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

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

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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.”

Empowering your line-managers, freeing-up your payroll staff

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In a recent Accenture report entitled The Platform Economy, it was revealed that “81% of executives say [that] platform-based business models will be core to their growth strategy within three years.” This interesting claim makes it clear that managers and business owners have recognised that an excellent software platform may well be a significant contributor towards the ensured longevity of an organisation’s success.

Whether you’re a business owner, a manager or supervisor, we can all identify with the frustration of having to find and/or collate information in order to make a necessary business-related decision. For this reason, since your time is precious to you, pressure rapidly accumulates when you feel that your time is being misspent. When your employees demand immediate answers, there is no greater frustration than having to stop what you’re doing, in order to find the relevant information that your employees are pressuring you for.

Disempowering situations result in frustration

Now, cast your thoughts back to the countless, tedious authorisations and forwarding of claim documents that you’ve had to attend to. Or the innumerable leave forms that you’ve had to forward to your payroll department. (Come to think of it, perhaps we ought to spare a few sympathetic thoughts for payroll departments everywhere!)

For example, have you ever been in the situation where—when busy with the planning of your staffing schedule—you’ve had no clue which of your staff will be taking a period of leave?

Or, have you ever attempted to resolve an overtime-related remuneration query without having due access rights to the necessary system records in order to troubleshoot the query? Does this not compel you to take a walk to your payroll department so that they can provide you with adequate additional information in order to be able to resolve the staff query that you’re dealing with?

Similar examples abound: trying to (manually) run the company’s performance evaluation process, or trying to report on staff-performance trends for the past three years, or being charged with accountability of an entire recruitment campaign that necessitates the collation of several interviewers’ interview notes.

Paymaster understands and identifies with your frustrations

At Paymaster, we understand and certainly do identify with some of the frustrations that you may well continue to experience.

Paymaster understands that you fairly acknowledge that you know you’re expected to ‘deliver the goods’, regardless of these frustrations. After all, as a salaried manager or supervisor, you’re employed to make a significant difference within the organisation despite these frustrations. And, if you happen to be the business owner, Paymaster also understands that you’d much rather be spending most of your valuable time ‘steering the ship’ (i.e. your own business) into the exciting unchartered waters of optimal future profitability and future organisational success.

At Paymaster, we understand that your job-portfolio places a high priority on achieving results which will most likely be measured by successes that are best recognised on the bottom line.

Paymaster understands that your valuable time and energy is of paramount importance to your organisation too.

Empowering your line-managers and freeing-up your payroll staff

You’ll be pleased to know (possibly you’ll even be a bit surprised to know), that Paymaster offers you access to a leading (comprehensive) software platform that has been designed to automate the management of your business’ human resources administration and payroll processes. It’s a matter of fact that the Paymaster system may well turn out to be a significant contributor to the longevity of your organisation’s future successes.

Bottom-line: the net-effect is that you will be empowering your managers and freeing-up your payroll staff, thereby allowing them to get on with more relevant and engaging management imperatives and payroll priorities.

What does the Paymaster human resource software platform involve?

The Paymaster human resource software platform provides the assurance that all aspects related to the human resources within your organisation will be adequately managed. For example, this includes taking control of your organisation’s payroll process, …right through to the budgeting exercise for new vacancies.

[tweetthis remove_twitter_handles=”true” remove_hidden_hashtags=”true” remove_hidden_urls=”true”]The Paymaster [Human Resource Software Platform] assures that human resources will be adequately managed. [/tweetthis]

A special feature of the software platform involves facilitating the management and tracking of a full recruitment campaign: beginning at the start (with the creation and placement of a recruitment advertisement), all the way to the scheduling and recording of employees’ exit-interviews.

The Paymaster human resource software platform is a “One system, One platform, Accessible to many” software platform.

Would you like to find out more? For an in-depth overview of the Paymaster human resource software platform, simply click here for all the details.


