Small business solutions provider NetLedger, Inc. Wednesday announced the integration of its online accounting software with EasyPayNet, an online payroll service of the Emerging Business Services division of industry veteran Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) .
“Users can now log in to EasyPayNet and key in their payroll information, never touching a telephone. Minutes later, it shows up in NetLedger, broken out by department, if they want it,” Bill Mirbach, president and chief executive officer of NetLedger, Inc. told ASP News. “It’s really a breakthrough.”
The integrated accounting and payroll service allows NetLedger and ADP to provide small business customers the ability to automatically update their accounting records as their payroll is processed. Specifically, users can synchronize employee information in NetLedger, then map bank account, earnings and deductions codes from EasyPayNet to their NetLedger chart of accounts, and automatically generate accounting entries from payroll runs.
“This is way more than accounting software. This is ERP for the mini-enterprise.” Mirbach said. “We’re not just leveling the playing field, we’re actually tipping it for the first time in favor of small business.”
There are currently about 22,000 people using NetLedger’s online accounting service, according to Mirbach. And Mirbach sees that number expanding greatly in the next few years. “Online’s just easier,” he said. “It gives you anywhere, anytime access — the ability to make a transaction happen where your people are.”
One application of the NetLedger/ADP offering would be calculating payroll and expenses of employees in the field, Mirbach said. Instead of sending in time cards and expense reports to be manually keyed in, NetLedger allows the employee to key in the information, then it can be approved back at the office, and the employee gets paid, he said.
Users are also offered the option to collaborate with their company’s vendors and clients. “You can auto-generate an invoice and bill the client with an email. If they have a question, they can log in with a password you give them and see all of their open invoices,” Mirbach said.
In addition to the recent partnership with ADP, NetLedger has “modules” to integrate services of nearly 20 partners, including OfficeMax , OneCore.com, Stamps.com
, New England Business Service
, CyberBills, Red Gorilla, BigStep.com, Innovative Merchant Solutions and the most recent addition, AuctionWorks, a web-based auction management tool for managing inventory and reaching customers.
“What motivates us is the end-user experience. We want it to be seamless, easy, fast and fun.” Mirbach said.” The objective of NetLedger is to enable a small business to run itself totally online.”
Mirbach has no illusions of eliminating the ubiquitous paper trail. “Will we make paper go away? Probably not. What we will do is make it so that where a company makes the big decisions, where it keeps its real data, is NetLedger, and in that way they can rely on as little paper as possible,” he said.
See related ASPnews.com story, ADP Ramps its Mass Market ASP Strategy, August 4th, 2000.
