Baker turns to open-source payroll software

Clockwork Software Systems launched PayThyme, an open-source payroll application, in Birmingham on Thursday. Clockwork business manager Jim Welch said it was initially supplying the software pre-installed on hardware but will supply it as an individual, supported product in 2005. The source code of the product will be available for free download from the company's website in two weeks.

John Pinner, managing director of PayThyme, said he estimates companies will save between £1,500 and £25,000 over comparable proprietary software, such as Northgate and Sage. Clockwork is initially targeting its offering at smaller organisations, as larger businesses are less likely to replace their current payroll systems due to the costs involved, according to Pinner.

"The opportunities for introducing large new payroll systems are fairly limited," said Pinner. "Companies must have reason to change, for example, if part of a company is being sold off. There is also an opportunity when someone has to replace a payroll, because their supplier has stopped providing support for a platform."

This was the case for the system's first customer, Peter's Cathedral Bakers, a Durham-based bakery that employs around 600 staff and has 70 retail outlets, which has been running PayThyme since April 2003.

Tom Knowles, the IT manager at the bakery, said it decided to switch to the open-source payroll application after its original payroll supplier announced that the bakery would have to move from Unix to Windows, as it was no longer supporting the Unix operating system. It already runs the majority of its systems on Linux, including an accounts and electronic point of sale system, and Knowles was keen to move to an open-source payroll system.

"I had no hesitation moving to open source - I like the idea," said Knowles. "We haven't missed a payroll since we started. We've had some teething problems but you always get teething problems when you set up a new system."

Gary Barnett, a research director at Ovum, said there is a good market for a reasonably priced payroll, although companies that have committed to large ERP installations are unlikely to migrate. He said there is also a potential for an open-source payroll application to be embedded in vertical ERP applications that are developed by other software vendors (ISVs).

"There are lots of vertical applications that have payroll embedded in them, which the ISVs have each developed separately," said Barnett. "Wouldn't it be great if they could pool their resources and build open source building blocks for vertical applications?"

The payroll system runs on Debian Linux by default but can also run on other Linux distributions including Red Hat and SuSE Linux. Pinner said the company chose Debian as the default distribution because it is stable and has a good update mechanism, which will allow Clockwork to pass on statutory updates to customers.

Ingrid Marson writes for ZDNet UK.