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ch17_4773.qxd 12/29/06 9:35 AM Page 424 424 Payroll Best Practices 17–10 Track Time with Mobile Phones When employees are occupied with off-site service jobs, such as copier repair, security monitoring, or landscaping work, it is quite difficult to track the exact amount of time they spend on each job. Instead, they tend to wait until they are back in the office and then jot down their billable time from memory. Also, if they are paid based on their billable hours, this introduces a great deal of uncertainty into the determination of their payroll hours. The use of a Web-based timekeeping system is not a good solution, since it requires Web access and a computer, which are not always available to this type of employee. The solution is to incorporate a timekeeping system into a GPS-enabled cell phone. Under this approach, a company acquires a cell phone and associated Nextel service contract for each employee, and then signs up for the WorkTrack service of Aligo (accessible through www.aligo.com). For a small monthly fee, this service allows employees to punch their job start and stop times directly into the phone, which transmits this information as a text message that the payroll staff can access through a simple Web browser. There is no other hardware or software required, since the text messages are sent to Aligo, which handles the reformatting of the resulting data for access through the Web. The system also allows the payroll staff to download standard time reports, as well as track employee locations on a map (which is useful for determining which people to send to another customer location). The system can also be used to push text messaging information back to users through the cell phones. By using this approach, employees no longer have to manually complete timesheets, while the payroll staff can summarize payroll data more rapidly and the billing staff can issue invoices to customers within minutes of a job being completed in the field. Cost: Installation time: 17–11 Use Honor System to Track Vacation and Sick Time The payroll staff may be in charge of tracking the vacation and sick time used by employees. This involves sending out forms for employees to fill out whenever they take time off, usually requiring their supervisor’s signature. Upon receipt, the payroll staff logs the used time in the payroll system and files the forms away in employee personnel folders. If the payroll staff does not account for this information correctly in the payroll system, employees will probably spot the problem on their remittance advices the next time they are paid and will go to the payroll office to look into the matter. These inquiries take up accounting staff time, as does the paperwork tracking effort. When used with some control features, it is possible to completely eliminate the tracking of vacation and sick time by the payroll staff. Under this scenario, employees are placed on the honor system of tracking their own vacation and sick ch17_4773.qxd 12/29/06 9:35 AM Page 425 17–12 Issue Electronic W-2 Forms to Employees 425 time. Though this system keeps the payroll staff from having to do any tracking of this information, there is also a strong possibility that some employees will abuse the situation and take extra time off. There are two ways to avoid this problem. One is to institute a companywide policy that automatically wipes out all earned vacation and sick time at the end of each calendar year, which has the advantage of limiting the amount of vacation and sick time to which an employee can claim that he or she is entitled. This step mitigates a company’s losses if a dishonest employee leaves the company and claims payment for many hours of vacation and sick time that may go back many years. Another way to avoid the problem is to switch the tracking role to employee supervisors, who are in the best position to see when employees take time off. In short, with some relatively minor control changes, it is possible to use an honor system to track employee usage of vacation and sick time. Cost: Installation time: 17–12 Issue Electronic W-2 Forms to Employees A large company can experience some difficulty in issuing W-2 forms to its employees if they are distributed over a wide area. The mailing cost of this distribution can also be quite expensive, especially if the employer wants proof of receipt, which calls for the use of more expensive overnight delivery services. This problem can be avoided by issuing electronic W-2 forms to employees, thereby avoiding all related postage costs. The IRS has issued specific regulations for the use of electronic W-2 forms. First, employees must give their consent to the receipt of an electronic W-2 form, and do so electronically, thereby showing proof that they are capable of receiving the electronic format in which the W-2 form will be sent. Second, the W-2 forms must contain all standard information that would normally be found on a paper W-2 form. Third, employees must be notified that the forms have been posted on a Web site for their access, and give them instructions on how to access the information. Finally, the access must be maintained through October 15 of the year following the calendar year to which they relate. These regulations are not difficult to meet, and the use of a central Web site for storage of the information also allows the employer to determine precisely which W-2 forms have been accessed. However, it is likely that some employees who either have minimal access to computers or who are not computer literate will not access their W-2 forms in this manner, requiring a last-minute distribution of W-2 forms to anyone who has not accessed their electronic copies. Also, paper-based W-2 forms must still be issued to any employees who left