Making Summer Payroll A Breeze

If summer is your favourite part of the year, you’re not alone - the weather is warm, everyone’s happy, and crucially, everyone wants to go on holiday. And while that’s worth celebrating, it can sometimes create a hassle for employers, payroll bureaus and accountants.

With the increased amount of leave requests come increased admin time, complex scheduling requirements and additional complexities in reporting. Much of this work may also need to be done last minute as people jump on last minute opportunities to go away.

But don’t let that sour your summer – there’s a way to alleviate the extra stress. With the right systems in place, holidays and scheduling can be a breeze. And this will have knock-on effects throughout the year – if you have good systems for emergencies, you’ll also minimise or completely eliminate any issues with your day-to-day scheduling.

What are the potential issues?

If you don’t have adequate HR and payroll systems, the deficiencies will be most obvious when you have to handle any tasks out of the ordinary on the fly, such as a last minute leave request. Systems that work well for business-as-usual can still have cracks that will be exposed as conditions change.

Some of the challenges you have to deal with include:

• High request volumes: as many employees may request leave within a short window. This must be accurately tracked and you need to factor it into payroll for that month. It also increases the risk of scheduling errors or data gaps.
• Last minute updates: as people have opportunities for last-minute holidays, updates will come in at short notice. This must be quickly integrated to ensure employee happiness while also ensuring business continuity.
• Revising payroll data: when employees have time off it’s vital to accurately track this and calculate the correct pay rate. This may also be complicated by overtime, bonuses and commission. You must also ensure that all details are complete and compliant.

Beware of potential data gaps

Because some people plan their holidays well in advance and some do not, it can be difficult to reconcile scheduling clashes. This is generally fine if you’ve got payroll in-house, but if you’re working with an external partner, you need to be able to communicate efficiently and on time with your provider.

With BACS files, the time window of “on time” is quite small, as a BACS file requires several days to go through a system. This means that everything has to be done well in advance and last minute requests are very difficult to accommodate.

To eliminate the lag time, Caxton and many other modern payment providers use Faster Payments to push payroll payments through. Due to the flexibility of the system, same day changes can be pushed through without delay, meaning that you can be more flexible with your employees.

The improvements made in payment systems have also paved the way for greater connectivity. Automating payroll processes means lower risk for manual errors introduced by the human element. Caxton connects to all major payroll systems via a powerful API which enables your payroll payments to be pushed through almost instantaneously, with none of the lag present with BACS files.

This will be especially important for firms and bureaus handling large portfolios of clients. Monitoring client communications at scale and ensuring maximum automation will allow you to increase efficiencies and enable you to grow your business with little to no additional resources. When you automate simple day-to-day tasks, you can instead spend your time more wisely on bigger projects.

Make payroll feel like a holiday

In conclusion, summer should be as relaxing for payroll professionals as it is for other professionals. With the right tools, firms and bureaus can ensure that the increased demands on payroll don’t sour their summer. Caxton gives accounting firms and payroll bureaus the tools to facilitate client payments, without any extra work, meaning that you can add an extra revenue stream to your business with little to no resource. Your payroll payments will be performed safely, quickly, and automatically.

Ready for faster and more accurate automatic payroll payments? Contact Caxton today.

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Caxton Payments

Caxton Payments is an alternative to traditional banks, established over 20 years, we help businesses make faster payments more reliably. We offer streamlined processes, automation through API and a collaborative solution to complex payment issues all from a single platform. Our payment capability extends from business expense management, to payroll payments, supplier payments, and currency risk management. We also offer personal prepaid travel cards and international money transfer.