The Paymaster People Solutions story: 20 Years of successful payroll processing

The Paymaster People Solutions story: 20 Years of successful payroll processing

by with No Comment AnnouncementsContributorsFeaturesPaymasterPayroll AdministratorsPayroll News

Corporate days at Bergers Stores

Back in 1997, Ian Hurst and Karen Morrison worked for Bergers Stores, a large clothing retail chain owned by the Morkels Group. Ian was the Human Resource Manager and Karen was involved in the corporate training department. During that particular year, Ian was tasked with investigating the option of outsourcing the company’s payroll; or, alternatively, converting the existing rather cumbersome payroll for a significantly more streamlined inhouse option.

Bergers opts for a streamlined inhouse VIP Desktop solution

The outcome of Ian’s payroll investigation revealed that there weren’t any outsource companies that offered an easy payroll processing alternative. The only payroll solution proved to be rather complicated and cumbersome: the client was required to submit hand-written forms and documents to an outsource company for processing. In other words, this meant that, what the client ‘put in’ the client ‘got out’: errors and all. Consequently, the payroll solution that was decided upon, was for Bergers Stores to implement a desktop version of VIP. The implementation was successful.

Seeds of Paymaster’s beginnings germinate

It was during this time, the beginning of Paymaster’s history, that the seeds of the fledgling company started to germinate: In 1998 Bergers Stores was sold to Dunns clothing stores. This prompted Ian and Karen’s decision to cease their jobs with Bergers and their involvement in the corporate sphere if business. Instead, they recognised a gap in the market: namely, to use a desktop version of VIP to process clients’ payroll, but also, to add further value to their service offering by ensuring that their own payroll administrators checked for accuracy and compliance. This resulted in a truly unique outsource company being registered and established: An authentic payroll processing company that genuinely understood the importance of all things payroll. At the time, inaccurate and clumsy payroll departments fell guilty of regularly demotivating its employees because payroll-run mistakes and errors where happening during almost every payroll-run.

The Paymaster People Solutions story: 20 Years of successful payroll processing1 March 1999: Paymaster is born

Paymaster’s doors officially opened on 1 March 1999. It took just two months for Ian and Karen to sign their first corporate client with Aries Packaging. Paymaster had taken off and the company’s ascent to new heights had just begun.

Paymaster: Built upon an early well-researched solid foundation

One of Paymaster’s core beliefs was to build its business model upon a solid foundation: it’s founding members wisely took the time to research what was needed to build a solid foundation—A foundation that would ensure that Paymaster was suitably able to service its client base well into the distant future.

Since 1998 Paymaster has achieved consistent year-on-year growth

Since 1998, Paymaster has achieved slow, steady and consistent year-on-year growth. Every time Paymaster signed new clients, Ian and Karen (and the competent team of Paymaster payroll professionals) would patiently and professionally ‘settle them down’ and make sure that they were always happy with their payroll runs. An error-free payroll has always been, and continues to be, the benchmark that Paymaster People Solutions strives to achieve for its clients.

2002: Amber Stynes joins Paymaster

In 2002 Amber Stynes joined the Paymaster team. Amber soon became indispensable to the Paymaster team and in 2011, she was appointed as director. Today Amber heads up the day-to-day operations at Paymaster People Solutions.

2006: Paymaster procures an online payroll software platform

Since 1999 when Paymaster was founded, payroll software technologies continued to rapidly evolve. Accordingly, in 2006 Paymaster’s directors took the strategic decision to evolve with changing technologies by procuring an online payroll software platform. After a year-long investigation, it was finally decided that Paymaster would partner with PaySpace.

Paymaster uniquely branded PaySpace’s online payroll software platform and migrated all of its existing clients to the new online payroll platform. The strategic decision was a huge success. So too was the migration of Paymasters’ clients to the new online system.

Online payroll software platform an absolute winner

Paymaster’s online payroll software platform has been and absolute winner—An excellent move it has certainly proved to be. Online payroll allows Paymaster to offer its clients a rich assortment of online-specific benefits and features. Now, not only do Paymaster People Solution’s clients have full online access to their own payroll data and information, but they also benefit from being able to access and manage human resource functions such as leave, training and disciplinary action records.

2016: Paymaster rebranded to Paymaster People Solutions

Over subsequent years, Paymaster continued to show excellent growth of its client base. For this reason, in 2016, Paymaster was rebranded to Paymaster People Solutions. This change suitably represented the significant growth that had taken place in the rich collection of additional benefits and services that Paymaster was now offering its many happy clients.

2019: Paymaster People Solutions celebrates its 20th Birthday

This year, Paymaster People Solutions proudly celebrates its 20th birthday!

The staff team consist of 18 full-time employees servicing more than 700 clients. These many satisfied clients make use of a combination of payroll solutions: from fully outsourced ‘we-do-it-for-you’ services, to the basic ‘you-do-it-yourself’ online package. Additionally, over 80% of Paymaster People Solutions’ clients sign up for the empowering self-help Employee Self-service module.

Looking ahead: the next 20 years and beyond

Ian Hurst, CEO of Paymaster People Solutions believes that the payroll service and function will always be central to the success of any company or organisation. Hurst maintains that “the ongoing success of the companies that we offer services to, is based on the our ability to keep up with technology, whilst also being able offer our clients customised levels of service that they require in order to efficiently manage their payrolls.”

As Paymaster People Solutions looks forward to the next 20 years, Hurst believes that there will always be ongoing changes to legislation, changes in software technology, and changes to the way in which payrolls are processed. “What won’t change however” says Hurst, “is the expectation that to be successful we will resolutely and proudly continue to deliver exceptional customer service to our many happy and valued clients.”

COID: MAXIMUM EARNING AMOUNT INCREASE & ANNUAL RETURN FORMS REVISED

by with No Comment department of labourLatest Payroll NewsPaymasterpayroll professionalsUncategorised


Department of Labour Legislation update

COID: MAXIMUM EARNING AMOUNT INCREASE & ANNUAL RETURN FORMS REVISED

Government Gazette notice no. 449 on 15 April 2016

Occupational Injuries and Diseases: Maximum Earning Amount Increase

Department of Labour published Government Gazette notice no. 449 on 15 April 2016 in respect of an increase in the maximum amount of earnings. Effective date is 1 April 2016. The prescribed amount under Section 83(8) of the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act No 130 of 1993 (COIDA) has been increased to R377 097 per annum.

Occupational Injuries and Diseases: Return of Earnings Form revised

A revised return of earnings form (W.As.8) in terms of the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act has been drawn up and published on 15 April 2016 in Government Gazette notice no.444.  The previous form and rules have been repealed with immediate effect.

 

All employers are still encouraged to file the return online on the website of the Department of Labour.

To view the new W.As.8 form and rules, please follow this link

Looking towards the distant horizon — the dedicated payroll department to possibly be ‘extinct’ within the next 5 years

by with No Comment Latest Payroll NewsMotivationalPaymasterPayrollProductivity


At the present moment you may well be thinking that the payroll department is the centre of the corporate universe.

Perhaps too, you are certain that organisations that rely on human capital, rightly consider their payroll department to be its primary axis.

These days most organisations simply cannot function without their dedicated payroll administrators sitting behind their personal computers, balancing countless figures whilst also faithfully keeping all the organisation’s human resource records in perfect order.

