Efficient payroll processing is a necessity to streamline payroll, improve productivity, and optimize administration within the organization. Many organizations consider payroll processing to be as simple as paying money on time. But it is much more complicated than that.
In the Payroll Operations Survey by Deloitte Consulting, it was revealed that the top challenges companies face in payroll processing include:
1) Manual processes (23%)
2) Accuracy and timeliness of inputs (21%)
3) Non-standard or complex processes (17%)
The efficiency of your payroll process can influence your business internally. That is why, it is crucial to keep improving your payroll process continually. Here are the top 7 ways to improve your payroll process considering timeliness, compliances, and tax regulations.
Tax Policies
Understanding the tax policies under IRS Payroll Regulations is important to prevent any payroll related mistake. Even one mistake in payroll calculation can turn into a penalty or even into a lawsuit from the employee. Fixing the errors becomes even costlier and may result in unnecessary time and labor waste of your resources. So, it is important to understand and incorporate both federal & state tax laws into your payroll process regularly. This helps both the company and its employees away from legal binds.
Regular Audits
A manually operated payroll process has high chances of inaccuracy and delays. Unless you want your employees to come up with any grievance regarding delays or inaccuracy in their payroll, you must conduct regular audits to keep in check that everything is in streamline. Even the automated processes and platforms can cause a mistake too. That is why, any payroll process should be an automated process led by manual overview. The factors may include employee classification, tax status, pay raise or even withholding taxes. These are the kind of things which happen manually and the audits keep you notified about such exigencies.
Policy Simplification & Transparency
Miscommunication between a company and its employee regarding the payroll policies can result in errors or misunderstanding. The best way to prevent this issue is by ensuring a simple and transparent payroll policy articulated in briefly. Including standard employment factors like attendance, leave of absence, late-coming, Offsite duty, privileges and allowances firsthand will help in creating a simple and transparent payroll process. Breaking down the salary even during the pay raise is another factor that many companies ignore. This may lead to miscalculation of taxes from the employee end which falls back in your court of responsibility. Another way to do it is by putting up or displaying common standard policies in notification areas or common rooms for employees to see, discuss and come back with enquiries instead of complaints.
Uniform Pay Cycles
There are different types of employees and thus, different types of payroll processes. For a smaller company, this may seem like an easy process. But as the company grows, the number of employees increases too. For instance, a full time employee is paid usually on monthly basis. But a freelance resource or service vendor is paid either weekly or at the end of the project which may vary from the time of pay cycle. To minimize the variations in these payment cycles, it is preferable to create a uniform pay cycle for everyone irrespective of the type of employment. Regardless of whatever system you use, the payroll cycle should be centralized which results in overall payroll capital flow improvement by 30%.
Improve Accessibility
An efficient payroll process is bent towards employee delight. And any employee will be delighted to see the records of his payroll process anytime. There are many ways to give access to the payroll process to your employees. You can either create an online access portal or buy internal software for inter-organization communication and management. As compared to the investment done in these systems, the return of investment is quite high and diverse in terms of reduction of errors and experience of employees with increased productivity & trust in the company. Online maintenance of the payroll process also reduces the paperwork to a great extent and creates a single platform for all surveillance, analytics, and management work related to it.
Outsourcing Payroll
Companies with multi-country presence are more demanding a global view of their payroll data, which primarily enables their business decision making. Therefore, a lot of organizations are making the move from disparate local, national or regional payroll systems to one global payroll operation, centralized, optimized and yielding significant efficiency and visibility.It not only reduces the manpower within the organization but also provides expert overview from a dedicated team of payroll handlers. These service providers have in-depth knowledge of payroll process which helps you optimize yours quicker. They also keep themselves updated regarding all local and federal compliances and tax regulations to prevent any errors.
Get Single Platform Experience For Global Payroll Processes
Mynd is a public-listed leading telecommunications company present in 100+ countries with a vision of shaping technology. While the payroll operations across the world are streamlined, dealing with compliance in Africa and managing different channels for multiple vendors was a challenge for many companies. Having a strong understanding of the policies and compliances in Africa, Mynd turned out to be the best solution for this issue for clients searching for one. Mynd gave them a single point of contact in the same time zone through flexible resources.
This also enhanced the employee experience through online access to payslips and a robust helpdesk platform to resolve queries with quick turnaround time. A monthly dashboard ensures timely reporting and transparency in the process.
If you are looking to improve your payroll process, Mynd Solutions can be of great service to you.
- Manage your payroll process for all branches with our expert local network spread across 128 countries.
- Stay updated about all compliance & regulation related changes, and eliminate errors in payroll processing.
- We are currently handling over 5 million payslips annually month on month without any glitch.
Choose Mynd Solutions for a hassle-free and productive outsource experience.
