There are many different ways to report payroll.
Everything starts with how you gather your time data. As an employer, it not only makes sense from an expense stand point, but according to wage & hour law, you are required to record your employees' time. The simplest system we've seen is a biometric scanner or swipe card technology. If you have people out in the field, there are also call in methods and mobile phone clock in methods via the web. In order to gather all your time data efficiently and to minimize errors, it takes the use of some form of technology. With most technology, it interfaces online through a website. Since this is the case, you will need to make sure your payroll services company has a robust website that can handle the upload of data from your time system. Many vendors have this technology. Some are limited due to the age of their software. You want to asks questions of your potential payroll vendor prior to making the switch to confirm they have upload capability.
Mini Case Study:
As an example, one of our clients is a hotel. When we with them, they had 50 employees punching in and out manually on punch cards. Each pay period someone had to take each punch card and manually calculate the hours for every employee. With 50 employees, this person spent 4 or 5 hours every week just calculating the hours and submitting them. This was a very inefficient system. But like many business owners, they were busy running their business and did not take the time to see what kind of new technology was out on the market to help them streamline their payroll processing.
Our solution was to take them from manually entering the data to a biometric thumb reader. The employee comes into work and scans their thumb on the reader and is "clocked in". When that employee finishes work, they scan their thumb again to "clock out." All of this data is put into an electronic database. The data is then uploaded to the payroll services company. The level of errors were reduced dramatically and the amount of time devoted to running payroll was reduced as well.
Another Factor:
In addition to the time and cost savings, there was also an elimination of "buddy punching". This happens when John punches in for Joe because he is covering for him when he's late or needs to leave work early. With the scanning technology, you have to be who you say you are. The system requires the employee's thumb be placed on the reader. Taking this out of the equation our client was able to reduce the number of HR issues related to punching in and punching out.
The short answer to this question: The best method for payroll services reporting is using up to date technology.
In this one scenario, this is a solution that worked for this particular client. Of course, the best way to know which method of payroll services reporting is right for your company is by getting an analysis by an expert. An expert should be experience with many varying solutions based on actual client usage of the technology. Technology is the initial answer, but which form of technology depends on many factors.
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