Smarten up your Payroll handling
Table of Contents
Payroll Efficiency ......................................................................................................................................... 3
Team effort ............................................................................................................................................. 3
Business Owner / General Manager ................................................................................................... 3
Financial Controller / Pay Officer ........................................................................................................ 3
Every Manager .................................................................................................................................... 3
11 Strategies ............................................................................................................................................... 4
1. Educating staff .................................................................................................................................... 4
2. Business intelligence dashboards ....................................................................................................... 5
For management................................................................................................................................. 5
For the pay officer............................................................................................................................... 5
3. Reducing the reliance on paper .......................................................................................................... 7
4. Improving payroll processing .............................................................................................................. 8
7. Faster payroll processing .................................................................................................................. 11
8. Country-specific features .................................................................................................................. 12
South Pacific (including Papua New Guinea) specific features ......................................................... 12
9. Importance of local payroll systems ................................................................................................. 13
10. HR, OH&S, time clocks, rosters, kiosks and more ........................................................................... 14
11. Reducing the risk of fraud ............................................................................................................... 15
Payroll Efficiency
Team effort
A team effort is essential. Everyone needs to have trust in your payroll systems and they need to
embrace the concept that improved productivity is all about working smarter not harder.
Business Owner / General Manager
You motivate staff and monitor progress towards your goals (for example, revenue per employee to
grow 10% in the next six months).
Financial Controller / Pay Officer
As the payroll administrators, you must ensure your payroll systems are set up in the most efficient
way possible.
Every Manager
You must ensure staff understand their pay advice, follow payroll procedures and proactively look for
ways to improve productivity.
11 Strategies
We will look at 11 strategies to help you improve your payroll efficiency. Each strategy is comprised of
specific tactics.
1. Educating staff
The better educated your staff, the more value they will get out of using the payroll.
1. Part of the staff induction process should be to explain the payroll administration function with
samples to support your discussion.
2. When things such as superannuation and tax rates change, hold a staff meeting to explain how
the changes will appear on pay advices.
3. Ensure all staff use the procedures you introduce to run an efficient payroll system. You might
like to discuss them under the headings used in this guide.
2. Business intelligence dashboards
Business intelligence dashboards are an exciting new tool that provides a clear view of what is
happening in your business.
For management
1. Dashboards provide a top-down view of your payroll so you can keep a close eye on what is
one of your biggest expense items and business assets.
2. Each payroll dashboard can have up to five on-screen reports (called gadgets) making them
easier to review than paper-based reports and spread sheets.
3. To ensure security, access rights govern what is displayed and to whom.
4. Dashboards provide an overview of all employees, displaying such things as all leave taken and
current leave liability.
5. You can monitor real-time payroll data without having to navigate through menus or ask other
staff for help.
For the pay officer
6. You can get a Payroll, Human Resource (HR) and Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S)
system rolled into one.
7. As an illustration, Attaché Payroll comes with five standard payroll dashboards, with the ability
to select gadgets on each dashboard from a standard library or to customise your own.
a. Payroll home: To Do List, negative leave, anniversaries.
b. Employee details: personal details, full pay and contact history.
c. Leave analysis: complete leave history including entitlements, leave taken and
upcoming.
d. Exception reports: active pay totals and pay details. Most importantly, exception
messages alert you to potential issues prior to processing the pays.
e. My reports: a library of gadgets to display in your own dashboard.
8. The dashboards provide visual management so you can see at a glance what needs to be done
without having to be told or run reports.
9. You can drill down from the dashboards into an employee’s masterfile and pay details without
having to navigate menus.
10. You can perform Google-like searches on part of an employee name, code or even a phone
number for fast access to employee files.
11. The To Do List has calendar reminders for both regular events and follow-up situations. It is
continuously displayed and automatically updated.
12. You can view gadgets as lists, calendars and graphs and add totals and search boxes to suit
your needs.
13. You can select data sequences and filters, for example, all employees with more than 20 days
leave owing.
14. Details can be emailed to others without printing reports, posting or using couriers.
15. You can add and monitor all correspondence with staff, such as workers compensation claims,
disciplinary warnings, etc.
16. You can create any number of contact types for quick referencing and reporting.
17. You can create tasks and follow up tasks, attaching files where necessary. Outstanding tasks
can be highlighted.
18. You can keep track of all employee contact details such as pay reviews and increases.
3. Reducing the reliance on paper
Reliance on paper-based payroll systems can reduce efficiency, increase costs and raise security issues,
and it is not good for the environment.