Conclusion

Once you’ve implemented the Paymaster human resource software platform at your company, your line-managers and payroll staff will without doubt be significantly more empowered because:

  • They will have significantly more free time to invest in working on tasks and projects that are of priority benefit to the organisation.
  • They will have to endure far less frustration, because the organisation’s human resources information will now be more easily and readily available at the mere click of a few (keyboard) ‘buttons’ (i.e. ‘right at their fingertips’).
  • They will be significantly more motivated because they would have gained the pleasure of being able to quickly and easily resolve HR-related enquiries.
  • They will be operating a software platform that maintains the strictest security and confidentiality of all HR-related
  • They will have complete peace of mind in knowing that all HR-related procedures are being followed, and that all HR-related documents will always be comprehensively completed and duly authorised.

What more could you wish for? Nothing really, because the Paymaster human resource software platform has got it all.[1]

↔◊↔

 [1] There are significantly more benefits and functions than this article covers: in addition, the Paymaster human resource software platform includes the following 5 solution categories: budgeting, position management, recruitment, performance evaluation and training. See brochure for more.

Would you like to know more? You are invited to contact Ian who will be happy to reply to any additional questions that you might have.

 

Which employee-related records must I keep in order to sleep peacefully at night?

by with No Comment EmployeesEmployersLatest Payroll NewsPayrollPayroll AdministratorsPayroll TipsUncategorised

An organisation has a legislated obligation to keep employee-related records

South African legislation makes it very clear that you, the employer, have an obligation to keep employee-related records. You need to make sure that the paperwork is accurate, on time, and available to your employees, to you company-representatives, and to any government representative who may request these during an inspection/audit.

Therefore, knowing exactly where everything is filed (whether it be manually or electronically filed), no doubt makes prudent company sense.

Two methods of filing exists: the ‘old-fashioned’ manual filing method, and the more contemporary electronic document filing method.

Allow me to proceed by discussing which employee-related records need to be filed, and who may request audit-access to these filed documents that ought (at all times) to reside in your organisation’s secure document archives.

What needs to be filed: BCEA-related?

A good start is to to turn to the Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75, of 1997 (BCEA), which informs us of the statutory requirement to have a written contract of employment. This contract ought to include the following details:

  1. the full name and address of the employer;
  2. the name and occupation of the employee, or a brief description of the exact type of work/duties which the employee was hired to perform;
  3. the place of work, and, where the various locations where the employee is required (or permitted) to perform his/her duties;
  4. the date on which the employment contract commenced;
  5. the employee’s ordinary “hours of work” and “days of work”;
  6. the employee’s wage (alternatively, the contract to stipulate the rate and method to be used in order to calculate his/her wages);
  7. the rate/s of pay for overtime work;
  8. any other cash payments that the employee is entitled to;
  9. any payment ‘in kind’ that the employee is entitled to, as well as to clearly state the monetary equivalent-value of this ‘in kind’ method of payment;
  10. how frequently remuneration will be paid (i.e. frequency of payment intervals);
  11. any deductions to be made from the employee’s remuneration;
  12. the exact categories/types of leave which the employee is entitled to;
  13. the period of notice required in order to terminate the employment contract, or if employment is for a limited/specified period of time: the date upon which employment contract ceases;
  14. a description of any bargaining council or sectoral determination that governs further regulations specific to the type of business/organisation which the employee works at;
  15. any period of employment (with a previous employer) that may need to be factored into the employee’s new employment contract;
  16. a list of any other documents that form part of the contract of employment, whilst also indicating where the employee may (reasonably easily) access a copy of each of these documents.

Once an employee’s service with the organisation ends, record of his/her contract of employment must be archived for a period of three years after their leaving.

More filing needed: all hours worked and remuneration paid?

The organisation is compelled to keep a comprehensive set of records of all employees’ monthly hours worked and full details of remuneration paid to each and every employee:

  1. the employer’s name and address;
  2. the employee’s name and occupation;
  3. the period for which the payment is made;
  4. the employee’s remuneration in money; (e) the amount and purpose of any deduction made from the remuneration;
  5. the actual amount paid to the employee; and
  6. if relevant to the calculation of that employee’s remuneration
    • the employee’s rate of remuneration and overtime rate;
    • the number of ordinary and overtime hours worked by the employee during the period for which the payment is made;
    • the number of hours worked by the employee on a Sunday or public holiday during that period;

This aforementioned information must appear on each employee’s payslip. Every single employee must be given a copy of their payslip (which may be done during working hours or within 15 minutes after the employee’s shift has ended).