the company prior to the end of the calendar year. Thus, this best practice will likely result in only a partial electronic distribution of W-2 forms. Cost: Installation time: ch17_4773.qxd 12/29/06 9:35 AM Page 426 426 Payroll Best Practices 17–13 Outsource W-2 Form Creation and Delivery Shortly after year-end, the payroll department comes under pressure from those employees who suspect they have a tax refund coming, and want their W-2 forms as soon as possible in order to obtain the refund. However, and especially in larger companies with thousands of employees, printing and mailing W-2 forms can be a major chore that tends to be delayed. Also, some employees inevitably lose their W-2 forms, resulting in more work by the payroll staff in reissuing replacement forms. A cost-effective solution for larger companies is to send their W-2 data by a data feed to the W-2 eXpress product of TALX (www.talx.com), which can issue electronic or faxed W-2 forms to those employees who opt for this service, or issue traditional paper-based W-2 forms to all remaining employees. Under the electronic delivery approach, employees can access the supplier’s Web site, enter their social security number and a PIN, and have immediate access to their W-2 forms for the past four years in PDF format. It is also possible for employees to download W-2 information directly into some of the more common tax filing software packages. If W-2 information is incorrect, the service also allows for either subsequent data feeds containing W-2c information, or on-line manual updates to the previously submitted information. This approach also allows the payroll manager to monitor employee W-2 usage, as well as call up copies of W-2 forms for individual employees. There are two issues with outsourcing W-2 form creation and delivery. First, it is generally cost-effective only for companies having at least 10,000 employees. Second, one must arrange for a data feed to the supplier. Though suppliers have interfaces with the most common payroll software systems, this may require some programming to design an export file compatible with the supplier’s data requirements. Cost: Installation time: 17–14 Post Payroll Remittances on Company Intranet A company can post payroll remittances on a company intranet site. To ensure that employees access their pay information in a timely manner, a schedule of posting dates should be listed in the employee manual or a memo. This approach is popular with those employees having Web access, since they can access payroll information from anywhere—at work, at home, or on the road. It has the additional advantage of providing employees with pay information for any time period they want; an employee just selects from a list of previous pay dates to view the details for that paycheck. ch17_4773.qxd 12/29/06 9:35 AM Page 427 17–15 Only Allow On-Line Payroll Remittance Viewing 427 Though an elegant solution to the issue of getting payroll information into the hands of employees in a cost-effective manner, this approach also presents the following challenges: • Account security. Each employee must be issued a user ID and password, and the intranet site must have high-quality security to prevent hackers from accessing key payroll information. • General employee access. Though it is technically up to the employees to find their own access to the intranet site, the company should recognize that some employees do not have access of any kind, and provide terminals and printers at company locations to resolve this need. • Posting from payroll system. The process of posting to the intranet site should be an automated one, and so will likely require a custom interface from the payroll system. • Outsourced payroll. If a third-party supplier processes payroll, it will be difficult to obtain a data feed that can be posted to the intranet site. However, some payroll suppliers now offer feeds into their own Web-based systems where employees can access this information. This approach also overcomes the problem of having to send a paper remittance to terminated employees, since anyone can access the Web site, even those who have not been employees for a long time. Cost: Installation time: 17–15 Only Allow On-Line Payroll Remittance Viewing if Employees Use Direct Deposit Some employees have a strong preference for being handed an actual paycheck, walking it to a bank, and cashing it themselves, no matter how many inducements a company dangles before them to use direct deposit. Thus, there is always a small percentage of employees for whom the company must create a different paycheckhandling process. A subtle inducement to make them switch to direct deposit is to implement an on-line payroll remittance system (as noted in the previous best practice), but to allow viewing of the information only if an employee has also enrolled in the direct deposit program. Given the increasing dependence of society on access to electronic information, it is entirely possible that this added benefit will persuade a few more employees to make the switch to direct deposit. The lure will be especially great if additional features are added to the on-line payroll remittance program, such as allowing the viewing of multiple years of payroll information and access to an on-line W-2 form. Cost: Installation time: ch17_4773.qxd 12/29/06 9:35 AM Page 428 428 Payroll Best Practices 17–16 Transfer Payroll to Debit Cards Some companies employ people who, for whatever reason, either are unable to set up personal bank accounts or do not choose to. In these cases, they must take their paychecks to a check-cashing service, which charges them a high fee to convert the check into cash. Also, employees will be carrying large amounts of cash just after cashing their checks, which increases their risk of theft. They also