1. Using drill down to retrieve payroll information is faster and more efficient than any paperbased systems.
2. There is less need for storage cabinets and office space to archive historical documents.
3. You can scan employee documents, such as employment agreements, and easily access them.
4. Use ExpressLink to electronically file and send payroll reports.
5. Access rights make electronic filing more secure and documents are not left on desks, misfiled,
etc.
6. Electronic filing saves clerical time. For example, most employee enquiries can be handled
instantly.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and New Zealand Inland Revenue Department (NZIRD) accept
electronic records provided the system is secure with controls over processing and backups. Pay
records must be kept for seven years and be able to be retrieved by tax officers at any time.
4. Improving payroll processing
On-screen payroll dashboards provide the single greatest benefit, and Attaché Payroll includes five (see
strategy 2). Other tactics for improving payroll processing include:
1. Use Shortcuts for faster access to regularly-used functions and reports.
2. Each operator can select their own screen colours and font sizes and can automatically resize
windows and report preview screens to suit their personal requirements.
3. Multi-tasking lets operators have multiple tasks open at the same time for faster processing
(for example, while entering a timesheet you can modify an employee’s details) and handle
typical accounts interruptions (such as a customer enquiry about an invoice).
4. Create different company backgrounds to easily identify which company you are working in.
5. Ensure your data is secure by using menu access rights to restrict operators’ access to payroll
functions.
6. Use employee groups to easily maintain employees who have the same pay details. By
attaching employees to a group, pay rate changes need only be entered once to update the
entire group.
7. Use standard messages for fast data entry when adding notes or comments to employee pays.
8. Design your own pay advices to include company-specific details.
9. Quick and easy archiving of data ensures an up-to-date copy of the payroll is secure before any
major processing or changes are made.
10. Unlimited number of income types, such as ordinary hours, overtime, sick leave, etc.
11. Unlimited number of allowances and deductions using different calculation methods such as
percentage of pay, fixed or variable values, quantity by value, etc.
12. Employees can have multiple bank accounts.
13. Open bank accounts, such as for the social club, can be used by all employees.
14. Manage payment schedules by start and stop dates, total amount, number of instalments and
frequency to automatically control deductions and allowances in an employee’s pay. For
example:


Higher duties allowance paid for a period of time.
Payments to a nominated bank account for garnishee or loan repayments.
15. Use cost centres to split an employee’s wages over multiple divisions.
16. General ledger postings reports list all the financial transactions generated for the pay run.
These transactions can be automatically interfaced to Attaché Accounts or the report can
provide the basis of a journal to be entered or exported to other systems.
17. Use multiple pay locations and pay points to easily group employees for maintenance and
reporting.
18. Use the 18 user-definable fields to capture company-specific information such as pay
classifications, driver’s licence numbers, etc.
19. Multiple employment status for wage expense analysis, for example full time, part time,
casual, contract, etc.
20. Multiple pay frequencies, for example monthly, weekly, bi-monthly, fortnightly.
21. Add employee notes, such as additional personal or medical details, against each employee.
22. The URL link enables documents such as employment agreements, licences, leave applications
and sickness certificates to be stored for fast and immediate access.
Leave monitoring
This is also a major benefit of the payroll business intelligence dashboards (see strategy 2).
23. Unlimited leave tables for annual, sick, personal, long service and other leave.
24. Multiple leave calculation methods, for example you can calculate leave by hours worked, date
or pay.
25. Record and report the start and finish dates of leave taken.
26. Create leave liability journals each pay run, and check that these values remain reasonable.
Superannuation
27. Superannuation calculations, exporting and reporting is available
28. Set up any number of employee superannuation contributions.
29. Set up any number of superannuation funds.
30. Remember that you can export a NASFund file that can be emailed or uploaded by NASFund.
Payroll safety checks
31. Set a maximum pay per employee for each pay frequency so you can be alerted if there is an
unexpected increase in gross pay.
32. Check the payroll payments report against the net wages on the payroll totals report and
against the actual payments drawn from the bank account.
33. Integrate the payroll to the general ledger after each pay run to easily check for budget
variances in the wages accounts.
34. Track changes for all additions and modifications to employee master files and payroll
transactions.
35. Use auto tax calculations during timesheet entry to ensure the correct amount of tax is
withheld for each employee.
36. Turn on confirm new master files to prevent operators from accidentally adding unwanted or
invalid master files.