The organisation is compelled to keep archival record of these documents for a period of 5 years.

Lastly, an inspector (that has been legally and duly appointed in terms of the BCEA) may enter the organisation’s premises at any time, without a warrant or notice, and proceed with a compliance audit. It is incumbent upon the organisation and its representatives to prove that all employment-related records are accurate. Dependent upon the type of contraventions that may be discovered by the inspector, the BCEA provisions for a punitive fine of up to R 500 per employee (and/or a period of imprisonment for up to three years).

[tweetthis remove_twitter_handles=”true” remove_hidden_hashtags=”true” remove_hidden_urls=”true”]No filing records: contraventions discovered by an inspector, may attract a fine of up to R 500 per employee… [/tweetthis] Consequently, prudence seems to lie in preparedness: Paymaster recommends that you ensure that your employee-related records are always duly filed (manually, or electronically) and are in order for possible inspection/audit.

Thankfully, Paymaster (after many years of professional service to its clients) has gained the experienced capacity to help make your organisation’s record-keeping an easy, effort-free enjoyment. With an automated payslip process, Paymaster keeps all your essential and valuable employee-records online (safely and securely stored in the Cloud). These records are readily and easily available (at the click of a button) at any time.

Sleep easy at night, without worrying about that BCEA inspector’s ‘knock on the door’!

Further great news: you may elect to process your payroll, Paymaster can do it all for you, on your behalf — a fully outsourced and comprehensive solution for your organisation.

Whatever you decide to choose, be assured that Paymaster has your organisation’s employee-related record-keeping needs fully covered. Ultimate peace-of-mind for you!

Payroll Professionals: the capstone human resource in an organisation

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Do you desire to be known as the ultimate payroll professional?

Do you wish to be the ultimate ‘go to’ person in the payroll department? Similarly, do you dream of being that ‘one particular person’ within your organisation, that is truly indispensable to the running of the business?

This is possible and it ought to be an achievable reality too.

Payroll professionals need to boldly step up to the plate. The payroll professional is an essential component within the smooth-running operations of most enterprises. Long gone are the days where the payroll clerk merely occupies desk-space, punching numbers (whilst apologising for getting in the way of the other business functions).

The time has arrived for the payroll professional to be recognised! All too often, in the past, the payroll clerk was only ever noticed when mistakes were made. But not anymore! The payroll professional is the much-needed capstone human resource within many types of organisations.

3 building-blocks: relevance, indispensability & being pro-active

The primary building-blocks of any payroll department comprises its relevance, its indispensability and its ability to be pro-active when business challenges arise. Without these building-blocks, the modern payroll department will not survive the contemporary era of automation and process-driven payroll operations.

Relevance

In everything you do—as a proud payroll professional—strive always to make your contribution relevant. Be sure to have accurate, correct facts and figures at your fingertips. Be ready to highlight the relevant challenges being faced (and how to possibly address these challenges):

  • Alert management to increasing overtime spends, particularly if it is leaning towards becoming a trend.
  • Raise an early white flag when you sense that labour-turnover rates are starting to look problematic.
  • Sound the alarm bells when new legislation stands to impact an organisation and its employees.

In order to make a relevant contribution, line-management oftentimes inadvertently forgets that the payroll department requires a wealth of rich meaningful information. The payroll professional should never have to repeatedly beg for information from other departments within the organisation. To be relevant, you need information — make sure you get the relevant information, on time, all the time.

Indispensability (your absolute necessity) to the organisation

Work towards gaining a thorough personal understanding of the human resource production line, right from the very beginning through ‘til the very end — from preliminary planning phases, to recruitment processes, …right through ‘til possible termination phase. This fosters and entrenches your indispensability to the organisation.

Importantly, don’t settle for only knowing how to operate your payroll software, but strive to master your use and understanding thereof. Once you’ve mastered this, you naturally become the central resource (information-hub) which others will feel drawn towards. For example, make it your primary speciality to know exactly how to set up a new employee record, …how to create an interview appointment, …or, how to issue the query for that complex management report.

