The winter holiday season tends to be the busiest time of the year for many industries. Consumers are out in full force, picking up gifts for friends and family and treating themselves to holiday cheer. However, they don't always realize that these shopping habits have a big impact on companies, who often wear themselves a little thin.

Not only are November and December very busy in terms of transactions and customer service inquiries, but it's also the end of the quarter and calendar year, so it can be a financially trying time as well. As such, businesses of all kinds like to expand their staff during this time, but temporarily, so they don't have to pay wages for an extended amount of time.

Seasonal help comes in handy
Many small business leaders place ads online or in newspapers for seasonal temporary hires to lend a hand when more foot traffic comes into stores. According to a CareerBuilder.com survey, 36 percent of retailers are going to hire additional help for the holiday season in 2012, up from 29 percent in 2011.

"Companies across industries are hiring for a wide range of positions to support their business operations as they wrap up the year," CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson explained.

Motivations for increasing hiring plans include a need for additional people to help with customer service issues, clerical tasks, more developed hospitality strategies and shipping or delivery processes, the report found. Moreover, businesses that are hiring are sweetening the pot, as holiday staff will be paid $16 or more per hour at 22 percent of hiring companies, up from 14 percent last year.

Use technology to help
With an influx of new employees coming and going during this time of the year, many smaller enterprises find it helpful if they leverage accounting software to handle payroll. Rather than manually dealing with these expenses and changes on spreadsheets or by hand, managers can set up a simple way of complying with laws and making sure all payouts are recorded.

These programs also help guard against mistakes. Because this time of the year is often hectic, errors in recording overtime, payroll and other financial factors could easily be made by accident, but could spell trouble if the firm was audited down the line or thought it had more capital available than it did.