Payroll management or administration is one of the most critical processes in any business, regardless of size, business model or industry.
It is one of the most important but time-consuming, cumbersome administrative tasks that every organisation performs daily.
While it doesn’t generate revenues for businesses directly, it is still an important activity that every business need to carry out accurately - as such, ensuring that your process is smooth and efficient must be a priority.
As a leader, you’re responsible for ensuring your organisation’s payroll management process is streamlined to ensure you save time and money. The question then is, how much do you understand and apply the best method to manage your payroll to legally keep your organisation compliant and ensure employee satisfaction?
In this deck, you will learn the fundamentals of payroll management and how it can benefit your business. You will also learn:
• The most important reasons you need to manage your payroll properly
• The top three (3) ways to manage your payroll
• The best payroll management solution that ensures your organisation remains legally compliant
• The most effective payroll management tips.
5. Payroll management…
The payroll management process
record, manage and organise an
organisation’s employee financial
data.
Its fundamental purpose is to
assist the organisation in making
timely employees remuneration. It
also helps determine allied factors,
including income tax, insurance,
and social security.
6. Importance of
Payroll
Management
Employees want to be
paid on time and if you
can’t manage your
payroll efficiently, then
you could lose important
team members and even
have legal difficulties.
Here are four critical
reasons why you need to
manage payroll
effectively:
Filing your payroll taxes carries its set of
rules and regulations at Federal and state
levels. Not doing so or paying employees
wrongly could lead to fines or other stiffer
punishments.
Your employees will likely look to
competitors when you don’t pay them
well or on time. So, it’s important to
retain your team and ensure their pay is
always done accurately.
Legal Requirements Employee Retention
Beyond retaining your employees, you
want them to perform and improve results.
Even if you can retain them, failure to pay
them on time or correctly can lead to poor
performance or employee disengagement.
Failure to manage payroll properly can
negatively impact your finances. Asides
fines, you may have a wrong knowledge
of your financial status leading to bank
fees or bounced checks.
Employee Performance Business Finances
7. Ways to Manage Your Payroll
Manual Processing
Outsourced Payroll Service
Payroll Software
Click here to read: 7 Was Staff Outsourcing Can Improve Your Data Centre Operations in Nigeria
8. Manual Processing
When managing payroll manually, you do all of the payroll calculations
and submit any direct deposits or print checks by yourself. You’ll need
to keep your personal records and find a system for calculating every
single payroll payment.
However, the drawbacks to manual processing include:
Amount of information - You need to ensure you always have access
to the required information on every payroll you’ve processed.
Time - Processing payroll manually consumes time that can be better
spent growing your business.
Incorrect payments - The biggest problem with manual payroll
processing is the risk of making incorrect payments to employees. This
can damage employee trust and result in the loss of quality talent.
On the other hand, the biggest benefit of manual processing is the
cost, as you don’t have to buy any software or pay an outsourced
payroll service provider. However, when you measure what your time is
worth and how long it takes to process payroll, you may end up not
saving any money.
9. How to do your Payroll in 8 steps
1
If you are running payroll manually, it is important to ensure
that you don’t overlook any critical detail when processing
payroll.
2
Employees can be paid based on a salary or stipulated
contracts on a time sheet. Sick leaves, vacations or paid time
off can also be tracked.
3 Before you think about deductions, you need to calculate
gross pay and overtimes wage where necessary.
4 You’ll need to withhold federal and state taxes for each
employee based on their allowances.
5
Health benefits, pensions and other statutory contributions
are among deductions you should determine during your
process.
6
Here, you start cutting checks or making direct deposits.
Taking out all tax withholdings and other deductions from
the gross pay leaves you with the net pay.
7 It is essential for businesses to create payroll tax reports for
each year cycle.
8
Set the Process Up
Review and Approve Time Sheets
Calculate Gross Pay
Calculate and Withhold Income Taxes
Determine Other Deductions
Pay Employees
Do Year-end Payroll Tax Reports
Store Payroll Records
You need to keep time cards, spreadsheets and copies of
checks and deposits should an audit or a discrepancy arise.
Click here to read: Payroll Process Best Practices
10. Payroll Software
There are many payroll software options that can handle most of the
payroll management process for you. This helps you save time, cost
and ensures timely payments to your employees and various
government agencies collecting payroll taxes.