Remember this: the line-management function prefers to manage. Intricacies and details of the payroll system is not their forté or interest — it’s yours, the payroll professional. Make sure that your indispensability comes from your special expertise.

Be Pro-active

The ability to be a pro-active payroll professional takes nothing more than a little well-considered thought and the ability to think ahead (i.e. planning).

Some common-sense examples include, the setting up of regular (and ad-hoc) meetings, …provide feedback on changes, …‘walk the floor” and/or engage others via e-mail, …start your own departmental Facebook Page, …use instant messaging to communicate with your employees (nowadays a standard built-in function with many payroll software packages).

Pro-actively build relationships with your various customers. Be sure they know what you expect from them. Remind them of what you consider to be your definition of outstanding service delivered to them.

Pro-active payroll professionals:

  • Expect to see the consequences of today’s actions, materialising sometime in the near or distant future.
  • Are expected to prepare management reports before being asked to prepare them (an automated feature which payroll software is easily able to do).
  • have forward-looking, forward-thinking minds, particularly when it comes to planning for public holidays and unexpected work stoppages.
  • Always think about next month (and next year) while processing the current payroll.
  • Are always anticipating the unexpected to happen — if the unexpected does indeed happen, it’s bound to be at the worst time. The pro-active payroll professional knows this.
  • Always double-checks their outputs/work — …“always reconcile and balance” is their trusted motto.

The payroll professional truly is (and always ought to be) the capstone human resource within the organisation.

 

Bottom line: The payroll professional actively works towards wanting everybody in the organisation to confidently say, “To be sure, let’s ask our payroll professionals first”.

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

Can your payroll do this? Report writing

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Cloud Analytics – you have not seen anything like it! Watch the video here.

Reports are critical to making sure that we in the payroll department can feed management with the information that makes sense. You know, as I do, that a lot of time is spent on creating reports for management. They need this information to make decisions regarding the employees of the company. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to find information for management or having to spend hours capturing data when the information should be available in the payroll.

So can your payroll…

.      Export to excel, Microsoft word or ascii file?

2.      Can you choose the time period for the report (total salary in January 2013)?

3.      Can your managers access their reports anytime anywhere?

4.      Can you print by department or region?

5.      Can you roll up all different payrolls into one report (wages, fortnightly, monthly)?

6.      Can you roll up different legal companies into one report?

7.      Can you schedule the payroll to e mail the report to you every month?

8.      Is every report customisable with a tick of a box?

9.      Does your payroll print all the legislative reports ( UI19, Statistics SA report, COIDSA report, employment equity reports)

10.   And then does your payroll have cloud analytics?

 

Payroll Administrators as Financial Counsellors

by with No Comment Financial CounsellingPayroll Administrators

We have all seen the tears and anger from employees who are struggling to meet their financial commitments and who are weighed down by debt or the need to keep the payments going to support the children. Employees do expect you to lend a sympathetic ear. They also expect you to help, if you can.

Be a Professional Payroll Administrator

5 areas of financial expertise.

  1. Garnishee Orders: This has become a serious issue in our country. Please understand how to process these efficiently, making sure that we do send the money on time to avoid extra interest. Keep a check on the balances to make sure we do not over deduct from the employee. You should be on the employees side.( I will be writing a newsletter on garnishees once the new regulations have been published.
  2. IT88a: I know the employee should know better, but when we receive an IT88a we should communicate with the employee and assist them to deal with SARS. It may not be your job but going the extra mile won’t hurt.
  3. Maintenance Payments: Please, let’s make sure the right magistrate’s court is paid the money and proof of payment is sent to the court. If you want to go the extra mile, send the proof of payment to the employee.
  4. Debt Counseling: Some companies are good some are bad. Some have great administration systems some need a lot of help. It would be good to investigate a few and to be able to refer employees, who need help, to a reliable well managed debt counseling service. It will make you feel great to know that you are helping this employee by referring them to someone who can be trusted.
  5. Budgeting: Teach your employees to budget. Download a how to budget work sheet from the internet or draw up your own booklet that will assist them to manage their finances.