If you are a small business you may be considering freeware payroll software. This can be a very good way to save money, but there are a few things you should know before jumping in. Although freeware is obviously free it may not be the best value for your business. Let me explain why and then show you some places where you can find it.

The main problem with payroll freeware is that there is little to no customer service provided. For many less critical programs this is not too much of a problem, but for payroll it might be. Your payroll software has to keep track of all the money owed to your employees. Thus, if you have a problem it not only affects you but them as well. So, in my opinion it is important to be able to solve problems in a timely manner.

Another major downside to freeware payroll software programs is that they often don’t have as many options as their full cost equivalents. Thus, if you need to fill in certain government tax forms you may still have to do this by hand. In the end this means you aren’t really saving much time at all. And keep in mind the whole point of good payroll software is that it should save you time.

Finally, although many freeware payroll programs have been improving in their ease of use over the last few years they still lag behind paid alternatives. If you are computer savvy this should not be too much of a problem, but if you aren’t you may find you have to spend valuable hours setting it up. So in the end is it a better deal?

Now that you have considered a few of the downsides to the free software option you may still want to download your payroll software for free. The best places to start your search are download.com and tucows.com. They both have lots of options from free trials to full blown freeware payroll software packages. However, you may still want to broaden your search to find the absolute best program.

Just one final word of caution if you do decide to expand your search to other websites. Make sure that you aren’t also downloading spyware or viruses on to your system. If in doubt about a certain site find out the name of the software program being offered and just do a Google search for their website. Then simply download it right from the source. There are lots of freeware payroll software options out there, so I recommend you get started with the two sites listed above.