This is a collaborative post
The moment that you hire a single person into your business, you need to have a payroll system in place. What’s more, it needs to be such that you can expect your people will be paid properly. That means paying them well, paying them fairly and equally, and paying them on time. All of this is essential if you want to make sure that you are looking after your employees well, so it is not something you can risk overlooking. In this article, we are going to take a look at some of the things you can do to make sure that you are on top of your payroll. We will do this by discussing some of the most important aspects of any payroll system. As long as you are aware of and take care of these four things, in particular, you should find that your payroll is much more in control.
Monitoring Attendance
In order to make sure that you are not over- or under-paying your staff, you need to keep track of their attendance. The more fully that you do this, the more likely it is that you will keep everything in control, so it is important to find a good system for monitoring this. In very small businesses, if there are only a few of you, you might be able to do this manually, or even via an honour system if you trust your employees particularly well. However, once you have a bigger business, you will probably find that you need to find other, more trustworthy ways to monitor attendance, which could be time clocks for small businesses or some other similar means. With time clocks, you can make sure that your people are working the hours they should, and that you are paying them for the hours they worked. Clearly, that is an important way to keep on top of your payroll, and not something that you should overlook.
Paying Right
If you ask your employees, the most important thing that they will think of when it comes to payroll is that they are paid a good amount for the work they do. Getting this right is actually much more of a challenge than people tend to think, and it means that you are going to need to work on looking into what kind of pay people generally expect for those roles. Researching other businesses and how they pay their staff is an important first step here, but you should also ensure that your own employees are genuinely happy with what you are offering them. So you need to make sure that you ask around in your company too, otherwise, you can’t be certain that you are going to pay them what they feel they deserve. As long as you get this right, you will be keeping your employees happy, and your payroll will be much more successfully adhered to.
Recording Payments
You might feel that it is enough to make payments to your employees and then simply hope that it all works out. But there are many ways in which it might prove important that you keep records of those payments. For instance, an employee might have a grievance or might not have received payment for some reason, and in those cases, you will need to be able to show that you definitely paid them. As such, you will have to ensure that you keep records of all payments that you make to your employees so that you can know that it is definitely safe and done, and you can show them as and when it might be necessary. You should keep those records for many years, just in case you need them further down the line. In many places, the legal minimum is seven years. As long as you keep records well, you are generally going to be in a much better position.
Knowing Legislation
There are many kinds of legislation that you need to try and be aware of if you are to keep on top of your payroll, and it is a good idea to think about looking into this if you want to make sure of that early on. Not paying enough attention to the appropriate legislation is one of the quickest ways to get into trouble with your payroll. Besides, that legislation generally has a way of encouraging best practice, so it is in your benefit to pay attention to it for that reason anyway. Make sure that you are aware of these things early on.