Orbus Technologies Limited previewed to their valued customers on December 10, the new features of their main accounting software package Sage AccpacERP 5.6 and announced the availability of Norming Payroll Manager for SageAccpac for the Jamaican market. The evening was a success as the new features of Sage Accpac ERP 5.6 and the new payroll, Norming Payroll Manager, were well received by the customers in attendance.

Commenting on the genesis of the launch, Managing Director of Orbus Technologies, Paul Collister, noted : “Some years ago, as an ACCPAC customer, I was told that it was out of the question to use an off the shelf overseas payroll package in Jamaica, as the peculiarities of our tax situation made such packages unsuitable for the local market. This always seemed somewhat strange to me because payroll taxes are pretty similar in nature wherever you are operating. For this reason, I could never understand why payroll software had to be customized specifically for the Jamaican market. In addition, it always seemed unfair to me that Sage Accpac users in the United States and Canada could get the benefit of an integrated payroll package that is part and parcel of their accounting system, whilst this option was not available to local users of Accpac.

“After some investigation, I located an international Sage Accpac payroll package Norming Payroll that was widely in use in a number of countries in Africa and Asia. Our investigations revealed that Norming Payroll would do the job – however, it did not provide the Government Payroll reports that Jamaican payroll users are accustomed to seeing in their payroll, so with the co-operation of Norming, and the help of our lead consultant on the project, Shelldon Chin-See, we decided to develop them.”

In an animated presentation, Shelldon Chin-See extolled the virtues of Norming Payroll for the Jamaican market: “Not only does it seamlessly integrate with the Sage Accpac ERP application allowing for the sending of journal entries to the General Ledger and Invoices for statutory payments and salary deductions to the Accounts Payable, the software is a true multicurrency payroll. Furthermore, Norming Payroll gives users true freedom, as they are able to change the tax tables without the need to involve the developers.

Additional advantages of Norming are: the fact that it allows the users to define and create formulae for an unlimited number of earnings/deductions and leave types; its ability to track the accrual and usage of employee leave; and security features such as the ability to restrict a user’s access to employee and payroll information by either the employee or by a user defined pay group.

Any investment in Norming Payroll will be quickly recovered in the cost savings that companies will enjoy from accurate processing and a dramatic reduction in the time spent reconciling and manually entering payments, journals and creating manual reports based on payroll information.