Payday can become one of the most stressful days for a business, especially if errors are encountered in processing the payroll. The practice of processing and managing the payroll alone is a time and effort-consuming human resource service, what more when mistakes are made, and are only realized during payday? It is most likely that you have made some of these common mistakes in your business, especially if you’ve managed the payroll manually.

Misclassification: Employee or Independent Contractor

            This crucial error of misclassification can cause employees to miss out on benefits, salaries, and rights they deserve. Not only would this lead to expensive penalties for the business, but it can also create dissatisfaction among the workforce of the business. Dissatisfied employees lead to an unhappy work environment, which is perhaps one of the main things your HR department is trying to avoid.

Miscalculations

            Human error, miscalculating wages and taxes can also lead to dissatisfying the employees. Miscalculations can also be caused by a lack of knowledge on the premium pay multipliers, poor communication between departments, and ineffective time-tracking of employees. 

Missing Deadlines

            The task of managing and processing the payroll of a business eats up a lot of time and depending on the number of employees that needs to be processed, this can cause many deadlines to be missed. Not only does delayed payments lead to unsatisfied employees, but it becomes very costly for a business as missed deadlines have penalties. These crucial deadlines are usually related to the salaries of the employees, their benefits, and tax filings.

How to avoid it

            These are just some of the many errors that are often committed in processing the payroll manually. Making mistakes during the process brings unfavorable consequences for the business, such as unsatisfied employees and costly penalties. However, with the innovation of technology, the risks of making errors have been limited, or even completely avoided.

Nowadays, many businesses invest in and rely on software payroll systems (online or installed) to limit the risk of making these mistakes. Some businesses even utilize a Human Resource Information System (HRIS) instead of just an online payroll system to also help the human resourcedepartment in their management of employees.

            Some of the many features that a software payroll system or an HRIS can do to help manage the payroll and limit your risk of making mistakes if you were to manually manage it include calculating accurately for salaries, taxes, and other important payments; saving and recording historical payroll data for future references; and organizing the payroll for easier analysis and general use of the business. Due to the automatic management of the payroll, businesses get to meet important deadlines, keep employees satisfied and avoid fines and penalties. Businesses that use systems like the Everything@Work HRIS even have employee portals to allow employees to easily access their own data such as their own payroll, attendance and time-logs.  Using software like Everything@Work can help a business have a more accurate process when it comes to their payroll, and with lots of time saved due to an automation of the payroll system, this also allows your Human Resource department to focus on other important human resource services to continue keeping a happy work environment and satisfied employees.