Is payroll eating up too much of your time? Integrating payroll and employee time and attendance eliminates payroll problems. It also makes life easier for your employees, managers, and HR team.
Today’s post is for organizations that have separate payroll and employee time and attendance systems.
What’s so bad about separate platforms?
If your systems are separate, you are duplicating work. And if someone is doing manual data entry, mistakes are sneaking through.
This real life example explains why payroll can take so long:
“Every 2 weeks, I run payroll for 200 employees. 39 of them are salaried, and about 50 of the hourly employees work in 24-hour programs. I copy each employee’s regular and OT hours from the software into an Excel spreadsheet. Without breaks or interruptions, this process would take about six hours. I’ve never done it in less than eight. It’s exhaustive and exhausting.”
Why is manual entry a problem?
In the previous example, the payroll manager spends several hours entering employee time. The hours must match up with the correct employee. He could inadvertently enter an extra digit, omit a digit, or transpose two digits.
Let’s see what happens when there is mistake. A conservative estimate of the error rate would be 2%. For 200 employees, that means four employees could get an incorrect paycheck. If you pay your workforce two times per month, this amounts to 96 incorrect paychecks annually.
When a number is off, it starts a chain reaction of problems…
If you pay your staff members by the hour, your payroll is based on the hours entered. Either you short that employee or pay too much.
If the employee hours are wrong, the paycheck total is incorrect. If the paycheck has an incorrect amount, the deductions are wrong. This could be due to inaccurate clock ins or corruption during the manual import.
Suppose this whole process started with paper time cards. An employee can enter an incorrect shift start time. The employee could do a math error when totaling hours. The manager who approves it could misread the handwriting.
If the hours entered aren’t right, PTO calculations are off. Employees might not earn vacation time or sick days that they are rightfully due.
It gets worse. If the deductions are wrong, the employer portion of the taxes is wrong.
Let’s get to the point: “What is a better way?”
You need automated time tracking that syncs to payroll. Your error rate will fall dramatically. A biometric time clock synced to an advanced employee time and attendance system is the best way to go.
Here’s how it works:
It all starts with tracking worker time. Tracking time accurately is the first step to smooth and accurate payroll processing. A biometric time clock is the best way to ensure that punch times are correct. It’s virtually impossible to fake a biological identifier to buddy clock for another employee.
“What if some of my staff is offsite?”
If you have mobile staff members, they will need another clock in method. TimeWorks Mobile with GPS the geographic location when an employee clocks in on the web portal. This is not as fraud-proof as a biometric clock. But it beats taking their word for it.
It’s not just time theft that can mess up payroll…
A biometric clock and automated employee timekeeping lets you enforce schedules and set overtime alerts. Some biometric clocks have tools that present employees with logical prompts so they don’t make common punch mistakes. Make sure your time and attendance system has a mobile app for offsite punches.
Absolute Payroll Inc can help you speed up payroll. For more information, call us at 1 (888) 223-3450.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHR/comments/4nx4af/payroll_how_long_does_it_take_you_to_process/
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