run the risk of losing their paychecks prior to cashing them. Thus, the lack of a bank account poses serious problems for a company’s employees. A good solution to this problem is to set up a payroll debit card for any employees requesting one, and then shift payroll funds directly into the card. This allows employees to pull any amount of cash they need from an ATM, rather than the entire amount at one time from a check-cashing service. The card can also be used like a credit card, so there is little need to make purchases with cash. Further, the fee to convert to cash at an ATM is much lower than the fee charged by a check-cashing service. There is also less risk of theft through the card, since it is protected by a personal identification number (PIN). Employees will also receive a monthly statement showing their account activity, which they can use to get a better idea of their spending habits. Payroll cards are superior to direct deposit in the following respects: • First payment is electronic. When paying an employee through direct deposit, the first payment to a new employee is with a check, since the bank wants to prenote the first direct deposit transaction. This is not the case for a payroll card, where the first payment can be issued electronically. • Data collection. Direct deposit requires the employer to collect bank routing and account number information from employees, which may be incorrect or difficult to obtain. This is not needed for payroll cards, since the employer creates each account. • Account lockdown. Employees sometimes shut down their bank accounts and forget to inform the company that direct deposit payments must now be sent to a new location. Since the employer controls the payroll card account, employees cannot shut down the account. • Termination pay. Terminated employees can be paid within one day through a payroll card, and there is no need for them to come back to the office to pick up a final check. • Information security. Unlike direct deposit, an employer does not need to retain personal banking information for payroll cards, since it is setting up all accounts. • Additional cards. Some card providers will issue extra payroll cards to other family members, which allows them to withdraw funds in other cities; this keeps the wage earner from paying wire transfer fees to send money to other family members. ch17_4773.qxd 12/29/06 9:35 AM Page 429 17–17 Use Direct Deposit 429 • Pay routing. Some card providers now allow card users to automatically route incoming funds to personal bank accounts, though there is a one-day delay in the funds transfer. Here are some additional considerations regarding the setup of a payroll debit card program: • Employees should not have to pay a withdrawal fee when they extract funds from an ATM (in some states, it is illegal to require employees to pay such a fee as part of their payroll payments). Accordingly, either have the company pay the ATM fee, or have the paycard supplier specify in its contract which ATMs will offer free services to employees. It is also possible to set up an on-site company-owned ATM, which ensures that ATM fees will be free. • Paycard issuers can impose a blizzard of fees, such as fees for an excessive number of paycard transactions, card replacements, a “load fee” (when a card is funded), and a monthly fee. First, be sure than none of these fees are charged to employees, only the company. Second, write limitations into the contract on increases in these fees, as well as the exclusion of as-yet unspecified fees. Also, it is helpful to model the full cost of all fees, using reasonable estimates of card usage, in order to determine which paycard program is the most economical. • Some paycard issuers are not banks, so funds issued to paycards maintained by them could be lost if the issuer goes out of business. Instead, provide your employees with some extra security by using only paycards issued by a bank, which carries FDIC insurance on funds deposited with it. Cost: Installation time: 17–17 Use Direct Deposit A major task for the payroll staff is to issue paychecks to employees. This task can be subdivided into several subsidiary steps. First, the checks must be printed—though it seems easy, it is all too common for the check run to fail, resulting in the manual cancellation of the first batch of checks, followed by a new print run. Next, the checks must be signed by an authorized check-signer, who may have questions about payment amounts, which may require additional investigation. After that, the checks must be stuffed into envelopes and then sorted by supervisor (since supervisors generally hand out checks to their employees). The checks are then distributed, usually with the exception of a few checks that will be held for those employees who are not currently on-site for later pick-up. Finally, the person in charge of the bank reconciliation must track those checks that have not been cashed and follow up with employees to get them to cash their checks—there are usually a few employees who prefer to cash checks only when they need the money, surprising though this may seem. In short, there ch17_4773.qxd 430 12/29/06 9:35 AM Page 430 Payroll Best Practices are a startlingly large number of steps involved in issuing payroll checks to employees. How can one eliminate this work? The solution is to pay by direct deposit. This best practice involves issuing payments directly to employee bank accounts. Besides avoiding some of the steps involved with issuing paychecks, it carries the additional advantage of putting money in employee bank accounts at once, so that those employees who are off-site on payday do not worry about how they will receive their money—it will appear in their checking accounts automatically, with no effort on their part. Implementing direct