Back in the day—say, three or four decades ago—payroll was done completely by hand with nothing more than a calculator, a sheet of paper, and a pencil. Luckily, today’s small business owners have more options, including outsourcing to a payroll provider, running payroll software in-house (or doing payroll online), or using a spreadsheet program like Excel to calculate payroll.
If you don’t have enough employees for outsourcing and aren’t interested in paying for software, using an Excel payroll spreadsheet isn’t hard. Plus, the only cost is the amount you pay for your spreadsheet software, like Microsoft Office Suite.
There are definitely reasons to skip doing payroll yourself, especially potential inaccuracies. But if you only have a handful of employees and want to give by-hand Excel payroll a shot, we’re here for you.