Service Offerings

The ABCs of Perfect Payroll Partners

Automation

Streamline Payroll Processes & Reduce Risks

Are all of your data exchanges automated?
Are your EEO-1 reports set up correctly and ready to run?
Is your Worker’s Compensation report set up and ready to run?
Are your accruals calculated automatically?
Do you have reporting to self audit your Retirement Plan activity?
Is your ACA reporting automated?
Are all of your payroll process steps as automated as possible?
Do you have pre-payroll and post payroll reports to validate your routines?

Assessments

How are we Doing? Seems Okay, we all get Paid.

Do you get a lot of complaints about payment problems?
Is your reporting thorough and timely?
Do you hear negative feedback from auditors and others on payroll information requests?
Does your year end audit take up a lot of time and cause you headaches?
Does your Retirement Plan audit uncover errors which require corrective action?
Are all of your payroll calculations and processes in line with your company policies?
Are your processes compliant with all Federal and State payroll laws?
Do all departments get the reports they need? Are they timely & easy to run?

Audit Assistance

How to avoid the drudgery of an audit

Do you have a self audit payroll review checklist you check off prior to each payroll run?
Do you have a Retirement Plan pre-payroll and post payroll audit process?
Do you have a quarterly and year end self audit checklist?
Are all of your needed reports automated?
Internally do you have the proper approvals for payroll changes and time entry?
Do you have the appropriate separation of payroll duties?
Do you have the proper record retention?

Another Third-Party Payroll Provider Decision

Do you really need a new System or a new look at what you have?

What are you not getting from your Third-Party Provider?
Does your Provider feel their system can provide what you need, but just not know how to get you there?
Have you fully researched why you are not able to get what you want from your Provider, or why some things are just difficult to get?
Has your team fully accessed all options to the problems or trouble your are experiencing with a payroll professional?

Are you sure what you will be getting is not available from your existing provider?

What is your relationship with your rep?

Do you have consistent business rules across all entities?

Application Readiness Reviews

Get your Ducks in Order First

You decided to add an interface with payroll, check the payroll application to find all the differences you need to accommodate.
Have the business leads agreed upon the payroll business rules, or have they all grown up separately?
Is your coding( e.g. overtime, bonuses, spiffs, etc.) the same across departments, or is that departmental or company specific?
Let’s walk through all the steps you take to process a payroll run.
What are all activities performed in between each payroll run?
What are all of your company pay and benefit rules?
Prepare a list of all these things. We want to walk through them all.

Best Practice Reviews

Have you outgrown yourself?

How long has your company been in business? Are you preparing your own payroll?
Have you had the same payroll provider for a long time?
Have you created so many manual reports and manual work arounds that you find yourself with barley enough time to get payroll processed?
Are you then still finding errors later? Or, are others finding the errors for you?
Do you get any analytics out of your payroll systems? Is the reporting out of payroll meaningful?
Would you like some other reporting that your not now getting?
When you ask for something more, do you get a an affirmative or negative answer?
When was the last time you or a payroll professional reviewed your process and suggested adjustments to get you into compliance with either a company or payroll rule?
Do you still use paper to process payroll changes? Pension contributions?

Business Rule Review

Reduce DOL Risks Using consistency to Simplify System Calculations

Have you reviewed your company policies and payroll process to verify compliance with all Federal and State payroll laws?
Do you calculate your work week and overtime correctly? How about consistently across the company?
Do you know when bonus or supplemental earnings are considered discretionary or non-discretionary?
Do you know these determinations affect your overtime calculations?
Do you perform your gross-up calculations correctly?
What is included in your definition of compensation for your pension plans? Does your system know that definition?
Have you had a DOL complaints? Or, has the DOL come to your business?

Benefit Plan Reviews

Ensure your Pension Plan reports are right the first time

Are all of your Retirement Plan changes and data exchanges automated?
Do you run a pre-process payroll report which verifies all employee and employer contributions and calculations for the payroll you are about to run are accurate, and comply with your retirement plan document?
Do you also run a post payroll report which again verifies accuracy and plan compliance of all retirement plan activity? This audit report should be saved for your auditors.
Are your employee and employer benefit costs being set up and reported automatically?

Coding Consistency Reviews

Reduce DOL Risks & Improve reporting across your company(s)

Are your earnings and deduction codes consistent across your departments and your company?
Does your current coding set up cause problems when you attempt to pull data for needed reports?
Do your current codes cause any overtime calculation problems, extra steps, or cause other payroll errors?
Do you calculate Overtime consistently across the company?
What is the work week? Is that consistent across the company?
Do you stretch the overtime calculation for people who pull doubles? Or work into the next shift, even though the work week ended at the conclusion of their shift?

