Does payroll drive you crazy? 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 businesses that have separate payroll and employee time and attendance systems.
What’s the problem with separate systems?
If your systems are separate, you are duplicating work. And if someone is doing manual data entry, mistakes are sneaking through.
This example from an online forum describes the issue:
“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 might accidentally add a number, omit a digit, or transpose two digits.
There is little chance that all that manual entry is flawless. A conservative estimate of the error rate would be 2%. For 200 employees, that means four employees could get an incorrect paycheck. If you cut checks twice a month, this amounts to 96 incorrect paychecks annually.
Data entry problems are not isolated events…
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 wrong. If the paycheck has an incorrect amount, the FICA withholdings 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 worker 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.
Moving on. If the deductions are wrong, the employer portion of the taxes is wrong.
Now: “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 staff member time. Automating your time tracking to speed up payroll. A biometric time clock is the best way to ensure that you track time to the minute. It’s virtually impossible to fake a biological identifier to buddy clock for another employee.
“What if not all of my employees are onsite?”
If you have mobile associates, 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 staff 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.
SwipeClock can help you speed up payroll. For more information, call us at 888-223-3450.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHR/comments/4nx4af/payroll_how_long_does_it_take_you_to_process/
UPGRADE TODAY
SwipeClock offers WorkforceHUB?, the unified Human Resources portal that makes it easy to optimize the performance of your supervisors, employees, and organization.
WorkforceHUB? includes TimeWorksPlus, TimeSimplicity, and TimeWorks Mobile. We’ve just added onboarding, benefits enrollment, performance reviews, and employee engagement! WorkforceHUB? is designed for busy employers like you who need to streamline scheduling, automate time and attendance tracking, maintain regulatory compliance, and lessen labor costs.
How much can you save? Check our SwipeClock ROI Calculator.
We can get you up and running with Workforce Management Suite in minutes. Contact us today to schedule a demo.
Recent Comments