When organizations think about saving time and money, improving payroll is a good place to start. A few adjustments in the payroll process can go a long way. Here are 5 ways to improve payroll in your organization:
1. IMPROVE TIMEKEEPING AND ATTENDANCE
Timekeeping and attendance information is the basis for most employees’ payroll. This is why to improve payroll, consolidating attendance information is key. This is where most organizations usually spend the most time on for regular payroll.
To improve attendance consolidation, first, consider improving your method of timekeeping. If you’re still using manual sheets or punch cards to clock in/out of the office, switching to a biometric device may help you eliminate costly hours you’re currently spending on encoding work.
Second, consider whether integration is the next step for you. It may be that you’re already using a biometric device in your organization but still spend much time exporting/converting data so you can use it for payroll computation. In this case, consider getting a full solution that enables you direct integration between your timekeeping devices, and your HR/Payroll software.
2. AUTOMATE LEAVES AND SCHEDULE MANAGEMENT
Capturing employees’ time logs is one thing, but crossmatching that against their schedules, is another.
This is why simply upgrading to an automated timekeeping device is usually not enough especially for organizations with workforces whose schedules change from time to time. Without a system to easily manage employees’ schedules, determining whether a person is late or early, absent or on leave, will be challenging. Moreso will computing deductions, or overtime pay.
Automating your schedule and leaves management not only make crossmatching employees’ logs with their schedules easier, some solutions also help you streamline approvals for attendance-related requests such as overtime, leaves, and schedule changes.
3. MAXIMIZE DE MINIMIS BENEFITS AND TAX-EXEMPT BONUS CAP
Not as many organizations are aware of or know how to leverage the de minimis and the bonus cap outlined by the BIR. Essentially, what happens is that organizations compute employees’ withholding taxes higher.
Because of this, employees either get lesser take-home pay than what is actually possible or companies shell out more money than they need to in order to achieve greater take-home pay for their employees.
And so to maximize these benefits and the cap for tax-exempt bonuses, organizations can either learn how to do this themselves, or seek the help of professional payroll practitioners (through consultation, or through regular payroll service).
4. STREAMLINE PAYROLL DISBURSEMENT
Sometimes, the challenge for organizations is not the computation of employees’ wages, but the actual disbursement of payroll.
Organizations can improve payroll disbursement by considering cash management solutions offered by their local bank. These solutions typically allow organizations to schedule payroll disbursement and streamline approvals.
Some companies can still take this further by contracting a service provider to also help in the payroll disbursement process, typically by giving them uploader/maker access to their cash management platform—so there is no need to switch to another disbursement method. This helps save companies even more time, so they simply just have to approve transactions they have already reviewed and authorized.
5. GO PAPERLESS TO IMPROVE PAYROLL EXPERIENCE
Printing reports, payslips, and other payroll-related documents take time, money, and lots of effort!
For instance, if you’re still printing payslips and handing them out manually to staff every payout, consider distributing payslips through email (but make sure they’re secured!) or even better through an HRIS system that allows access to electronic payslips.
As for reports and employee documents, some HR solutions already allow you to generate reports on the fly, keep an electronic 201 file, and produce the government statutory documents for electronic filing.