Stop. Reality Check!

Stop. The reality check is this: whilst the preceding introductory consideration may well be an accurate assessment of the current status quo in most organisations, the time has arrived for the (sensible) strategic thinking human capital professional to look towards the distant horizon, in order to consider the strong likelihood that the dedicated payroll department (as we know it), may well be ‘extinct’ within the next 5 years.

With that distant horizon fast-approaching, let us consider what the future of the payroll department might involve by highlighting 5 specialised services that it (in all likelihood) may need to offer the organisation in the not too distant future.

Provisioning of an all-inclusive Human Capital Management (HCM) solution

Market-leading HCM-solution software offers the fullest, most inclusive spectrum of operational functionality. Suppliers of preferred HCM software solutions are increasingly beginning to ensure that they cater for the broadest range of HCM functions that a successful and profitable organisation requires: from workforce acquisition, to workforce management, to workforce optimisation.

For example, software functionality is likely to include the facilitation of cutting-edge recruitment best-practices, inventive application of face-to-face and online training tools, optimal leveraging of automated skills-evaluation tools, the implementation of progressive performance evaluation controls, the rolling out of comprehensive digital document cloud-storage, and options to make constant software-adaptations to payroll management processes.

[tweetthis remove_twitter_handles=”true” remove_hidden_hashtags=”true” remove_hidden_urls=”true”]Seemingly, we are fast-beginning to see the end of purposed payroll-only software solutions. [/tweetthis]

Consequently, we are seemingly fast-beginning to see the end of purposed (i.e. isolated) payroll-only software solutions. On the rapidly approaching distant horizon, we are already beginning to see suppliers of ‘all-rounder’ HCM solutions claiming the traditional purposed/isolated payroll solution space.

Facilitating technical compliance with the utmost of ease

Nowadays, easily implementable software-development tweaks easily caters for additional HCM parameters to be built into software products. For example, consider your organisation’s ever-increasing need to speedily respond to ever-changing tax-table formulae. In a case such as this, the discerning human capital professional needs to procure a HCM solution that offers the fullest scope for manifold legislative requirements to be amended and managed with the greatest of ease (without experiencing any upgrade downtime either).

Empowering line-management

Progressive HCM executives (inclusive of their functional management teams) ought to be excellent all-rounders. The HCM function make a truly relevant contribution towards the realisation of line-management’s operational contribution to the organisation. After all, this is what the organisation’s executive management team expects — nothing less.

For example, innovative HCM-solution software allows line-management to authorise all payroll-related documentation. Consequently, in most cases, not only does the line-manager take usual accountability for production processes and outputs, but he/she now also takes a (shared) accountability for the employees working in his/her department.

At Paymaster Payroll, some of our clients (whom we provide our HCM-solution to) are beginning to (confidently) allow their line-mangers to process the full payroll-run for their respective department/s. For example, line-management is empowered with the management of additional cost-incurring overtime hours and takes responsibility for making changes to employees’ basic salary settings. The Paymaster Payroll HCM-solution ingeniously encourages line-management to take empowering accountability for the safe-keeping of relevant documents and files — in an extremely safe, secure and risk-free environment, if the supplementary online cloud-server storage is used.

Additionally, further empowerment of line-management is made possible when, for example, a line manger personally manages the full interview process: from the reviewing of CV’s/resumés, right through to the online cloud-capture of the interviewers’ notes, comments and recommendations.

Thus, as demonstrated in the aforementioned examples, it’s clearly evident that there is no longer any need for the dedicated payroll department to manage these HCM processes. Further, from an auditing control/oversight perspective, at the very end of the ‘production line’, the financial manager simply ‘signs off’ (i.e. approves) the payroll-run. Thus we see that, in this case, a dedicated payroll department is indeed unnecessary.

 

Distributed accountability through employee self-service tools

It is becoming increasingly popular (and practical) for employees to be entrusted with the accountability of maintaining their own biographical data, submitting and administering (online) their own leave applications (which is also ‘online-authorised’ by their line-manager). Immediately thereafter, all leave records are automatically updated.

By employing this process of ‘distributed accountability’ employees are given access to self-service tools that smartly facilitates the submission of their own overtime claims, …the input of their own subsistence and travel-allowance claims, …and the facilitation of numerous other (ad-hoc) employee-specific claims — all processed via the integrated self-service functionality of progressive HCM-solution software.

Employee self-service tools may also be programmed to allow unrestricted access to an employee’s personal payslip and tax certificate archive — which is (most) conveniently stored on your organisation’s dedicated secure servers, or online in a secure (shared) cloud-server environment.

Easy access to data analysis and exception reporting tools

In the present business-era where real-time decision-making is becoming increasingly necessary and (perhaps even) desired, HCM-solution software must possess a reporting-ability to enable managers (at various levels within the organisation) to instantaneously gain access to meaningful reports that facilitate informed (and accurate) management decisions.

With progressive HCM-solution software, skilled and informed financial mangers no longer require reams of printed documents in order to get a glimpse of what’s happening in his or her department (or within the entire organisation for that matter). With a single login instance, a request for a report, accompanied with the shortest of waiting periods, will allow a comprehensive payroll-run for thousands of employees to be authorised (without worrying that multiple errors may result).

With exception reporting and approval processes, the era of individual-entry verification and interim payroll-run verification checks is fast coming to an end.

Responding to the challenge — prepare for change

Should the reader of this article be suitably convinced that we may well be seeing a future where the dedicated payroll department may well be ‘extinct’ within the next 5 years, here are a few suggestions on how you may respond to the challenge by suitably preparing for imminent change:

— Make a critical analysis of what kind of HCM-solution software that your organisation will need in order to adequately prepare for a future that has no dedicated payroll department.

— As a payroll professional, periodic personal introspection is crucial to your career growth and success within the HCM field of expertise. Constantly consider what new skills you may require in order to remain employable and, (more importantly) to remain relevant once employed.

— From an organisational perspective, adequate training (at various levels) coupled with progressive change-management practices, needs to take place on a regular basis. In this regard, be sure that you do your homework thoroughly.

— Always consider your relevance factor. By setting a time-constraint to your medium-term career planning, constantly assess how you are you going to reinvent yourself (particularly within the next 5 years), in order maintain the highest ‘relevance factor’ that you are capable of.

[tweetthis remove_twitter_handles=”true” remove_hidden_hashtags=”true” remove_hidden_urls=”true”]Strategic-thinking HCM professionals take proactive, decisive steps to transition to what the future promises to be.[/tweetthis]

Concluding thoughts

This article presumes the almost inevitable arrival of a future where the dedicated payroll department is fast on its way towards becoming ‘extinct’ within the next 5 years. As this distant future horizon fast-approaches, a prudent planning approach—to be taken by the discerning strategic thinking Human Capital Management (HCM) professional—will see him/her taking proactive and decisive steps towards transitioning to what the future (almost certainly) promises to be. Be sure to source HCM-solution software that not only keeps your HCM function relevant, but guarantees that you maintain (or improve upon) your HCM relevance factor too.

