Many Nigerian companies are still using legacy business software or even manual processes

That’s according to Dr. Rutendo Hwindingwi, Divisional Director for Sage East and West Africa who says that fully integrated payments, accounting, and payroll solutions mean companies spend less time on admin and more on running their businesses. “Many Nigerian companies are still using legacy business software or even manual processes,” he adds.

“The result is that they lack visibility into business performance and need to capture certain transactions and information multiple times. Implementing modern, integrated solutions can help African organisations comply more easily with tax and labour laws, increase efficiencies, and gain more control over their business processes.”

What’s more, an integrated solution that brings payment, payroll and accounting functionality together eliminates the need to recapture or manually import payroll data into the accounting system each month, and then reconcile financial data with bank statements. “That can save hours of work each month for the accounting and payroll teams, while also ensuring that the business always has up-to-date payroll information reflected in its financial systems,” says Dr. Hwindingwi.

Eliminating the need to recapture data means that the possibility for human error to creep in is vastly reduced. Additionally, all of the company’s business systems draw their data from a single database, reflecting a single, accurate version of the truth. This creates trust in the business’s financial data and helps the business to avoid making costly errors in tax or payroll calculations.

Integrated payroll, HR and accounting solutions can help the financial and payroll teams to stay on top of the mountains of paperwork involved in managing the workforce, adds Dr. Hwindingwi. For example, if an employee updates his or her personal information in the HR system via employee self-service, the integrated payroll software should automatically update. This means less work for HR and payroll employees, and fewer chances for data capture errors.

“As the global market leader of integrated accounting, payroll and payment systems, Sage enables our customers to focus on their business and helps them to leapfrog to the future,” Dr. Hwindingwi says. “An important element in this strategy is freeing entrepreneurs from the low-level admin and data capture so that they can focus on growing their businesses. Integrated business solutions take care of the basics so that entrepreneurs and business managers can focus on strategy and growth.”