deposit can be somewhat more difficult than one may first realize. It requires an ability to transfer payment information to the company’s bank in the correct direct deposit format, which the bank uses to shift money to employee bank accounts. This information transfer can be accomplished either by purchasing an add-on to a company’s in-house payroll software or by paying extra to a payroll outsourcing company to provide the service; either way, there is an expense associated with starting up the service. An example of a payroll add-on service is National Payment Corporation’s www.directdeposit.com; its Web Direct Deposit product allows one to download payroll information from such popular accounting programs as QuickBooks, Peachtree, and DacEasy, and transmit this information to a direct deposit processing center that handles all direct deposits. Also, it can be difficult to get all employees to switch over to direct deposit. Though the benefits to employees may seem obvious, there will be a large proportion of employees who prefer to cash their own checks, or who do not possess bank accounts. To get around this problem, a company can either force all employees to accept direct deposit, or only do so with new employees, with existing employees being allowed to still take paper checks. If employees are forced to accept direct deposit, the company can make the issue less onerous by working with a local bank to provide a free bank account to each employee. Also, there will be the inevitable start-up problems for the first few weeks, resulting in some direct deposits not going through to employees on time. All of these issues make implementing direct deposit somewhat more difficult and expensive than would first appear to be the case. Besides implementation issues, there are a few other problems to consider before using direct deposit. One is the fee charged by the bank or payroll service to do it—a common charge is $1 to make a direct deposit to each employee’s account, which can add up if there are many employees and frequent pay periods (e.g., once a week). Also, some paper-based form of notification must still be sent to employees so that they know the details of what they have been paid. This means that using direct deposit does not eliminate the steps of printing, envelope stuffing, or check distribution (though there is no need to sign the pay notifications or hold them for stray employees, nor is there any further trouble with tracking payroll checks that have not been cashed). Finally, most companies find that they end up with a dual system—some employees take direct deposit and some go with paper checks—so that they have a more complicated system with two forms of payment. However, do not let all these problems shoot down an initiative to use direct deposit. If one follows through on it properly, then most or all employees can still be converted to it ch17_4773.qxd 12/29/06 9:35 AM Page 431 17–19 Consolidate Payroll Systems 431 over the long term. Despite its disadvantages, direct deposit can be a clear advantage to both the accounting department and employees, if properly implemented. Cost: Installation time: 17–18 Automate Vacation Accruals A topic that is of considerable interest to employees is how much vacation time they have left. In most companies, this information is kept manually by the payroll staff, so employees troop down to the payroll department once a month (and more frequently in the prime summer vacation months!) to see how much vacation time they have left to use. When employees are constantly coming in to ascertain this information, it is a major interruption to the payroll staff, because it happens at all times of the day, never allowing them to settle down into a comfortable work routine. A simple solution is to include the vacation accrual in employee paychecks. The information appears on the payroll stub, and shows the annual amount of accrued vacation, net of any used time. By feeding this information to employees in every paycheck, there is no need for them to inquire about it in the payroll office, eliminating a major hindrance. However, there are several points to consider before automating vacation accruals. The first one is that the payroll system must be equipped with a vacation accrual calculation option. If not, the software must be modified with custom programming to allow for the calculation and presentation of this information, which may cost more to implement than the projected efficiency savings. Another problem is that the accrual system must be set up properly for each employee when it is originally installed. This start-up problem is caused by having employees with different numbers of days of vacation allowed per year, as well as some with carryover vacation from the previous year. If this information is not accurately reflected in the automated vacation accrual system when it is implemented, employees will hasten to the payroll area to correct this problem at once. Another issue is that the accruals must be adjusted over time to reflect changes. For example, an employee may switch from two to three weeks of allowed vacation at the fifth anniversary of his or her hiring. The payroll department must have a schedule of when this person’s vacation accrual amount changes to the three-week level, or the employee will come in and complain about it. If these problems can be overcome, using vacation accruals becomes a relatively simple means of improving the efficiency of the payroll department. Cost: Installation time: 17–19 Consolidate Payroll Systems A company that grows by acquisition is likely to have a number of payroll systems—one for each company that it has acquired. This situation may also arise ch17_4773.qxd 12/29/06 9:35 AM Page 432 432 Payroll Best Practices for highly decentralized companies