When We Make Mistakes

by with No Comment Latest Payroll NewsPaymaster

 

To all the people who make mistakes — here is some good advice…

 

[tweetthis remove_twitter_handles=”true” remove_hidden_hashtags=”true” remove_hidden_urls=”true”]“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man, but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.” –Plutarch[/tweetthis]

“To make no mistakes is not in the power of man, but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.”
–Plutarch

Everyone makes mistakes.

Everyone makes mistakes. If you think about it, you’ve probably made your share of ridiculous mistakes over the years – a misdirected package, a misrouted file, a forgotten deadline.

Typical reactions? Embarrassment, anger, and frustration.

There is great virtue to making mistakes but then learning from them and improving along the way. Why don’t people realise that mistakes are really great opportunities? When you fix a problem, you not only get a chance to right a wrong, but you can build a strong working relationship too.

 

You can recover from blunders and be a winner!

Here’s how:

  • Make things right.Your first responsibility is to correct the mistake. The faster you address the problem, the more credible you’ll decidedly come across to others.
  • Apologise. When you make a mistake, you’ll usually gain some respect when apologising sincerely and directly. Consewquently, you don’t run the risk of appearing incompetent. Instead, you display your humaness gracefully. You also send out the message that you’re sincere enough to admit it.
  • Let the matter rest. There is no need to beat a dead horse by bringing up the matter over and over again. One apology will suffice.
  • Learn more about operations. Use the occasion to learn more about the intricacies of your department or campus operations. This knowledge will come in handy over time. And it can prevent mistakes down the line.
  • Ask if you can do something else. After correcting your error, ask if you can help in any other way. Perhaps an “I’m sorry” doesn’t seem sufficient. Offering something extra may be necessary to establish futher relationship-goodwill.
  • Let others know that you’ve learnt something. Assure those affected by your error that it won’t happen again. If you have indeed learnt something from the experience—that may well be helpful for others in your office—then share the information in a positive manner.
  • Keep records. Keep a record of errors made: the causes and the solutions. Review the list of mistakes to prevent a recurrence thereof.

Put your best foot forward and get on with being the best you can be.

Now smile, put your best foot forward and get on with being the best you can be.Now go on deliver that outstanding service that far exceeds your client’s expectations.[tweetthis remove_twitter_handles=”true” remove_hidden_hashtags=”true” remove_hidden_urls=”true”][Paymaster says] — “Put your best foot forward and get on with being the best you can be.”[/tweetthis]

About running an international payroll. The in-country partner’s challenges.

by Latest Payroll NewsMotivationPaymasterPayroll Tips


It is 10 o clock at night in South Africa 

To all our clients all over the world. An open letter from a payroll company processing payrolls on behalf of clients in America, United Kingdom, Europe and India.  We love working with you. We enjoy the interaction and the intercultural learning experience.  It is fantastic to call people all over the world our clients. 10 years ago this would never have been possible. Unfortunately, it has it challenges.

I would like to share some insights of running a payroll with overseas partners. Don’t misunderstand me, it is not a moan session. This is a heads up, an eye opener and I hope an insight into a payroll company based in Cape Town, South Africa, coping with the requests from around the world. Here are 5 challenges we face regularly.

1) Time zones:

Time Zones do exist. When it is 7 am in India, it is 4 am in South Africa and 10 Pm in America. It is 2 am in England.  We do work long hours and yes, we try to meet deadlines. But when you phone us at 2 pm your time from the USA and ask us if we can have it back to you by the close of business the same day, please understand that we are working way into our night to meet your deadline. (our clients will tell you that is what we do). So please be nice when you are dealing with service providers from another continent. We are working long hours to deliver.

2) Language and Culture:

We are different. We see things differently.  We even have different words for the same thing.  A trunk in America and a boot in England and South Africa mean the same thing.  But a boot in America also means a boot in the rest of the world. When you communicate with us please understand that we do our best to interpret what you require. We are not trying to be difficult when we ask for clarification.   For us Please and Thank You is a very important part of everyday business. If we sometimes forget under pressure and come across really business – like, forgive us. Our culture one of trying to deliver.

3) Expectations:

This is a sensitive one. Work needs to be done on time and accurately. We all understand that. There is also only so much we can do. When our Receiver of Revenue says 21 days turnaround time, then no matter what your expectations are, there is nothing we can do. Shouting at us and putting pressure on us to get an answer does not work. We do understand that in your part of the world that would be unacceptable and you would get an answer a lot quicker. Sometimes we cannot meet your expectation through no fault of our own.  (our clients will tell you we do move mountains where we can).

4) Infrastructure.

It is a fact that infrastructure differs from country to country. Lightening fast internet is a given in certain countries. A postal system that works is another given. For a while a stable consistent electricity supply was a big challenge to South Africa.  We all have different environments we are working in.  We Know that a deadline is a deadline. But when the internet has gone down and you are working on a shaky 3G connection it takes a bit longer. A simple word of understanding sometimes goes a long way to keep us motivated to go that extra mile to make sure your accurate payroll is delivered on time.

5) Legal process.

As in your country, we too have laws that govern our payroll. We have laws for basic conditions of employment, we have minimum wages (depending on your industry) and tax laws that we need to apply to your payroll. At Paymaster we do not break the law. We will be legal and make sure all our clients are legal. Please understand when we say NO, we think that should not be done. We are only trying to look after your best interests.

Thank you for listening.

4 ways in which your payroll solution and increase productivity and improve efficiency

by with No Comment Latest Payroll NewsPaymasterPayroll

There is much more to running an efficient modern payroll and HR environment than paying your employees on time and printing payslips.

To reduce paperwork associated with your weekly and monthly wage and salary runs and automated system such as paymaster can bring considerable benefits as well as cost savings. Here are 4 ways in which your payroll solution and increase productivity and improve efficiency.

  1. Take it easy tax submissions

Every month South African tax regulations and labour laws become more challenging and complex, it never seems to end. There is so much to remember and manage in addition to PAYE, in South Africa there is UIF, the skills development levy and the employment tax incentive that needs to be fully and correctly accounted for. Something seems to change every year without fail.

When choosing a payroll package it is essential that it is tailored to meet local tax and the labour regulations ensuring all the often complex calculations are made to ensure on time and accurate submissions to SARS.  Your software should also be automated to ensure processing is performed using the latest software and legislation.  Getting the submission to SARS wrong can be costly with fines or even censure from SARS if incorrect or not submitted on time.

  1. Reduce the space for fraud and errors

Perhaps the greatest expense for any business is payroll and means fraud or just plain errors can be extremely costly. Your payroll should provide the information needed to keep a close eye on all transactions and impose checks and balances throughout the payroll environment.

The best solutions incorporate features such as bank account and ID verification from within the system that reduces the opportunity for fraud and closes the door on paying the money into the wrong bank account in error.

  1. Planning is important

It is not just about automating your business processes; automating your payroll is about providing management information. Your payroll systems contain valuable information that can allow your business to better manage employee performance for example, and allow you to see at a glance how the human resources in the business are contributing towards improved profits and allow for future planning where more staff are needed and show potential costs.

  1. Empower employees

Employee Self-Service is generally available is up to date payroll systems such as paymaster. This is a tremendous employee-self-servicehelp and time saver for the busy smaller business owner or manager who would otherwise spend too much time on the payroll processes taking him out of where he is needed most.

