Calculating the dozens of different awards, payment types, and leave requests is a complex task. Double-handling or time lag is the bane of any payroll department, resulting in rising costs and frustrations as incorrect information is chased up. Making the process as streamlined as possible between timekeeping and payroll is paramount to leaving the headaches behind and getting everyone paid properly and on time.
If you haven’t already, check out our blog in part one on integrating with payroll. Here, we’re covering the specifics of our web-based timekeeping application, including what syncing data can save you in terms of complex payment calculations.
Syncing more than just payments.
Even when avoiding the double entry of information, the most common error factor is people themselves. Timesheets arrive late, employee records aren’t kept up to date, public holiday payments are missed, or employee role changes are looked over. All require a lot of backtracking to find and correct. The most common issue is miscommunication between the initial request or time slip and the payroll system itself.
TimeFiler, in essence, does all the complex calculations that a payroll system or payroll manager is expected to do, which is why it’s able to sync up so easily with the final payslip. Automated schedules are updated on the web app at least hourly so that the timesheet information recorded from the employee’s end is routinely updated on the payroll system.
Information such as public holidays are automatically calculated from TimeFiler, while leave requests, once applied for, are updated and calculated by type based on the leave allowance of each employee. TimeFiler also syncs;
- New employee records,
- Changes in the role,
- Leave balances,
- Terminations,
- Changes in organisation structure,
- Cost centre lists,
- Interdepartmental costings,
- Valid payment types,
- Public holiday information (on a country-by-country basis)
- And payslips.
In some cases, we can even sync leave requests (and workflow) from the payroll, which enables our clients to continue with an existing leave request process that they feel comfortable with.
Handling payment notifications.
An automated, comprehensive sync with payroll is key to delivering a robust and resilient payment system. It allows us to include simple but extremely effective features that may otherwise get missed.
A common example is leave requests. Often, a leave request is filed and isn’t looked at until the employee is on or has taken the leave. After this, it’s found that the employee never had enough leave to begin with, leaving all sorts of complications for the payroll team as they try to backtrack and reconfigure the new leave allotment. Of course, this leads to frustrated employees, unsure why their leave was accepted, only to be reexamined and revoked weeks later.
With TimeFiler, if an employee claims leave but doesn’t have enough, we can let them know at the point of data entry, avoiding the overpayment slip and the hassle of having payroll chase up employees on holiday.
Two-way payroll integration.
To sync data in the way we need, allowing a conversation between payroll and TimeFiler, we built a comprehensive two-way integration system. Some payrolls are more capable than others, and some payroll vendors are better at enabling integrations. Each has its own preferred features, depending on who is using them, which is why TimeFiler was created to talk to a number of payroll systems, including;
- Jemini from Fusion5 (NZ and Australia)
- PayGlobal from MYOB (NZ and Australia)
- Datapay from Datacom (NZ)
- COINS Payroll and ERP (Australia)
- Empower from Fusion5 (Australia)
- JadeStar from Fusion5 (NZ)
- IMS from MYOB (NZ)
- iPayroll (NZ)
We’ve worked directly with these payroll vendors to deliver a coherent integration. Each integration is out of the box and can be adapted to meet specific requirements and include custom fields that mimic the payroll system in question.
Other systems our customers use that have been adapted to TimeFiler include;
- iChris from Frontier
- Ascender
- MYOB Exo
- And others
Trying TimeFiler for yourself.
If you don’t see your payroll system listed above, it doesn’t mean we can’t integrate it. The same goes for industry standards — TimeFiler, during set up, is easily customisable and can be tweaked even after the installation has finished. We’re forever updating TimeFiler as well, ensuring that changes to the law, new holidays and upgrades to payroll systems are reflected in our application. You can find out more about our updating process in our blog here.
The trickiest part of any timekeeping system is ensuring that it’s adopted at all. Chasing up employees to record hours will always be a challenge — but making it super easy to do and for payroll to confirm makes the whole process a lot easier, time efficient and cheaper to run. Which surely is the goal of anyone concerned with their payroll.
