Press

Keytime is pleased to announce that it’s payroll software has been shortlisted for the 2009 Pay Awards. See here for more details.

Keytime Payroll has been entered into the Payroll Software Provider of the Year category and the entry below will be scored by the judges in the following areas, which determine half of the score:

• innovation
• customer service
• payroll improvements
• recent customer case study

The other half of the score will come from the user vote.

To qualify for shortlisting, Keytime had to provide the following materiel in relation to its payroll software: -

Each year, the government introduces regulatory changes affecting businesses on two common commencement dates. These dates are 6 April and 1 October.

There are a number of changes due to come into force on 1 October 2009, affecting the minimum wage, tips and service charges, redundancy payments and the way companies are managed.

What follows is a summary, but not an exhaustive list, of the more important new rules with which businesses will need to comply.

National minimum wage

From 1 October, new hourly rates come into force for the national minimum wage.

The rate for workers aged 22 or over rises to £5.80 an hour; for workers aged 18 to 21 it rises to £4.83 an hour; and for workers aged below 18 who are no longer of compulsory school age it rises to £3.57 an hour.

The daily accommodation offset, which is the amount per day that an employer may offset from the minimum wage when providing a worker with living accommodation, is £4.51.

Tips, service charges and the minimum wage

Keytime are expanding and looking for new talent to join them as the business prepares for its busiest year ever - are you looking for a new challenge and a complete change of working environment? Then read on...

Are you tax qualified and in practice or HMRC?

• Fed up sitting at your desk completing tax returns or accounts?
• Bored dealing with HMRC?
• Worried about your future prospects?
• Sick of wondering how much you can put down in chargeable time to your clients?
• Dreading the end of day, week, month timesheet?

Then how about a change?

Keytime is one of the leading suppliers of tax and accounting software to the accountancy profession and as we expand our client base we have a need for another person to work as Specialist Sales Consultant, Accountants Division as part of our sales department promoting and selling our software, both face to face and on-line.

Keytime is pleased to announce that it’s new Test Drive facility is now available and can be accessed from the link below.

This new facility will give you instant access to Keytime’s suite of software products to allow you to use and test them in no time at all, from the comfort of your PC and with zero hassle.

Test Drive allows anyone to try out one or more of Keytime’s software products, immediately and online via a browser – no need to wait for a CD, load it, install, register etc – it’s ready in seconds.

Products available for you to try include…

• Tax Professional
• Corporation Tax
• Accounts Production
• Trust Tax
• Payroll
• P11D

Test Drive simply requires a browser and an internet connection.

Test Drive Keytime by clicking here

Buying Accounts software should be easy, therefore making the decision which application to buy should be easy.

However, most books will tell you that we buy using emotion then we rationalise our decision by bringing need into the equation. For example – when was the last time you actually needed to buy yourself Fish & Chips? Did you stand at the chippy door asking yourself “Do I really need 2000 calories and belly full of grease and fat?” Course you didn’t. Maybe you just fancied a treat and didn’t have time to cook dinner, you rationalised the want and turned it into a need.

Same with a shiny new car. Did you actually need the new car? Were there other options available? Of course there were. You buy the car because you want it, it makes you feel good, it looks great, it impresses people. But you didn’t need it. You could have got a less flashy car for half the price and that would have easily satisfied your need to get from A to B.

At the start of July I asked colleagues to come up with ideas to improve the business – “This may be an idea about one of our products, an operational/procedural change or something completely off the wall! “

A number of ideas were submitted, all good & thought through.

The management team  shortlisted them down to the best three and last Friday I took the shortlisted to Nando’s so they could pitch them.  This was really good; everyone had an opinion on each other’s ideas and passionately pitched their own.

In brief, the ideas where:

1. More staff training , as people can’t get enough
2. An company incentive scheme (Night’s out seeming a popular suggestion)
3. A web portal for Customer Support, allowing customers a personal area

Initially I’d stated that we would implement the best suggestions, but I was so impressed with the quality of the ideas and the actual thought that went into them that we’ll implement all three.