Last winter my heater stopped working. Now, in true DIY fashion, I decided this was my opportunity to learn all things HVAC so I started down the Google rabbit hole of searching for all the ways I could fix my own problem. I read a lot of articles, watched countless hours of videos, and eventually began my journey as a master technician. I troubleshot and tinkered; I tweaked and tested, and after WAY too much time dedicated to this new adventure, I learned an extremely valuable lesson: something that is hard for me to fix, is really easy for the pros! After just one call to my HVAC guy, my house was warm and toasty once more. Who would have thought that the pros know better than me?!?
Thankfully, I don’t work somewhere that requires me to know about HVAC systems, but I do get to be a part of an expert team that solves all kinds of complicated payroll issues. In our implementation process, one of the questions that we ask every client that we bring on board is, “Do you have any unique ways you pay your employees?”
We ask this question because often we find that people put Band-Aids on payroll problems instead of fixing the underlying issues (think of a bunch of space heaters around the house instead of a working heater). Workarounds can be great, but in the payroll world where a typical person is pulled in a million different directions, oftentimes at a moment’s notice, they can become a hassle to keep up with and usually require less than ideal processes to administer.
Below are some of the common issues that come up and how we solve these problems for our clients.
“Exception to the Rule” Employees
Do you have any policies where everybody is included except for maybe a few people? For example, everybody participates in a group life plan except for the executive. Or, all employees get paid mileage – except for my admin team. Most employers do a good job of remembering the “except for” employees when they start a policy like this, but that memory fades as time passes. In our world, we create rules around these policies that automatically apply when you bring on a new “except for” employee, and the best part, you don’t have to remember!
Scheduled Pay Items
Another common issue we see is where certain pay items (think commission, bonuses, expense reimbursements) need to trigger on a frequency that is different from the regular payroll checks. For example, I want to pay out a monthly auto allowance on the first payroll of the month instead of breaking it out evenly over every payroll. You can see the issue here, it requires someone to always remember to add the pay on one check and remove it on others. Again, this is something we put rules around so that you never have to think about it again.
Premium Pay
Premium pay problems are some of my favorite issues to solve because these can create the most headache and typically involve a lot of manual work before we take over. I remember one client we brought on that paid an additional $150 every Saturday when an employee had to clock in. Each pay period, they had to go back to their calendar, find all the employees that worked on a Saturday, add the $150 bonus, and then do manual calculations to see if Overtime was impacted. Once we got a hold of it, all of that was completely automated! From shift differentials, worked holiday premiums, or even after-hours pay, we have a solution that will save you time to focus on more important work.
Do you have unique payroll problems? Let’s find a solution
Just like how my HVAC guy could quickly identify my problem and get me back working in no time, the team here at Whirks specializes in these more complicated payroll issues. After all, it is what we do day in and day out. You might have unique payroll problems that you didn’t see addressed in this post. We want to hear about them.
Think you have something too complicated? Try us out. Let us know the issue, and I can almost promise you it isn’t something we haven’t seen before, and better yet, have a solution for. We’re ready.
