No matter the size of your business or the industry in which you operate, payroll is the biggest expense and liability to your organisation. A single payment mistake could put yourself – and your business – at risk, which is why an end-to-end payroll system is the answer.

Why getting payroll right matters

In addition to your regulatory responsibility as an employer, your staff trust that you will be accurate in giving them exactly what they have earned. Moreover, getting it wrong can – in the worst circumstances – potentially result in a jail sentence.

Unfortunately, payroll isn’t always made easy for finance teams. The modern award system in Australia is incredibly complex, covering everything from minimum weekly wages to ordinary hours of work, allowances, overtime, annual leave and leave loading, shift work, withholding tax and superannuation payments.

This is compounded by the human element. Many payroll teams work long hours to ensure no mistakes are made, however if they are not supported with best-practice systems and processes, errors will inevitably occur.

A single mistake in payroll can lead to various negative outcomes. Aside from legal penalties and the threat of jail, incorrect payments can result in significant fines from the ATO and even negative media attention – with wage theft a common theme in recent years.

Major payroll challenges facing businesses

The bottom line is this: even if your organisation has the best intentions for how payroll is managed, it won’t matter if you end up making a mistake. That’s why getting it right – every pay cycle – is the single biggest challenge for businesses. Your team needs to interpret the award rules correctly and know how to apply them consistently across every employee’s payment.

The human element is made even more challenging when you are dealing with an outdated payroll system, or worse, a legacy accounting system that can only partially manage your organisation’s broad payroll requirements. If the process becomes fragmented across multiple systems, then decisions are unable to be recorded effectively, which quickly becomes unmanageable for payroll staff to maintain.

Another challenge is compliance. Legislation updates and new payroll requirements are constantly being introduced, which means your payroll team needs to stay across these new rules while also incorporating them into their existing processes. Without a comprehensive payroll solution, things will be missed and compliance gaps will open up.

Then there’s the challenge of your people working on the most appropriate tasks. Without a robust solution in place, staff will be consumed by trying to manage their various payroll activities instead of spending time on value-add tasks, such as improving processes or finding new ways to benefit the business.

The value of deploying a true end-to-end payroll system

The answer? Automated process improvements. A modern ERP system can streamline compliance with a range of apps that bring the whole payroll solution together.

Such an option can reduce your payroll process from many days to consolidate and allocate against specific customer jobs or projects, down to an hour and a half which is a huge time saver especially when you have people in payroll who could be doing other things rather than working through manual sheets of paper or disparate systems.

Ultimately, a strong end-to-end payroll process should bring together planning (award interpretations, rostering, budgets, attendance), onboarding (employee self set up, employee self service, employee managers), pay runs & cycles (automation of payments, payslips, super payments and more), as well as integration with key third party platforms.

While that represents some of the typical out of the box functionality, sometimes  our customers need a little bit more.

Consider a large manufacturing business. With its high volume of staff who enter and leave the facility at the same time, facial-recognition software that is integrated with the payroll system will reduce clock-in, clock-out times while ensuring every worker’s hours are calculated correctly.

As another example, consider a construction firm that requires regular operation of high-risk machinery. By integrating breathalyser software with your payroll ERP solution, readings are automatically fed into the system for compliance, ensuring all relevant staff records are complete and accurate.

For more examples, view our recent webinar on Perfect Payroll: Your Get Out of Jail Free Card.

How the right ERP partner can help secure your payroll processes

Building out your ERP system with the right selection of apps is critical for the success of your payroll management. At Wild Tech, we take a software-agnostic approach and focus on the needs of your business and your industry.

Once we have a firm understanding of your requirements, our Solution Architects will determine which of the major ERP platforms is best for your particular needs.