Best practice process for a streamlined payroll

Payroll is a crucial part of any business. An accurate and well-maintained payroll system can help employees feel valued and important. Therefore, payroll needs to be as efficient and accurate as possible. This can be achieved by challenging processes and procedures regularly and ensuring expertise and knowledge remain up to date. Here we will discuss some key areas that can ensure a smooth and streamlined payroll process. 

HR system

An HR system can provide your business with a single central place to store your 'Golden Data'. The more data captured, the more focused and driven your business can be; storing your holiday schemes, sickness records, employee training records, employee contracts and much more. 

An HR system can also be integrated direct to a finance or payroll system, removing the requirement for duplication of data entry or manual updates. Automation is a high priority for many businesses and with Application Programming Interface (API) a strong HR system can drive your company’s payroll.

Internal processes for data management 

It is very important that there are clear and strong internal processes for data management. 

If multiple departments are feeding into the system, the question you should ask is who is ultimately responsible for this data? It would be prudent to have limitations on the total number of users who have key ownership, to ensure that the collated information is managed, entered correctly and confidential data is kept secure. 

Training

It’s important to ensure those who are responsible for supplying data have appropriate training so they are aware what is required and when. This would be cover all the business platforms at all stages of the process, so that anyone that works on any touch points understands what is expected of them.  This would apply to software usage and internal requirements. 

By managing systems, people and processes effectively, you will find data will flow effortlessly through your business touch points. By keeping this well managed you will reduce the amount of time and resource required whilst improving overall accuracy. 

For more information on how RSM can help you streamline your business, please contact Simon Balaam.