Every Payroll Software provider charges some form of Annual Maintenance fee each year with most (except MYOB) including support in this fee.
The Annual Maintenance fee is charged to cover:
- Legislative Changes (a must for payroll software)
- Bug Fixes (which should be the developers cost)
- Support (except for MYOB)
- Development (adding new features and enhancements)
MYOB has commented that their fees are so high to cover the ‘continuous development’ they carry out with their EXO product range.
So, I thought it would be interesting to see how much ‘continuous development’ is happening with MYOB and the IMS Payroll Partner product.
Now for me, development, does not include ‘legislative changes’ as this is a must if the payroll developers wants to sell their product in New Zealand.
In addition, I did ask the question, ‘If a product has been in the market for a long time then there must come a point when everything has been developed, and the only changes will be legislative ones’. If this is true then you would expect that the IMS product would have minimal development when compared to MYOB as it has been in the market considerably longer.
However, the March 2010 results prove differently.
Both products covered the release of Payroll Giving (legislative) which came into force in January 2010 and apart from other legislative changes, the only ‘development’ I can see from MYOB was the addition of a ‘Contact E-mail field‘.
IMS on the other hand (and this is the more mature product) had 11 (non legislative) changes to their product.
You can view the release notes for March 2010 below.
MYOB_ReleaseNotes_March10
IMS_Release_Notes_v3.60
As a comparison we have also included a copy of Smoothpay’s Release Notes. Smoothpay provides regular, automated, updates to their software throughout the year.
Smoothpay_Release_notes
Tags: Annual Maintenance, IMS Payroll Partner, MYOB EXO, Payroll Support, Release Notes, Smootpay
Does IRD Owe You Money?
Jun 30th, 2010 by paymaster
Its is quite amazing how many people and institutions the IRD owes money to and unless it is claimed by the rightful owner I guess the IRD get to keep it and use it for their Christmas Party.
Check and see if your name, or anyone you might know, is on the Unclaimed Money Register.
The figures on the register are not Tax Refunds but money left untouched for six or more years in companies such as financial institutions or insurance companies.
Tags: Free Money, Inland Revenue
Posted in General Comment | No Comments »