So much can be done through Employee Self-Service including leave applications, travel claim submission, downloading of current and past payslips and of course updating of personal details either on a smart phone or pc. With employee self-service there is no need to manually recapture any claims or submission as the system will automatically apply the updates.

These 4 features can bring about considerable savings in your business. Paymaster has the capacity to handle this for you, why not try paymaster today with a free demo.

Paymaster – Error Free Payroll!

The value of Paymaster co-sourcing over traditional outsourcing

by with No Comment Latest Payroll NewsPaymasterPayroll

The value of Paymaster co-sourcing over traditional outsourcing

When you make the decision to outsource your payroll the decision is made on the need for convenience, security, expertise and of course cost.  There are outsourced payroll solutions and then there are outsourced payroll solutions, all claim to offer the same but more and all claim they will save you time and money but do they really?

 

The overriding reason for outsourcing payroll and even HR is because of the skills or rather the lack of in-house skills or the cost of employing such skills. When a company reaches a certain point the cost of hiring the skills becomes more viable but for most companies the payroll and HR skills are just a little out of reach or the cost can be better used elsewhere, even for the company that does have HR staff and payroll managers the thought that it can be done in a more cost-effective manner has surely crossed one’s mind.

 

Outsourcing is one thing but partnering and thus co-sourcing with a payroll or HR solution provider is another thing all together.  Co-Sourcing is the Paymaster Unique Selling Point and the differentiation between it and other outsourced Payroll providers. Having someone do the work for you is a good thing but having someone do the work for you and with you is better, do you agree?

 

Yes, Paymaster will email the payslips and the required reports each month or as you require and then they deliver a little extra, the extra that makes all the difference not only in Payroll but for HR too.  Below is what differentiates Paymaster Payroll from the rest:

 

Description Paymaster outsourcing Traditional outsourcing
24/7 Secure Access to all your data Real-time Data .Full access to all your payroll and human resources information from any connection at any time, reports and data maintained in real-time, no need to wait for servers to be updated nightly May offer a limited online data entry portal to input payroll hours with some post-payroll reports at a specific day and time. Standard reports typically available next day.  May require that you call or fax in payroll information
Error Handling Identify any errors using pre-pay reports before you print and finalize payroll. Edit and recalculate an unlimited number of times at no extra charge. No significant time delay. Identify errors after payslips arrive. Extra charge to reprint checks. Payroll is delayed. Employees upset
Reporting Extensive, easy to read payroll and human resources reports. Plus custom report writer so you can create your own report now at no extra charge Standard basic payroll reports. Extra charge and significant waiting period to create custom report for you
HR Records Keep all H.R records on line. Easy to access all employee information on line including training and disciplinary record. HR functionality typically not available Some offer at extra charge
On line Documentation All original documentation uploaded to the cloud. Contracts of employment I.D Books, disciplinary records always available.

 

 Alternative: manual files in unsecured filing cabinet. Need a document – you need to get access to the physical file
Employee Self-Service Employee portal available as part of standard service; employees can view payslips, IRP5 certificates, leave balances. Apply for leave online and manage their biographical details Employee portal may be offered at extra charge, if available at all
HR and payroll Expertise andadvice Answers your HR and payroll questions from trusted experts in their field. Articles available as well as on line documentation free of charge Not offered or limited articles available at extra charge. Alternative: hire employment lawyer or HR manager.
Tax filing, UIF declarations as well as third party payments (pension, Medical, garnishee or industrial council payments) Sit back Relax Paymaster does it all including the reconciliations and query handling Handles filings and deposits.
Integrating Payroll Calculations into General Ledger Download file to import into industry standard accounting packages such as Pastel or QuickBooks Limited GL reports may be available for an extra charge for you to re-key into your accounting package
Extra Pay Run Run an extra set of payslips such as a bonus or commission payroll at no extra charge Extra charge for additional payroll run
Payslip Delivery Print any number of payslips when you need them Wait for payslips to be e-mailed or delivered.
Direct Deposit Unlimited to multiple employee bank accounts at no extra charge Typically offered for an additional charge. Often employees are limited to a number of accounts
Live Customer Support Customer support is handled by live personnel usually within 4 hours, sooner when urgent Customers support may be 24-48 hours by e-mail only
Pricing Flat fee per employee per month Easy to determine how much you are being charged. Basic fee with additional per-event  charges (such as reprints) typically with no cap or limits
Add New Employee to Pay Run Add a new employee to pay run. No extra charge Extra charge for new employees
Event Reminders Tag employee events so you will be automatically reminded of upcoming events such as employee reviews and training. Not offered. Limited to payroll only
Payroll administrators You will be assigned your own payroll administrator Whoever is available will process your payroll.

 

There is always a choice, there are other payroll providers however experience in the industry and the extra benefits of a solution from Paymaster are worth considering.  Perhaps it is time to review your Payroll partner and have a closer look at Paymaster.  With the additional HR Benefits, system functionality with trusted expertise Paymaster stands out as the only complete co-sourced solution with no hidden costs or fees and without the limitations other providers put in place.

Are you ready to consider Paymaster?

 

 

 

WELCOME TO THE NEW PAYMASTER WEBSITE

by with No Comment Latest Payroll NewsPaymaster

Paymaster, as you can see, has a brand new website and this opens up an exciting new chapter in our story. The new Paymaster website incorporates the old Paymaster and Paymaster Forum websites into one entity giving us scope to provide you with more.
Over the next few weeks this Blog will become a useful and valuable tool for those of you working in the payroll or HR industry in South Africa or for those of you with merely an interest. A Variety of topics will be covered with guest writers contributing; these articles will flow over into the Forums to become a very valuable resource.

The new Paymaster website creates a platform that positions Paymaster as an expert in the HR and Payroll industry and over the coming weeks a number of new concepts will be launched that are intended to be both informative and helpful. One of the new concepts will be the monthly webinars; a series of online presentations, discussions and even training sessions that will cover a variety of HR and Payroll matters as well as delve into the operations of the Paymaster system itself. In planning for these, input from our customers, prospects and those working in the HR and Payroll sector will extremely valuable and you are invited to send us your ideas on topics and matters you feel we should or could cover in these webinars – visit the contact us page on www.paymaster.co.za and send us your ideas.

Another feature of the website will be video tutorials, those useful “How to” videos that explain a little more about the Paymaster system for those using it, these videos will be exceptionally helpful in introducing new users to the system to complement their training. Watch this space.

An essential part of the new Paymaster image is the social media aspect of Paymaster. Our Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages are all being revamped and given a face lift. Our social media platforms will be the first place you will be notified of what is happening and we ask that you follow Paymaster and interact.

Paymaster has long been a trusted HR and Payroll Solution provider and we hope you like our new website, please provide us with feedback an d don’t forget to like us and follow us on social media.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions News Release

by with No Comment PaymasterPayrollPayroll Administrators

 

Cape Town. Paymaster has announced  a brand new employee claims module that will automate the employee claims procedure.

Employees can submit various expense claims for re-imbursement relating to, amongst others, travel, cellular calls, entertainment or even capture details relating to overtime worked. Specific detail can be recorded for each claim such as date, client, km’s travelled and rate per km for re-imbursive travel.

Depending on the role of an employee, workflow rules can be configured to move through a different number of approval steps i.e. a team manager may require an expense claim to move through 3 approval steps whereas a general manager may only require claims to be approved by 2 people. Employees are also able to attach documentation relating to the claim.

