforward, as it might be for a different industry. Laws vary by location, by type of institution and by a number of other factors, and it can be a complex issue to handle manually. Ideally, it would be automated through the payroll app, taking this major concern off of the admin team’s plate.
Not all education employees are salaried. Teachers, professors, administrators and the like are often paid via salary, but many others are not. Cafeteria staff, janitorial and maintenance crews, and even substitute teachers may be paid by the day or the hour. As a result, many education teams will likely need a tool that either offers native time tracking or attendance functionality or provides easy access to add-ons or integrations so they can properly manage that aspect of payroll.
The last few years have seen the education landscape shift from mandatory in-person learning practically across the board to a much more distance-friendly mindset. In other words, where face-to-face interactions and physical paper records were sufficient (or at least acceptable) in years past, these days it’s increasingly expected that systems and processes will support remote access. Again, some education teams may find this less critical than others. But some will find it a mandatory feature.
In a time in the market where faculty and staff are often in short supply, it’s more important than ever for organizations to have improved methods for attracting and retaining talent. This is often considered a corporate matter, and hiring teachers isn’t typically seen as “talent acquisition” by the general public. But that’s precisely what it is, and the better that software can support those efforts, the better for the organization.
As with all technology solutions, there’s a lot to consider with payroll software for educational institutions. The end goal is the same as it always has been for educators, though: to facilitate the effective learning and growth of the students. So, carefully evaluate the needs of the organization, identify what’s required to achieve your most important goals and compare that against your budget. From there, it’s mostly a process of elimination.
While writing this article, we researched the vendors and their websites, as well as customer reviews and ratings, to gain a full understanding of where each solution fits into the market landscape — and who they serve most effectively.
