Isn’t it strange that we do the same thing year after year and still have the same issues?
“We’ll look at it next year.”
Next year has come again and you still have the same issues. If your provider is not actively working on a better solution, you need to start shopping around.
For award related employees, July 1 is wage update time. Can you download into excel, apply the increase by formula and then bulk upload back into employee record? Better still, have a function in your software to automatically apply the update at a click of a button? Even though you might not have employees applicable to the July 1 increase, you would need this function at some point of the year. You should not be manually entering this data.
For those that incur payroll tax, your manual work should be at a minimum. The assessable wages are already in the system. It should only be a click away to obtain this information by date. Storing things such as FBT and contractors to formulate a total assessable result would be nice. Determining apprentices and trainees, now we’re talking.
Yes, software can help, however, a lot of end of year fuss happens through poor procedures and planning. You cannot be searching for transactions from last July in your 2000 plus employee payroll now. Reconciliations should be performed monthly at a minimum. If you’re plagued with EOY issues and it has not been practice, put it in your calendar now for a review in August to have an improvements meeting. There’s no point waiting until May next year. Discuss this while it’s fresh in your mind so that you can prepare and have a better one next year. Changes to software could help, so make sure you get these down and talk to your provider.
Lastly, Payment Summaries. We have not had tremendous changes with these. ETP type O and Type R, CDEP wages, Foreign Income plus more have been around for a while and we’re talking to customers that basically do not have software that supports these which means that they really do not support Australian payroll.
Start improvements or possibly start shopping for a better June 2017.