The capturing of expense claims by the payroll department is usually a tedious task that involves sifting through huge amounts of paperwork, spreadsheets and emails which poses a huge security risk in terms of unsecure data flying around the company. Furthermore, the information usually needs to be manually consolidated and imported via a batch facility to reflect on an employee’s payslip.

Karen Morrison, managing Partner says that “the most exciting thing about the new claim system is that we can customise what is part of the claim and then customise what needs an attachment and what does not.”

At a click of a button the monthly claim is summarised on one report. Once the claim has been approved by the immediate line manager it is work flowed into the payroll.

This product is available immediately and a demo can be arranged by clicking the link Free demo

Paymaster Payroll Solutions – International Profile

by with No Comment PaymasterProfile

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions is the leader in cloud Payroll and HR software in South Africa and Africa.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions will do everything we can to simplify Payroll while making sure that you always have access to your payroll and Human resource information by doing things more dynamically and more intelligently than ever before. It’s about access to relevant and valuable information at anytime, anywhere. It also gives staff member’s greater access to their payslip, tax information and HR data to reduce dependence on payroll and HR administrators.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions is a business tool that helps you grow and drive your business processes with the complete confidence that you are using the benchmark of today’s available payroll and HR management systems.

Over and above delivering world class easy to use functionality which delivers automated results, giving you your time back, we back it up with outstanding professional service and a vastly unique support model when you need it. (everything can be done via the internet- no more waiting for consultants to arrive on site – this is real time, now support)

 

International

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions has expanded its cloud based offering into 35 African countries. The countries that are currently included are Democratic Republic of Congo, Zambia, South Africa, Swaziland, Namibia, Lesotho, Botswana, Mali, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Ghana, Eritrea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Gabon, Senegal, Madagascar, Mozambique, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Tanzania, Cameroon, Mauritius, Angola, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania, Reunion, Malawi, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia and extending to the rest of Africa,  in the near future.

In order to deliver the best possible solution as well as comply with latest legislative changes, strategic relationships have been set up with various world-renowned global accounting firms and together with multinational specific functionality, Paymaster Payroll Solutions provides powerful delivery that assists clients in rolling out into international regions literally overnight.

Some of the features offered include:

 

  • All international legislation is automated and updated by Paymaster Payroll Solutions – Clients need not worry about understanding complex legislative rules.
  • Access to Payroll or HR functions from anywhere in the world – Paymaster Payroll Solutions cloud access eradicates the need for onsite admin personnel and allows all stakeholders; Administrators, managers and employees access at anytime and anywhere.
  • Advanced Expatriate functionality:

 

o   Paymaster Payroll Solutions covers the requirement for expats working in other countries to gross up their earnings by relevant statutory contributions according to currency and contracts offered in their home countries. This allows for simple conversion of net home to host earnings.

 

o   Expatriate tax management reporting offers home country currency specific tax year to date reports, providing expats with an abundance of information to complete personal tax returns.

 

  • Paymaster Payroll Solutions is able to supply employee and company-based reporting in host and home currencies, as well as comply with consolidated reporting in any currency required by the multinational’s headquarters.
  • Automated currency exchange rate conversions either on a monthly or daily basis for the entire multinational group. The choice of currency conversion information source is up to the client.
  • Workflow business process engines drive corporate governance and improve efficiency by offering limitless approval chains from initiator (employee / manager) to HR and Payroll admin. Clients can take advantage of the Paymaster Payroll Solutions technology to get data input from the source, electronically approve it in locations around the world through advanced workflow capability, and ultimately, process the information from anywhere in the world. Examples of business process workflow functionality include:

 

o   Onsite timesheets incorporating complex payroll interpretation of employee raw time and shift pattern capture either via online web capture or automated interfacing from access control systems.

 

o   Employee Claims and applications for advances or loans.

o   Annual increase review processes with automated increase letters and pre-payroll analysis tools.

o   Document approval workflow. o Performance evaluations.

o   Leave applications.

o   Recruitment requests.

o   Simple commission administration incorporating complex commission rules not exposed to end users.

 

  • Language and statutory specific reporting.
  • Simple employee transfer processes from country to country while retaining original employee number and biographical record.
  • Apart from offering all legislative payroll possibilities, country specific payroll collective agreement rules in industrial and mining sectors are also offered.

 

Employee Management

 

By handling the entire lifecycle process of any employee, Paymaster Payroll Solutions provides a centralised and cohesive solution to managing your workforce.

 

On-boarding – Manage the transition of any worker from applicant to employee through our recruitmentmodule, post a job vacancy, track interview dates with candidates, send regret letters automatically and get feedback electronically from interview panel. Paymaster Payroll Solutions contains a configurable workflow engine that will guide the user through specific forms to ensure that all required employee details are captured i.e. biographical details, dependant details, job title, cost center, reporting line manager, salary grade, package details etc

Employee Maintenance – Maintain employee details such as name, contact and address information orlet them do it themselves using ESS, record job history such as promotions, cost center changes, manage performance appraisals and full leave administration.

Record Additional Info – Record all disciplinary actions, track all equipment given to employees, recordtraining courses and associated costs, record an employee’s skills and qualifications.

Movement – Manage the movement of employees within an organisation, including transfers, promotions,and demotions.

Off-boarding –Manage the transition of a worker from employee or contingent worker to terminatedworker or retiree.

Work Flow – Administrators can configure and define workflow processes by choosing the type of inputthat needs to be gathered and consolidated from their geographically dispersed workforce. Examples of these include:

 

  • Annual salary review process
  • Employee expense claims
  • Commissions and overtime
  • Timesheets Leave approval

 

Client specific workflow approval chains can be setup where flexibility exists to create as many approvers as is necessary (based on security profiles). Initiators (employees or managers) of the data start the workflow process through online single view capture sheets. These sheets are then passed along the approval process where rejection and alternate approver options are in place (if an approver goes on leave and assigns this task to an alternate approver).

This information finally reaches payroll / HR who can then analyse and audit the input before influencing the payroll in real time by merely approving the batch.

Extensive audit facilities are available where administrators can investigate the details of what was captured for the month as well as pinpoint who or where outstanding batches are located in the process.

 

  • Notifications are sent to approvers and stakeholders throughout the workflow process through email and Paymaster Payroll Solutions inbox notification.
  • Furthermore, documentation and reports are available throughout the process that guarantees efficiency and stakeholder communication.

 

Examples of these include:

  • Automated Employee increase letters according to performance predefined templates
  • HR initiates the capture and it is completed by payroll who fill in the missing data
  • Commission and expense claim electronic sign off sheets
  • Budgeting reconciliation reports for the remuneration committee during increase process

 

Payroll

Starting from Scratch

Our product and technology teams had the luxury of designing and building Paymaster Payroll Solutions from scratch and were therefore able to create an intuitive and modern payroll solution. We threw out many legacy payroll approaches such as the month end pay-run concept and greatly simplified data capture by embedding legislation into the software thereby minimising the number of fields and forms that a user is required to fill in.

