Over the years, I have found that most employers are unaware of the many steps involved with properly processing a payroll.

If you are outsourcing your payroll to Southwestern Payroll, then you might like to learn about the processes, procedures, and controls that are in place when we process your payroll.

If you are not processing with us, then you should ask about these steps with your current provider. Each is critical to maintaining accurate records, as well as ensuring payroll is done correctly and according to your wishes.

Recruiting and Hiring Employees:

The payroll process starts long before data is sent to us to pay employees. It begins when you hire an employee.

Properly documenting employee data is critical so you are in compliance with all state and federal laws and so you can report all information required.

Time and Attendance Tracking:

Once you have properly documented an employee and put them to work, it is likely that you will need to track their time worked and their attendance in general. This can include tracking hours to specific tasks or just tracking how much paid time off they have coming.

Using an electronic system to do this brings great efficiency and provides excellent record keeping. We provide comprehensive web-based time and attendance systems that allow you to track time using computers, time clocks, bio-metric devices, smart phones, mobile devices, and other methods, separately or in combination.

Using an electronic time keeping system should also provide for electronic signatures of employees and supervisors, time card approval, and ultimately electronic feed into the payroll module.

Regardless of how the time is tracked, all employee demographic information, time worked, and all payroll-related information needs to be entered into the payroll system.

Southwestern provides great flexibility in this process.

While time can be tracked many different ways, and through various systems, all relevant information needs to be entered into the payroll system.

Southwestern allows you several options here, which we will cover in our next article.

Have questions about your payroll process?