Here are some of the most important things that payroll software does
for you:
Calculate taxes and paycheck amounts - With a payroll software, you
don’t have to worry about accurate payments. However, you must
ensure you enter accurate information at the start of the process.
Adding the right employee information and your pay period data will
give the software what it needs to calculate all pay amounts accurately.
Pay taxes - Payroll software companies typically will pay all payroll
taxes on your behalf. Your payroll software can pay the necessary taxes
at the same time as your employees’ pay.
Pay your employees automatically - The payroll software deposit
employees’ remunerations into their accounts as scheduled.
Payroll software can also be very affordable - With all of the time,
energy and potential liability involved in payroll, it is usually worth the
price.
12. Outsourced Payroll Service
The third option involves outsourcing to a third-party payroll provider
like Workforce Group that handles everything for you.
With this, you never have to worry about adding employee information
into the database or ensuring timely payroll process in your software.
This option is the easiest way to manage your payroll because you only
have to notify your payroll service of new employees and then ensure
you have sufficient funds.
This approach is hands-off and gives you time to focus on driving your
business growth.
However, the primary drawback of this method for many organisations
is the cost, and sometimes, a lack of control in the process. Many
businesses appreciate the touchpoint with their employees of
managing the process and making sure they deal with any issues that
come up.
Click here to read: 10 Commonly Outsourced Service For Business Growth
13. Top 3 reasons to outsource your payroll management process
Workforce or business growth is
great, but sometimes they
present risks if internal tools and
processes cannot keep pace.
If your team is growing rapidly
and you’re worried that you
cannot continue to deliver great
employee experience, you need
to consider payroll outsourcing
Growing
Business/Team
As your business grows and
the number of employees
increases, so does the time it
takes to process payroll.
To ensure that you have time
to focus on core business
processes, you can outsource
your payroll process to a
third-party service provider.
Need to save time
Payroll mistakes are costly. In
addition to this, you also run
the risk of creating problems
with employees and
government agencies.
When payroll becomes
overwhelming for your internal
team, costly errors will happen
more often.
Need to avoid Costly
Errors
Click here to read: Cracking the Outsourcing Process Code
14. Tips to Manage Payroll Effectively
Provide Payroll Training: It’s important that everyone involved in the payroll process is trained properly.
Everyone should use the same procedures and processes to make payroll as effective as possible
Document Everything: From your overall process to every pay period, it’s important to document
everything. In the event that you miss a payroll tax filing or get audited, not having proper
documentation can hurt your business
Keep All Data Secure: You need to ensure all employee information is secure and not accessible by
employees or outsiders. In addition, Social Security numbers, bank accounts and other secure data
cannot be accessed, stolen or misused.
Audit Your Payroll Process: No matter who is processing your payroll, It’s necessary to complete audits
from time to time. This ensures your process is being done correctly. Auditing the process can also help
you unlock new efficiencies or opportunities to teach your payroll team how to handle routine tasks or
escalation issues better.
15. Payroll management has become a full-time job; it has more than its fair share of
complexities. Compliance with tax and other regulations is the biggest of these, and
your Finance or HR teams may not be able to easily manage these complexities
alongside their other priorities.
Outsourcing your payroll management to an expert organisation like Workforce Group
ensures you no longer have to worry about these matters. At Workforce Group, our
outsourced payroll services are primed to improve the efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and
overall value of your team.
This gives you the confidence to focus on your more strategic business priorities to
drive growth and business expansion.
To get started on this journey, please send us an email to hello@workforcegroup.com.
Scale the advantage…
18. What we do
We help organisations solve problems around:
Staff Payroll
Management
Performance management
support
Health insurance management
Executive, Experienced and
Graduate Recruitment
Staff onboarding and
training
Staff records
management
Leave and exit
management
Background
verification
Strategy Development and
Execution
Digital Learning Function Specific
Programmes
Leadership
Development
Digital Content Creation and
Conversion
Assessment and
Development centre
Occupational testing
and Success Profiling
Independent Contractor
Management
Assessor skills training
Professional Employer
Organisation
Employer of Record
Recruitment Process
Outsourcing