 

No Downtime

Paymaster Payroll Solutions has a real-time calculation engine which means that as input is added to the system, the relevant employee figures are automatically calculated. This means that there is no need to run a formal pay-run to close off or finalise a period at month end which usually means the entire business needs to log-off the system in order to perform calculations and do backups – this is an extremely time consuming exercise. With Paymaster Payroll Solutions there is no downtime and all users can access the system and pull relevant up-to-date reports at any time thereby maximising all users’ productivity.

 

Compliance

Paymaster Payroll Solutions helps you comply with all legislative requirements by automatically calculating the correct

 

PAYE, Social Security and Compensation funds figures. There is no need to download any “newversion” in order to update your software with the latest tax tables and legislative changes – you are always using the latest version whenever you log onto Paymaster Payroll Solutions. For the larger organisations we provide employment equity reports and a report for Statistics SA. We automatically declare all employees’UIFearnings to the Department of Labour so there is yet another task you no longer have to worry about. All leave payments are calculated according to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and Paymaster Payroll Solutions also caters for various tax calculation methods such as directive, director’s tax etc.

 

 

Year End Process in South Africa

SARS have released a software package called e@syFile to assist taxpayers manage their interactions with SARS quickly, easily and conveniently on their desktop. Paymaster Payroll Solutions provides an electronic file that can be imported directly into e@syFile, saving an employer all the effort of having to manually reconcile and submit their employees’ earnings to SARS.  Download e@syFile.

 

Payroll Processing

It goes without saying that Paymaster Payroll Solutions has all of the usual payroll functionality that is expected of most payroll systems, however, we have vastly improved the way in which typical tasks are performed on a monthly basis allowing the user to work more efficiently. Here is a list of some of the payroll features we offer:

 

  • Ability to pay weekly, fortnightly and monthly employees in a single company
  • Tax certificates are available instantly every period (not just at year end)
  • Ability to set up limitless earnings and deductions
  • Automatic backpay
  • Create limitless additional runs to cater for late payments, bonuses and commissions
  • Administer all components, funds and contributions etc on a single form
  • Administer changes directly on an employee’s payslip
  • Upload figures in mass via excel spreadsheet
  • Paymaster Payroll Solutions contains all medical aid rates, no need to obtain these manually
  • Draw a bank file for all major banks at the click of a button
  • Full audit trail on all forms
  • Schedule standard reports or draw immediately in pdf or excel format
  • Ability to cost figures to any cost center
  • Ability to configure your GL requirements based on cost center codes
  • Add components to employees via predefined templates instead of capturing one by one
  • A simple easy to use YTD take on facility is available so that 1 tax certificate can be produced
  • Full reconciliation and exception reports
  • Payslips in multiple currencies
  • Full history available instantaneously

 

Employee Self Service / Manager Self Service

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions is all about access to information and therefore employees are able to access their information at all times. Historical payslips are always available without the need to do perform a restore operation to obtain previous payslips.

Employee can also request that payslips be sent to their  mobile phones via a text message.

Payroll and HR departments do not get involved at all when it comes to providing employees access to their profiles, employees register themselves and define their own password hereby eliminating the maintenance burden typically involved with administrating employee self service.

Employees can apply for leave, access tax certificates and  capture expense claims that are sent via a workflow approval chain where the payslips are automatically updated without having to compile complex batch files outside of the system in order to upload into the payroll.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions has a configurable commission calculator that allows a manager to capture their teams  commission input whether it is monetary or unit based and Paymaster Payroll Solutions will automatically calculate the commission value based on the company’s commission rules and send it through a workflow approval chain where it is automatically added to the employee’s payslip.

Managers have a manager view screen which allows them to see the relevant information for the employees reporting to them and drill into the down line of employee’s within the employees reporting to their directly report to employees.

There is a manager change request screen which allows the manager to request changes to certain areas of the employees profile reporting into the relevant manager as well as the line of employee’s within the employees reporting to their directly report to employees.

Managers can define the relevant period ’s performance KPA’s for their employees and group them into relevant areas. These KPA’s then slot into the relevant area of the company/position template.

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions for Mobile Browsers

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions is the 1st Payroll and HR platform in Africa to offer Employee Self Service access to employees on smartphone and tablet devices.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions allows employees to access their details using any smartphone and tablet device without the need to download, install or upgrade a native mobile application. It looks and feels very much like a native mobile application except that it is deployed using the power of the web and therefore is accessible from anywhere in the world.

 

Job Profiles and Organizational Management

 

Getting a headcount should not be one of the most difficult questions to answer about your business, nor should detailing costs or spend by a department, region, or group. Paymaster Payroll Solutions enables companies to accurately model their company structures as well as provide information based on any organisational dimension.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions gives companies the ability to accurately represent their organisations structure and act on relative information in a timely manner. If you have a very simplistic structure, Paymaster Payroll Solutions hides the involved fields to allow you to capture your information quickly.

Multiple Organisation Types – Paymaster Payroll Solutions supports limitless organisation types which can all existsimultaneously and be updated independently from each other. Types include: company, department, region, division, cost center, business site and more.

Flexible Reporting Dimensions – Each organizational type can be used to segment data aboutthe company. For instance, users can analyse spending patterns by department, division, cost center, or region – Instantly.

Segmented Security Access – Organisations allow much more flexible distribution ofresponsibilities, allowing different individuals to have rights only to specifically assigned organisation units. Administrators can be granted access by individual department, region, group, or any other organisational dimension.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions enables companies to capture, track, and report on the current state of their business with confidence in the accuracy and relevance of their data.

Developing and defining accurate job descriptions as well as various requirements for each of the positions in the company plays an important role when measuring an employee’s performance and when the need arises to recruit for a particular position a job specification can be printed out immediately.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions gives companies the ability to store information relating to a position that includes overall purpose of the job, what grade the job is attached to, who the position reports to, what occupational category and level the position falls under which is critical for employment equity reporting and much more.

Companies are able to define the following detailed requirements and information for a position:

 

Skills Requirements – Indicate exactly what skills are required, how many years experience, whatlevel of competency and how important the skill is for the position by indicating a weighting figure.

Qualification Requirements – Record the minimum qualification requirements.

Outputs or Tasks – Define all duties or tasks that are expected of a position so that employees areaware of what they will be measured on when it is appraisal time.

Competency Requirements – Depending on which competency framework your company utilises,you are able to indicate what competencies are required for a position. This greatly assists in driving an interview in terms of what questions are asked to a candidate.

Other Requirements – Record any additional requirements that do not fall into the categories abovesuch as the position required a driver’s license.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions is not just an HR system, it is a comprehensive Human Capital Management solution.

Leave Management

Caters for Simplistic & Complex

Our leave module is all encompassing and extremely easy to use. Whether your company offers stock standard statutory leave accruals or if your requirements are more advanced such as multiple annual leave types with complex non-accumulative forfeiture rules, Paymaster Payroll Solutions can manage your leave processes while integrating to Payroll seamlessly.

 

Great Flexibility

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions delivers pre-configured statutory leave on top of which users can also configure as many additional leave types as necessary in accordance with simple or complicated leave policies. Leave can be given upfront or accrued in units such as days or hours. More advanced accrual definitions can be based on length of service or salary grade.

Forfeiture rules are flexible and can be configured to drop off completely or shift leave to different leave buckets based on anniversary date or a fixed date for all employees.

