As software like Sage Simply Accounting 2012 matures, the big question with a new release is not how the core functions work but rather what additional features have been added.

Payroll enhancements dominate the list of new features in the 2012 version, accounting for seven of the product's thirteen new feature areas.

Sage noted that the decision to focus on payroll enhancement was based on results of the Sage Global Business Index, which found that businesses highly value time spent on marketing and sales.

"The new payroll features in Sage Simply Accounting 2012 will help those businesses eliminate and streamline some of the burdensome payroll processes allowing owners more time to concentrate on what they really want to do - grow their business," said Nancy Harris, vice president and general manager of Sage Simply Accounting.

Here is an overview of new features you will find in Sage Simply Accounting 2012. (Not all features are available in all versions.)

New payroll features

When it's time to create employee pay cheques, the new payroll interface is designed to speed up the process.

• One of many improvements is the ability to switch between paying one employee to a group of employees on the fly. When you create pay cheques you can also choose to give employees an advance and the software will automatically deduct the correct CRA withholding amounts.
• Businesses in Quebec can now track Quebec employee benefits more accurately using a new Quebec benefit income type.
• Bulk updates let companies filter and assign a new WCB rate to a group of employees. The process is easy: go to the Update Employee WCB Rate in the Maintenance window and then choose to change the WBC rate by province or territory, by job categories that you have created or by existing rates that have already been set. Similarly, you can also now update the personal tax amounts for multiple employees.
• New payroll reports are also available:
  - Detailed Employee Hours and Wages by Job Category
  - Summarized Employee Hours and Wages by Job Category
  - Employee Wages by Departments
  - Employee Hours and Wages by Project

New tool for business analysis

How is each project in your business contributing to your bottom line - and more importantly - which parts of individual projects are profitable and which ones are not?

The Premier and Enterprise versions of Sage Simply Accounting 2012 have a new Produce Project Income Statement Report that is designed to help businesses answer these questions.

The report provides companies with several different views on the revenues and expense of individual projects and includes the ability to generate graphs and view a side-by-side comparison of projects for meaningful analysis.

Other new features

Other newly added features have been added to help businesses quickly record and access relevant information:

• A new report option lets the business hide accounts with zero balances on financial reports.
• The new Exclude inactive records checkbox lets businesses hide accounts that are no longer active from lists in the Home window by turning off the "Include inactive" checkbox at the bottom of each list.
• Businesses can print and review cheque log reports for the previous year and verifty cheque activity for both the current and previous fiscal year.
• Consistent tracking of all transactions that affect remittances has been added with reports available in the Remittance journal, which can also be adjusted so that errors can be fixed correctly.
• Businesses can now record remittances using any payment method, whether it was done by cheque, credit card, cash or direct deposit.

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