Five practical tips to increase payroll efficiency

Ensuring employees are paid accurately and on time requires a significant amount of time and backend work. The updates to PAYE Modernisation or Real-Time Reporting early this year were a step towards helping streamline payroll and reduce administrative burden on employers with real-time payroll submission.

But despite these changes, the Irish payroll process can still be burdensome if you don’t have the proper systems and practices in place. Here are five ways you can save time on payroll processing, so you can spend more time building out new initiatives and developing the workforce.

Download our guide, Five ways to save time on payroll: Ireland edition

1. Store employee records in a central system

From an HR and compliance perspective, keeping employee records up to date is critical. However, sifting through stacks of forms, managing huge spreadsheets, or manually entering the same information into several systems simply isn’t efficient.

Since saving time is about efficiency, start with putting all your employee records in a central HR system, so that everything you need is in one place.

2. Sync your systems

If you’re processing payroll and using separate systems to manage your data, you’re in for a time-consuming process. Integrating your payroll and HR systems, however, helps cut down on reporting time and makes data management easier.

Spot payroll errors, calculate zero-to-net pay in real-time, and more: download the guide for more benefits of syncing your systems 

3. Go paperless

While reducing or eliminating paper saves you time in sorting through notes, paper cheques, and time sheets, there are other benefits to going paperless from a payroll perspective. You’ll also save time when it comes to paying your people, generating reports, and delivering key information to your workforce and other internal stakeholders. Not only is it a more efficient process, but it’s also easier to keep track of your tasks.

While you can still do payroll manually with PAYE Modernisation, using payroll software that’s integrated with the Revenue means that employers can seamlessly experience the benefits of using technology as part of their payroll process. Implementing a technology solution will help automise the process so you can spend less time sorting through paperwork and more time on higher value tasks. Progressive companies are becoming more aware of technology benefits for these processes. In fact, according to PwC, 56% of Irish CEOs and HR leaders plan to increase their spend on HR technology in the coming 18 months.

4. Hold people accountable

Payroll and HR professionals have traditionally handled the paperwork and administration associated with creating and updating employee records and information, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for other projects. A simple and impactful solution? Empower your people to do it themselves with self-service tools.

Making your people responsible and accountable for their own records and schedules from the start of and throughout their employment positively impacts everyone. An empowered workforce is a more engaged workforce.

5. Better manage compliance by leveraging technology

With the modernisation of payroll and evolving workforce legislation, it’s hard to stay on top of complex compliance requirements that apply to your organization in addition to everything else that’s on your plate.

A solution that helps you manage compliance requirements and make timely and accurate payroll submissions can help alleviate some of your worries while also giving you more time to focus on initiatives that benefit your workforce and organization.

What would you do with more time? Read what payroll professionals have been able to do with the time they’ve saved.