Advanced settings allow users to restrict negative leave, only accrue leave for new employees if they joined before a certain day of the month, ability to toggle mandatory attachments and much more.

 

Access to Information

 

Employees can view current and projected leave balances when applying for leave, cancel leave, attach any supporting documentation to leave requests as well as channel a leave request through an approval path according to simple reporting lines. More advanced workflow configuration is also available where administrators can define unlimited workflow approval paths.

 

Seamless Integration with Payroll

 

Automated accurate payroll leave provision calculations are fed directly via the leave administration module where any fluctuation in employee leave balances translate into accurate provision costing for budget purposes. Upon termination, automated leave encashment options can be utilised where the user can firstly, view the amount of leave pay, perform the necessary payout, and reduce the leave balance accordingly – all in a single action.

Vast flexibility is also available with regards to defining leave pay income. Although the BCEA averaging leave pay income requirement is a standard delivered feature within the product, Paymaster Payroll Solutions allows the user more flexibility around averaging options.

 

 

Recruitment and Selection Management

 

Automate Your Entire Hiring Process

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions allows you to automate your entire hiring process from requisition, placing an advert, response handling, scheduling and tracking of interviews, electronic panel feedback and onboarding.

 

Requisition

 

Administrators are able to create a vacancy that is linked to a position and upload a requisition form that can be sent to the relevant parties for approval via a workflow process. Once approved, high level qualification questions can be attached to the vacancy to immediately rule out candidates that do not meet the minimum requirements.

 

Job Advertising

 

Jobs can be advertised internally via the careers dashboard in Paymaster Payroll Solutions and can also be placed externally on the company’s website. Candidates are able to apply for a position by entering their details and uploading their electronic resume after which they will receive an SMS confirming receipt of their application.

 

Response Handling

 

Candidates can be short-listed based on their resumes and templated regret emails can be sent to unsuccessful candidates. Interviews can be scheduled and managed for each phase of the recruitment process and for each candidate individually. Interview panel members are attached to each interview and are also invited to attend electronically. Once the interview has been completed, panel members are sent an electronic feedback form where they are able to rate the candidate. The vacancy owner is in turn notified via email and is able to view the consolidated feedback in order to make an informed decision.

 

Onboarding

 

Once the successful candidate has been identified and signed an offer of employment letter, the candidate can immediately be enrolled as an employee where Paymaster Payroll Solutions will ensure all necessary information is captured via a workflow guided process.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions improves the turn-around time of placements by providing a single integrated system for management of both internal and external recruitment, ensuring an efficient, streamlined recruitment process is maintained throughout your company.

 

 

Performance Management

 

Effectively Manage your Organisation’s Performance

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions has a comprehensive performance management tool that will assist an organisation in assessing their employees and ultimately help to develop, motivate and retain a high performing workforce all year round without the added burden and cost of a separate appraisal system.

 

For Large and Small

 

We have created a powerful combination of features that is easy to use and affordable for any size business. It is equally important to have a performance appraisal process in place for a small business as it is for a large organisation and by using Paymaster Payroll Solutions’s evaluation module you will have the benefit of powerful software usually only available to large organisations due to the cost factor. Employee performance appraisals shouldn’t be a dreaded task that yields a lot of paperwork and little value for your organization, we guarantee that the Paymaster Payroll Solutions evaluation tool will greatly streamline performance appraisal processes within your organisation and reduce HR’s administrative burden.

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions lets you:

 

  • Create your own company appraisal processes that can be actively monitored i.e. 2010 Annual Performance Appraisals.
  • Create company key performance indicators (KPI’s), attach them to a predefined process and using our performance dashboard, visually see how these indicators are performing based on predefined targets across departments or cost centres. Areas requiring attention will be highlighted immediately.
  • Create an unlimited number of appraisal templates from scratch. Templates can be position or job specific or simply general templates that suite all employees. Assign relevant weightings to sections of the template that indicate higher importance than other sections.
  • Create your own scales that are relevant to a specific areas or questions, for example, 1 = Unsatisfactory, 2 = Below Average, 3 = Average, 4 = Above Average, 5 = Excellent – this scale could be used for a variety of questions where as, 1 = Did not meet expectations, 2 = Met Expectations, 3 = Exceeded Expectations could relate to project specific questions.
  • Automated 360 degree evaluations – get broader, richer “multi-rater” feedback without the processing hassles. Raters will be notified via email that they need to assess a person, they simply need to login into Paymaster Payroll Solutions and complete the evaluation in their inbox. It is all online therefore you eliminate all paper!
  • Managers can define the relevant periods KPA’s for their employees and group them into relevant areas. These KPA’s then slot into the relevant area of the company/position template.
  • Managers are able to view all raters’ feedback.
  • Employees as well as managers are able to log entries throughout the year in an employee’s performance journal so that at appraisal time these are taken into account.
  • Log goals and create development plans for an employee and review these at the employee’s next appraisal.
  • A complete history of an employee’s appraisals or reviews are stored and can be viewed at any time.

 

Moving from a paper based to an electronic performance appraisal system saves time, money and significantly improves the evaluation process for both the employee and the organisation.

 

 

Skills Development Management

 

Manage a Skilled Workforce

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions assists companies in managing their workforce’s training requirements by enabling users to create training courses and capturing details such as course cost, NQF level, credits, whether the course is SAQA registered and much more.

Companies are able to build up a qualifications and skills repository that in turn is linked to employees so that employees can quickly be identified when specific skills or qualifications are being looked for.

 

Set Employees up for Success

 

Easily schedule employees for training, inform them electronically and monitor their progress. View an employee’s skills gap analysis against a specific position’s minimum requirements to assist in creating a career development plan to help them integrate into the company and their role.

Paymaster Payroll Solutions also provides various reports to assist you in completing annual training reports and compiling workplace skills plans.

 

 

Reporting

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions comes with the ability to view, analyse, and take action on data right from the source in real-time. Available to both line managers and power users, anyone can use our packaged reports to get the answers they need to do their jobs more effectively.

Types of reports range from various costing reports, HR related reports such as new engagements and terminations, leave balances report, training reports, employment equity reports, Payroll reports include variance reports between periods, garnishee reports, group life and pension reports, SDL and UIF reports and much more. All reports can be drawn in a number of formats including Excel and PDF.

Users are able to draw reports for data they have access permissions to and filter the data based on the organisation structure. Users are also able to schedule reports so that they are delivered to their email at the close of every period automatically. These reports are secured in a password protected zip file ensuring confidentiality.

 

Accurate Historical Data

 

Reporting on historical data is instant, there is no need to restore any backups to retrieve information. Paymaster Payroll Solutions has the ability to report on historical data based on an “as at” date, this means that reports being pulled for previous months will reflect data as if you were physically pulling the report in the past. For example, if an employee’s cost center changed in June, the report will reflect the old cost center for reports pulled for periods before June and the new cost center for reports pulled after June.

 

 

Cloud Analytics

 

Cloud Analytics delivers true self service BI that empowers users by driving innovative decision-making. It lets you interact with data without limitations to generate insight in ways you never imagined. It delivers answers as fast as you can think up questions. Explore data, make discoveries, and uncover insights that enable you to solve business problems in innovative, new ways. Conduct direct and indirect searches, and interact with dynamic dashboards and analytics from any device. You’ll gain unexpected insights with Paymaster Payroll Solutions Analytics because it works the way the mind works.