37. Select to display annual leave warning messages for leave that goes into negative before it is
paid.
7. Faster payroll processing
1. Reduce data-entry time and errors by creating standard pays for employees whose pay details
don’t change from pay period to pay period.
2. Set each employee to auto pay so you only need to key in changes from their standard pay,
such overtime or sick leave.
3. Automatically decrease normal (ordinary) hours worked when entering leave hours for
employees.
4. Instantly check leave entitlements during timesheet entry.
5. Enter one-off pay rate changes and bonuses during timesheet entry.
6. Add comments to pay transactions that will print on the pay advice.
7. For faster reconciliation, choose to display on screen the total hours worked or the total hours
paid.
8. Open the calendar on any date field to select the correct dates.
9. Open the calculator on any amount field to do quick calculations.
10. Enter the start/stop times for the hours worked by an employee.
11. Enter the first/last dates for leave taken by an employee.
12. Display optional warnings for exceeded leave hours and for base hours that are not reached or
are exceeded.
13. Enter adjustment pays, for example updating opening balances for employees when first
implementing the payroll, pay reversals, etc.
14. Check and uncheck the pays to enter changes as many times as necessary before updating the
files.
8. Country-specific features
1. It means you only need one payroll if you process, for example, payrolls for both your
Australian and Papua New Guinea offices from the one location.
2. Select the country for the payroll you are processing to activate the appropriate tax rates and
other country-specific features and requirements.
3. South Pacific Software Services, in conjunction with our Sydney office, handle the South Pacific
and Papua New Guinea. (www.spss.net.au/wiki)
South Pacific (including Papua New Guinea) specific features
This covers several countries so please refer to South Pacific Software Services. (www.spss.net.au)
Some examples for Papua New Guinea include: NAS Fund Contribution Schedule, Loan and Savings
Schedule, Statement of Earnings.
9. Importance of local payroll systems
Your systems are only as good as the support you can get and the supplier’s commitment to local ongoing enhancements.
1. Financial software must meet the practices and legal requirements of the country in which it is
being used. These can change at short notice so the software developer’s investment in local
support must be substantial.
2. Payroll software demands an even greater degree of local support. This is why so many
businesses using international financial software use a local standalone payroll system.
10. HR, OH&S, time clocks, rosters, kiosks and more
Intelligent business systems provide a powerful payroll engine with the ability to integrate with
specialist systems should the size and nature of your payroll require them.
1. If you endeavour to get all of these systems from the one payroll software vendor, typically
something is likely to be compromised.
2. The Attaché Payroll dashboards can provide a number of Human Resource (HR) and
Occupational Health & Safety features, for example:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Record, categorise and report on incidents.
Record and be reminded of pay review dates.
Record and be reminded of training information.
Be reminded of licence/qualification expiry.
Record and review leave by employee and across the company.
3. Rostering is an area where the payroll savings can be large. RosterLive provide rostering, award
interpretation and time and attendance (T&A) systems (www.rosterlive.com.au). They provide
these examples:
4. The main areas of payroll savings come from:
a. Reducing payroll administration, human error and time theft.
b. Eliminating manual timesheets and leave applications.
c. Helping to manage labour costs before they occur.
5. Other payroll add-on system vendors who integrate to systems such as the new Attaché
Payroll include:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Blaze Business Software: www.blaze.com.au
EmployeeConnect: www.employeeconnect.com
South Pacific Software: www.spss.net.au
TimeTarget: www.timetarget.net
WorkBuddy: www.workbuddy.net
11. Reducing the risk of fraud
Attaché Accounts All-In-One has a number of features that help reduce the opportunities for fraud.
1. Set a maximum pay per employee for each pay frequency so you can be alerted if there is an
unexpected increase in gross pay.
2. Choose to display annual leave warning messages for leave that goes into negative before it is
paid.
3. Turn on confirm new masterfiles to prevent operators from accidentally adding unwanted or
invalid masterfiles.
4. Check the payroll payments report against the net wages on the payroll totals report and
against the actual payments drawn from the bank account.
5. Update the general ledger after each pay run to check for budget variances in the wages
accounts.
6. Track changes for all additions and modifications to employee masterfiles and payroll
transactions.
7. Use auto tax calculations during timesheet entry to ensure the correct amount of tax is
withheld for each employee.
8. On the payroll dashboard, display sick leave taken in the calendar view so you can check for
patterns in sick leave.