that allow each company location to set up its own payroll system. Though this approach does allow each location to process payroll in accordance with its own rules and payment periods, while also allowing for local maintenance of employee records, there are several serious problems that can be solved by the consolidation of all these systems into a single, centralized payroll system. One problem with having many payroll systems is that employee payroll records cannot be shifted through a company when an employee is transferred to a new location. Instead, the employee is listed as having been terminated in the payroll system of the location that he or she is leaving and is then listed as a new hire in the payroll system of the new location. By constantly reentering an employee as a new hire, it is impossible to track the dates and amounts of pay raises; the same problem arises for the human resources staff, who cannot track eligibility dates for medical insurance or vesting periods for pension plans. In addition, every time employee data is reentered into a different payroll system, there is a risk of data inaccuracies that may result in such embarrassments as wrong pay rates or mailing checks to the wrong address. Also, a company cannot easily group data for companywide payroll reporting purposes. Finally, if an employee switches among multiple payroll systems, there is a chance that the corporate entity as a whole will pay an excessive amount of payroll taxes. For all these reasons, it is common practice to consolidate payroll systems into a single, centralized location that operates with a single payroll database. Before embarking on such a consolidation, one must consider the costs of implementation. One is that a consolidation of many payroll systems may require an expensive new software package that runs on a large computer, which entails extra capital and software maintenance costs. In addition, there is probably a significant cost associated with converting the data from the disparate databases into the new consolidated one. In addition, there may be extra time needed to test the tax rates for all company locations, in order to avoid penalties for improper tax withholdings and submissions. Finally, the timing of the implementation is of some importance. Many companies prefer to make the conversion on the first day of the new year so there is no need to enter detailed pay information into the system for the prior year to issue year-end payroll tax reports to the government. The cost of consolidating payroll systems is considerable and must be carefully analyzed before the decision to convert is reached. Switching from many payroll systems to a single one is an excellent best practice to implement, with many long-term benefits. However, due to the conversion cost, it is important to weigh the costs and benefits of the project and to insert the project into a company’s capital budget only when the funds are definitely available. Cost: Installation time: ch17_4773.qxd 12/29/06 9:35 AM Page 433 17–21 Link Payroll Changes to Employee Events 433 17–20 Eliminate Personal Leave Days A common task for the payroll staff is to either manually or automatically track the vacation time employees earn and use. Depending on the level of automation, this task can require some portion of staff time every week on an ongoing basis. Some companies then take the additional step of accruing and tracking the usage of personal leave days, which are essentially the same thing as vacation time, but tracked under a different name. By having both vacation and personal leave days, the payroll staff is reduced to tracking data in both categories, which doubles the work required to simply track vacation time. A reasonable, and easily implemented, best practice is to convert personal leave days into vacation days and eliminate the extra category of time off. By doing so, the payroll staff can cut in half the time it devotes to analyzing employee vacation time. The only resistance to this change usually comes from the human resources department, which likes to offer a variety of benefits to match those other companies offer; for example, if a competitor offers personal leave days, then so should the company. Though only a matter of semantics, this can cause a problem when implementing the simpler system. Cost: Installation time: 17–21 Link Payroll Changes to Employee Events There are many payroll changes that must be made when certain events occur in an employee file. Many of these changes are never made, because either the payroll staff is so busy with the standard, daily processing of information that it has no time to address them or the payroll staff does not possess enough knowledge to link the payroll changes to the employee events. For example, when an employee is married, this should trigger a change in that person’s W-4 form, so the amount of taxes withheld will reflect those for a married person. Automation can create many of these linkages. Here are some examples: • As soon as an employee reaches the age of 55, the system issues a notification to the pension manager to calculate the person’s potential pension, while also notifying the employee of his or her pension eligibility. These notifications can be by letter, but a linkage between the payroll system and the e-mail system would result in more immediate notification. • As soon as an employee has been with a company for 90 days, his or her period of probation has been completed. The system should then automatically include the employee in the company’s dental, medical, and disability plans, and include deductions for these amounts in the person’s paycheck. Similarly, the system can automatically enroll the employee in the company’s 401(k) plan and enter the deductions in the payroll system. Since these pay changes