While many business leaders agree on the importance of maintaining a positive workplace culture, not all understand how the process of payroll is vital to this. This was clearly illustrated in the 2017 Debenhams case, when the company topped the UK government’s minimum wage non-compliance list. In its defense, Debenhams cited “technical error in payroll calculations” for its failure to pay £134,894.83 to nearly 12,000 workers.
The truth is, payroll impacts the most crucial areas of companies in the smallest ways, affecting cash flow, productivity, and business success as it is strongly linked to employee engagement. With this, it is clearly vital for companies to ensure that their payroll management operations are efficient, timely delivering the accurate compensation to all employees.
To this end, we offer you some tips on how to improve the efficiency of your payroll processes:
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Automate your payroll.
Payroll automation will save you a significant amount of time and effort over manual processes by utilizing cloud-based software that simplifies the overall payroll system. Here’s how this approach will make your payroll management more efficient:
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It allows easier wage calculations.
Manual payroll management entails poring over various payment calculations, checking and rechecking spreadsheets, and hand-writing checks. Even with just a number of employees, this process takes a substantial amount of time and commitment each cut-off period.
However, with payroll software, all processes related to payroll management will be handled by the system, from monitoring, to calculating, and finally, releasing wages. This will allow you to pay your employees timely, as the system quickly performs all types of payments, including basic salaries, hourly wages, bonuses, retroactive pays, wage deductions, and overtime.
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It improves record-keeping and makes document retrieval easier.
Manually processing payroll typically involves a tremendous amount of paperwork and filing. As documents pile up, it becomes difficult to track data and retrieve it when necessary to rectify errors and re-check transactions.
By automating payroll management, the hassles involved in manual processing will be reduced dramatically as the system allows users to input all the necessary data involved, retaining them for a longer period of time. Once the data is integrated into the system, you can easily retrieve them through a search feature that will automatically reflect them.
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It allows you to make changes easier.
Making changes in manual payroll is like finding a needle in a haystack — difficult and time-consuming, with HR managers not knowing exactly where to start most of the time when errors occur, given the bulk of data and information involved.
With an automated payroll system, you can do away with struggles like this as the software allows users to reverse payroll generation through just one click, auto-reversing calculations to correct inaccurate information.
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Outsource your payroll processing.
When you outsource your payroll, it simply means that you engage in service providers to handle the overall payroll management of your organization. Here’s how it can make the process more efficient:
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It leaves the entire process to the hands of experts.
In-house payroll typically takes a significant amount of time, where employees need to put a tremendous amount of effort just to make sure that the process runs smoothly, dividing their attention on other core business functions. Oftentimes, this results in errors and data misinterpretations, as some of them lack the expertise on the subject.
Outsourcing payroll gives your organization an access to a pool of HR specialists who are knowledgeable and skillful in the area of payroll management, ensuring that all processes are complied with accurately and timely, reducing the likelihood of errors that may take too long to be rectified.
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It streamlines compliance.
In recent years, HR responsibilities, especially relating to compensation and benefits, factors involved in payroll, have grown significantly as labor regulations have become more stringent. As these statutes change from time to time, taking into consideration the ever-changing needs of workers, there are laws that ordinary HR employees may not be able to keep track of.
As you outsource your payroll and leave them to the hands of experts, you can be rest assured that all compliances will be up to date and streamlined as they keep track of labor trends amidst constant changes. This will allow your organization to have its compensation and benefits packages implemented with an up to date rate in compliance with laws, even without the need of allotting a significant amount of time to study and research current labor trends.
If you are looking to make your payroll process more efficient through these tips, reach out to BSH Soft for more information