Consolidation of Payroll Company Reviews

Continuity of Payroll Reporting

Can you get what you need without pain?

Does your company and cost center set up allow you to get all your needed reporting easily?
Are your reports set to run either automatically or with the push of a button? Are they sent automatically to the requestor?
Do those reports require no or minimal manual effort?
Do you download data into excel? Do you prepare many manual reports ?
Who uses the reports and for what?
Do you have regular regulatory reports generated out of Payroll?
Were you able to run PPP Loan data requests easily?
Who is your third party payroll provider? Do you they support your needs?

Analytics

Want to understand your employee base better?

Payroll Chart Options

Comparatives of payroll information correlated to all kinds of other data sources

Table

Information by year to show progressions or declinations in headcount, FTE, hours, vacations, participation in plans, or any other payroll type data

Why Focus on Payroll?

As our country moves more towards service, it stands to reason that one of the largest costs in a company is wage and wage-related costs. Yet, we have not dedicated to payroll the leadership it necessarily needs and replaced management with the promise of outside payroll processor systems, which are very good but can easily get away from doing what they were originally intended to do.

Reevaluating Your Approach

You may have changed reps a couple of times, but the relationship keeps deteriorating. Chances are the processor's reps are powerless to help your payroll clerks, because of the contraptions that have been added onto the mechanisms in the system, and now it is beyond recognition. It’s not working as it was originally intended to and has been to point that they are somewhat stymied and unable to help other than offer a few possible solutions. We can help with that too, and that will put you back on track with your rep and improve your communication. With the system brought back to its original form, you can begin to work better together and you might just find the features you need at a very low cost compared to the traumatic removal, replacement of the existing provider's system, and the long arduous task of installing a new and very similar processor's system. So think about it deeply- do you really need to do that? Call Perfect Payroll Partners first, before making calls to a new provider.

The Downside of Third-party Payroll Providers-

Third-party payroll providers are not bad, in fact, they are very good if carefully cared for. But because payroll sometimes lacks a voice around the leadership table, it becomes subject to the fancies of the operators and others with a desire to fulfill some perceived or actual reporting requirement.

Dutiful payroll personnel gladly accommodate the need and sometimes build a workaround to fulfill that need. Over time, these workarounds accumulate and create processing issues, extra manual effort, and present payment risks to the employer.

Sometimes the groaning about these situations reaches the ears of both the third-party providers and company management. Third-party providers would like to help, but there are so many straps on functions that would require not only correcting the systems but the underlying business rules. The payroll processors are so far removed from influencing the business rules that they are powerless to help.

Meanwhile, the company begins the new system march, considering the costly and drastic step of a new implementation to achieve what they believe they cannot now do. Most payroll employees will agree, as starting over maybe will give them relief from the present madness brought about by the overly complex system algorithms.

That is not necessarily the correct solution. Why spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace a system with a new system with almost the same features that you invested in already? Not to mention the headaches with project teams, timelines, and meetings, when you just have to correct what you now have?

Most people can’t do that, and that is where we come in. Perfect Payroll Partners does nothing but correct these kinds of issues. We can help you at any point in your life cycle, perhaps we can even show you how you can get more life out of what you have, and enjoy the features of things now of things you need to buy in a new system.

Most third-party provider systems offer the same features and are pretty much a commodity. Sure, they are different, written in different languages and with nuances in features, but for the most part, they are pretty much the same, offering and accomplishing the same things.

Typical Review

After we are granted access to the payroll system, we gather data on the structure, coding, and reporting capabilities.
We will interview key personnel, including the payroll manager, and associates, HR, the payroll provider, recordkeepers, and ancillary companies that may use or interface with payroll systems
We will review the payroll department’s costs, including personnel, third-party provider costs, and compare them to best practice costs
We will ascertain the level of manual processes the department is engaged in and the opportunities for automation
Assess the results of recent audits pertaining to payroll reporting, interview recordkeepers on effectiveness or failures on reporting
Determine the level of paperwork between departments to update personnel data, and suggest the automation that will reduce that effort
Reduce the manual intervention in providing data and therefore reduce the error rate in producing manual data
Provide the pre-authorization controls that ensure the payroll and all ancillary company reports are accurate before the payroll runs as well as after it is complete