Payroll and Time and Attendance

Wednesday, 09 January 2008 00:00

Overview

The UK's traditional workplace environment has undergone radical change in recent years. The ‘nine to five' culture of most offices and factories has long gone, flexible work patterns are now a feature of many businesses and more and more people are choosing to work remotely or from home as they seek an improved work-life balance.

Add to this increased employment legislation which has transformed the rights and conditions of most employees and businesses are left facing enormous pressures to remain efficient and competitive whilst maintaining effective administrative control.

That's why a modern, efficient time and attendance system has become such an important management tool. In any manufacturing environment it can now be relied upon to deliver accurate, real-time business critical information, however complex a company's shift patterns.

Stanley Security Solutions
Stanley Security Solutions is the market leader in time and attendance solutions and at the forefront of technology developed specifically for the manufacturing plant environment. Its systems now not only manage time and attendance but cost centre recording, resource scheduling and access control as well. They are also now being increasingly integrated with payroll packages enabling fully accurate wage runs to be automatically processed with enormous efficiency and cost-saving benefits to the HR function.

However, as desirable as an integrated time and attendance/payroll system might be, it is not as straightforward to implement as a company might think. What on the face of it might appear to be the simple conversion of hours worked into wages owed is complicated by the myriad of different payroll systems being used, all utilising different formats and rate codes. Some payroll systems, for example, rely as much on data about hours not worked, through unscheduled absenteeism or sickness, as they do on hours worked. Others calculate based on total sum of hours worked rather than using a breakdown of different rates such as basic, overtime or time and a half, so the transfer of compatible information becomes increasingly complex.

Whilst time and attendance systems can accurately calculate employee hours worked (and not worked) the successful transfer of this information into payroll depends on the format in which it needs to be presented.

Thinking Software Partnership
To overcome this problem, Stanley has now developed a close partnership with Thinking Software, specialists in payroll forecasting and payroll linking software. Its Rota Pay-Link product, for example, is one simple but powerful link between Stanley’s time and attendance systems and over 60 different payroll packages.

Pay-Link is able to record the output from Stanley systems and then either write it directly into payroll or prepare it for importing into payroll. This process saves hours of expensive, manual recycling of payroll input and Rota Pay-Link makes it easy to compile hours, calculate overtime and reduce payroll errors before they occur, thereby improving overall payroll accuracy and giving greater peace of mind to employer and employee alike.

Steve Rushkopf, CEO of Thinking Software says:

“We’re proud of our association with Stanley Security Solutions. We’ve worked with Stanley for many years helping to integrate its time and attendance systems with popular UK payroll packages. The opportunity this presents for Stanley clients is immense – payroll system analysts currently estimate that payroll administrative costs can easily reach 1 – 2% of the overall payroll and Rota Pay-Link can significantly reduce that expenditure.”

Malcolm Rose, marketing manager for Stanley’s time and attendance products says:

“Our partnership with Thinking Software has demonstrated the importance of having good relationships with payroll software developers and suppliers to ensure seamless integration of the systems. Our advice to businesses looking to integrate would be to make sure their time and attendance system supplier has a clear definition of what the payroll system requires and the precise format in which data needs to be exported. Any reputable time and attendance supplier will take the time to understand this requirement and will have encountered, and overcome, the complexities of integration many times before.”

Stanley Case Study Example
One excellent example of an integrated time and attendance and payroll system in practice has been at PC Henderson, a world leader in the design and manufacture of garage doors and sliding door gear. The company’s main manufacturing plant at Bowburn in County Durham employs over 300 people.

Established in 1921, the company’s original clock card machine and payroll system had, until this new millennium, altered little, even as the production plant itself became ever more technologically state-of-the-art. Employees still clocked on in the traditional manner, team leaders still had to process all timesheet records manually and payroll still had to painstakingly plough through paperwork to calculate every employee’s hours, wages owed and who had worked where and when throughout any given production schedule.

The decision was taken to move towards a Stanley electronic time and attendance system, fully integrated with a payroll package. Using the new technology, all employees now clock in using an electronic swipe card which automatically begins to calculate their hours worked. Staff holidays are pre-programmed in so any unscheduled absences are immediately recorded and highlighted. Pay grades and overtime allowances are also programmed in for each individual employee so that at the end of each working week, the hours worked are exported into payroll and a fully accurate wage run is processed.

A spokesman at PC Henderson said:

“Whereas before we employed two people to work full time in payroll collating and processing timesheets, it can now be achieved by one person in just a day and a half. I’ve calculated that in a year it’s effectively freed up an additional 45 days of resource for our finance department. That’s a return that goes far beyond the day to day benefits to employees and has more than justified PC Henderson’s investment.”

For further information

Andrew Crosbie, PR Director, Stan, Tel: 0161 975 6100, Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Matt Wheeler, Product & Marketing Manager, Stanley Workforce Management
Tel: 01793 412254  Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it