User accessibility

 

Secure for Every User

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions offers a flexible security model that functions on a “what you can see” and a “who you can see” basis. Depending on the type of users you have in your company, various security roles can be defined where permissions are allocated that restrict users to selected screens or provide read-only access. Furthermore, users can be restricted to only see employees that reside under certain orgnisation units based on your organisation structure. If you have more than one legal entity or frequency, you can further restrict users on these levels.

 

Embedded Auditing

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions tracks all changes to data on every form in the system, meaning customers can view who changed or inserted data and on what date. Audit trails are available on each form as well as a report to check all changes for a particular period.

128 bit SSL encryption is present on every form within Paymaster Payroll Solutions – this means your information is encrypted during transmission from our servers to your browser. Further to this, Paymaster Payroll Solutions has various world-class security measures in place to ensure the protection of your data.

 

Top Class User Experience

 

When a company effectively and successfully redistributes responsibility to all employees, a business culture based on real information and informed decisions is the result. The delegation of administrative tasks to employees and managers, enables both HR and IT to refocus their attention to more strategic, bottom line issues. The Paymaster Payroll Solutions user experience is singularly focused on extending access to every user while ensuring simplicity is always at the forefront in the execution.

 

 


 

Security

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions is a fully web based system.

Security is critical for any organisation. Paymaster Payroll Solutions security goes far beyond what most companies have been able to achieve for themselves. Using the latest firewall protection, SSL encryption, and proprietary security products, Paymaster Payroll Solutions gives you the peace of mind that only a world-class security infrastructure can provide.

Security is a multidimensional business imperative that demands to be considered at every level, from security for applications to physical facilities to network security.

Here is an overview of how we handle security at various levels.

 

Protection at the Application Level

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions protects your data by ensuring that only authorized users can access it.

 

  • Paymaster Payroll Solutions provides each user in your organisation with a unique email address and password that must be entered each time a user logs on.
  • Paymaster Payroll Solutions issues a session “cookie” only to record encrypted authentication information for the duration of a specific session. The session “cookie” does not include either the username or password of the user. Paymaster Payroll Solutions does not use “cookies” to store other confidential user and session information, but instead implements more advanced security methods based on dynamic data and encoded session IDs.
  • All access to Paymaster Payroll Solutions is governed by strict password security policies and all passwords are stored in encrypted format in the database.
  • 128 bit SSL encryption is present on every form within the system – this means your information is encrypted during transmission.
  • Administrators can define security roles and attach users to these roles. Roles can be defined to restrict or allow users to any form within the system
  • Administrators can give users access to view specific employees that are in turn attached to organisation units defined on company level. This restricts users to only see employees details in specific units.
  • All employee self-service users are only able to view their own profiles.
  • Reports that are emailed to users are sent in a password protected zip file. o An audit trail exists on every screen for traceability purposes.
  • Paymaster Payroll Solutions uses safe bank EFT transfer technology to receive information and to interact with the banks for bank account validations.

 

Protection at the Facilities Level

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions utilises one of the most modern data centres in South Africa. The security in the data centre consists of visible and invisible physical measures and other facilities to guarantee an uninterrupted service.

 

  • Paymaster Payroll Solutions is backed up every 15 mins to an offsite backup server and every evening a full backup is also done.
  • No public access – Public access to the hosting facilities is strictly forbidden.
  • Video surveillance – Live video surveillance of the entire data centre is in place 24 hours a day. All entrances are monitored to the data centres to ensure that only authorized personnel enter them.
  • Access cards – A data-centre access proximity card system represents the second layer of security for entering the data centre. Access to the data centre itself is restricted to Certified Technical Points of Contact.
  • Biometric security – Biometric security systems are the third layer of security for entering the data center. Biometric hand scanners are used to restrict access to the data centre and only Certified Technical Points of Contact have use of the biometric hand scanner system to enter the data centre.

 

In addition, the following safety and redundancy measures are in place to ensure continuity and stability at the data centre:

 

  • Redundancy – All critical systems in the hosting centre are redundant, and there are regularly audits and tests on all data centre systems to ensure their readiness and smooth operation. (N+1 redundancy indicates having a complete replica of the system in place, as backup should the primary system fail.)
  • Environmental monitoring – The data centres have N+1 redundant heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems to ensure that, even in the event of a system failure, the hosting environment will not be affected. The data centre also has an advanced fire-suppression system in place to contain fire.
  • UPS (uninterrupted power supply) systems – The power systems are designed to run uninterrupted even in the event of a total power outage. All production systems in your hosting environment are fed with conditioned UPS power that will run whenever utility power fails. The UPS power subsystem is N+1 redundant, with instantaneous fail-over to generators to ensure continuity.
  • Diesel generator systems – Onsite diesel generators automatically start up in the event of a power surge or interruption in the power supply. The power and generator systems are regularly tested to ensure that they function properly in the event of a power failure.

 

Protection at the Network Level

 

Paymaster Payroll Solutions uses proven security practices to ensure network security.

 

  • Paymaster Payroll Solutions utilises a perimeter firewall that protects our network from malicious or unwanted behaviour from traffic entering our network as well as keeping our network safe from Zero Day attacks, DOS (denial of service) and DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks, spoofing attacks and malicious code.
  • Our Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) is a network security service that monitors network and/or system activities for malicious or unwanted behaviour and can react, in real-time, to block or prevent those activities.

 

 

 

McAfee Vulnerability Scanning Process

 

Audit – Port Scan

 

The first audit phase is a thorough, interactive port scan. Accurately determining which ports on an IP address are open is the crucial first step to a comprehensive security audit. The McAfee Secure proprietary firewall and IDS/IPS aware network discovery technology is designed to accurately map out any size or complexity of network topology. This is often not a simple process. Unlike most scanning solutions based on Nmap, our advanced dynamic port scanning can handle all targets, from desktop PCs to the most aggressive firewalls, IDS and IPS systems.

 

Audit – Network Services Scan

 

During this second audit phase of the audit process, McAfee thoroughly interrogate each service running on every available port to determine exactly what software is running and how it is configured. Once this information is acquired it is matched to their Knowledge Base of vulnerabilities in order to launch additional application specific and generic tests of each available service. These tests are based on their extensive knowledge base of over 10,000 vulnerabilities, which is updated every 15 minutes.

 

Audit – Web Application Scan

 

Web application testing is the third audit phase of the McAfee Secure daily security audit, and perhaps the most important. According to analyst firm Gartner Group, an estimated 70% of all security breaches today are due to vulnerabilities within the web application layer. Traditional security mechanisms such as firewalls and IDS’ provide little or no protection against attacks on your web applications. During this testing phase, all HTTP services and virtual domains are checked for the existence of potentially dangerous modules, configurations settings, CGIs and other scripts, and default installed files. The web site is then deep crawled, including flash embedded links and password protected pages, to find forms and other potentially dangerous interactive elements. These are then exercised in specific ways to disclose any application-level vulnerabilities such as code revelation, cross-site scripting and SQL injection. Both generic and software specific tests are performed in order to uncover misconfigurations and coding error vulnerabilities.