An Attendee Point of View of 2015 Congress

Thanks to Symmetry Software I was able to attend the APA’s 33rd Annual Congress. Winning the Symmetry Software APA National Congress Giveaway made it possible for me to attend Congress for the first time since 2009. I enjoyed hearing Marie Osmond speak on how to overcome obstacles and become stronger from them. She was such an inspiration. Jason Dorsey with his humor and seriousness helped me learn how to work alongside with Millennials. The workshops I attended were outstanding and very informative. I had a great time networking with other payroll professionals and vendors at the Expo and the Payroll on Fire Party. The entire week was filled with educational, inspirational and fun opportunities throughout. The educational opportunity, the speakers and networking really makes this event the ultimate payroll experience a Certified Payroll Professional could ever attend.

Tools of the Trade

Symmetry’s Software suite of products provides payroll professionals tools to do their jobs. As a Certified Payroll Professional I have conveniently located tools within my reach. Long before the age when we all had desktop or laptop computers at our work station I would have within arm’s reach the current and past years IRS Publication 15 also known as the Circular E, the state’s tax booklet, APA’s The Payroll Source and some other tax reference book. Now in the dawn of all these reference’s being available online or at least in PDF format I have a folder on my desktop and links to my other reference sites listed under my “Favorites”. Several of those “other reference sites” are products of Symmetry Software. There are days I would be lost without access to those sites.
I became aware of Symmetry Software in the late 90’s when www.paycheckcity.com was launched, and have since been a fan. Since that time I have used their payroll calculators thousands of times. I have shared them with employees, co-workers, and other payroll professionals. During the years when I was responsible for setting up the tax tables in our payroll system I used PaycheckCity along with IRS Publication 15 to verify that I had the tax tables set-up correctly. I’ve used the calculator to verify our 3rd party vendors are using the correct tax tables. I’ve also used them to create scenarios for employees and to calculate manual checks. The W-4 Assistant makes it easy to figure out how many exemptions one should be claiming (it’s much easier than the W-4 calculator the IRS has on their site), and to top it off you can print it out with all the fields filled out. No more trying to decipher an employee’s handwriting.
It’s been several years since I’ve handled multi-state or multi-local payrolls but I’ve used Payroll Point to determine accurate state and local taxes when needed.

PayrollTalk.com provides the networking opportunity to ask questions and bounce ideas off of other payroll professionals in a bulletin board format. Along with a section to “Let off Steam” which as payroll professionals, we do need to do on occasion.
Symmetry’s Software suite of products allows payroll professionals, like myself to have easy, user friendly access to the “tools of our trade” on a daily basis. I highly recommend if you haven’t tried them check them out, you won’t be disappointed.

Huge Fan of Symmetry Software,

Teresa Salsbury, CPP