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Payroll beginner - training and advice?

Gemma

Hi all,

I recently took on a new role as HR Manager (UK) for a tech sector employer with 100+ employees in the UK and a HQ in NL. Although there was no mention of payroll in the job description, and even at offer stage, it became clear when I took on the role that I was expected to take on payroll responsibilities for the UK.

We have two payrolls, one for 2 staff and one for everyone else.  Prior to this role, I've never operated Payroll before and was clear at interview that I had no Payroll experience.  I have taken over from an HR Director who had Payroll experience and ran the Payroll through an outsourced bureau for a few months.  

The main duties are putting together a big salary spreadsheet with all the starters, leavers, overtime, commission, and any changes and then checking the reports which are returned from the bureau.  We don't have an HR database so I have to use a range of different documents and data to ensure the data I am inputting is correct. I also have to check my own work when the reports are returned from the bureau and forward on reports to various other people such as our Finance team and pension provider.  On a personal level, I find this to be a very time-consuming task (it takes me about a day a month to do the processing and about another day or so a month to check the files and deal with any queries out of 20 available days) with the attention to detail it needs a really poor fit for my skills.  Additionally, I have a major concern about the risks inherent in allowing an essentially untrained person to carry out an important task with no checks and balances in place.

I have a couple of questions I'd appreciate an objective view on from you, my lovely Community colleagues:

1.  Is this normal or am I making a fuss over nothing?

2. Is there some training I could do which would help me in this task?

3.  How typical is it for a small employer with an HR team of 0.8 and a Finance team of 6 to delegate this task to HR?

4. Is there any other advice you can offer me to help me feel less stressed about this task?  Every month I have an absolute horror that I will make a mistake.  The first month I did it, I had a horrendous night's sleep as I was so worried about it.  I have made a few minor errors and I am constantly discovering new aspects to Payroll that I knew nothing about.

Thanks for your time in reading this post and please be gentle, this is probably the first time in my HR career I have taken on a new task which has made me feel so vulnerable and inexperienced!

Kind regards,

Gemma

Parents
  • HI Gemma
    Congrats on the new job. I have looked after payroll at my last 3 places of work and its similar to what you describe, where payroll is outsourced but I have to do all the work of putting the reports together to send out then check then when they come back in and pass on to relevant departments. We operate three payrolls UK and Euro monthly and UK weekly and have approx. 85 employees and 0.5 HR with 4.8 in finance.
    I find it time consuming as well and even yet I still dread the phone ringing a day or two after payday encase its an employee with a pay query.
    However the difference is that I was aware prior to starting that I would be responsible for payroll. My first job which entailed payroll was a maternity post and the HR manager was supposed to do a hand over which would have involved training but she went off early with complications so I had to just get on with it and hope for the best. I spoke to our payroll provider for guidance and also looked at past reports and crossed my fingers and toes.
    Eight years on I just accept it as part of the job and I think a lot of company's would view this as HR rather than finance role, we know when someone is off sick, on maternity, leave of absence etc so it makes sense to them for us to adjust payroll. My GM doesn't want some employees in finance to have individual salary details or details of bonuses so makes more sense to keep it with me.
    RE training I got no formal training but did speak in detail with our payroll providers when I started this post 3 years ago and also as you do the job every month you gain more confidence and can adapt the reports to suit you to make it easier if you have to copy the info into other reports. I found that our payroll provider needed need a detailed report each month and we devised a form with all employees names, employee number and cost code so that only adjustments were included. Speeded up things at her end too
    Good Luck
    Tracey
Reply
  • HI Gemma
    Congrats on the new job. I have looked after payroll at my last 3 places of work and its similar to what you describe, where payroll is outsourced but I have to do all the work of putting the reports together to send out then check then when they come back in and pass on to relevant departments. We operate three payrolls UK and Euro monthly and UK weekly and have approx. 85 employees and 0.5 HR with 4.8 in finance.
    I find it time consuming as well and even yet I still dread the phone ringing a day or two after payday encase its an employee with a pay query.
    However the difference is that I was aware prior to starting that I would be responsible for payroll. My first job which entailed payroll was a maternity post and the HR manager was supposed to do a hand over which would have involved training but she went off early with complications so I had to just get on with it and hope for the best. I spoke to our payroll provider for guidance and also looked at past reports and crossed my fingers and toes.
    Eight years on I just accept it as part of the job and I think a lot of company's would view this as HR rather than finance role, we know when someone is off sick, on maternity, leave of absence etc so it makes sense to them for us to adjust payroll. My GM doesn't want some employees in finance to have individual salary details or details of bonuses so makes more sense to keep it with me.
    RE training I got no formal training but did speak in detail with our payroll providers when I started this post 3 years ago and also as you do the job every month you gain more confidence and can adapt the reports to suit you to make it easier if you have to copy the info into other reports. I found that our payroll provider needed need a detailed report each month and we devised a form with all employees names, employee number and cost code so that only adjustments were included. Speeded up things at her end too
    Good Luck
    Tracey
Children
  • in reply to Tracey
    Hi Tracey,
    Thanks for your comments and support, I really appreciate them.
    I haven't found our Payroll bureau to be very helpful so far and their attitude hasn't always been the most cooperative. Fear of pay queries is a big one for me too!
    Yes, I think it is a big issue to me that I wasn't seeking a role with Payroll and had in fact actively deselected roles that had Payroll in them because I didn't think it was a good fit for my skills. I am still negotiating with my manager whether there is any lee-way for Finance to become more involved but they are reluctant despite the comparative team sizes. Finance have access to all salary and bonus information as they process the payments, so there is no confidentiality aspect to sharing data with them - they receive the processed reports every month for their accounts!
    I'm sure you are right and in time I will gain confidence - unfortunately for this situation (although fortunately for me) I will be on maternity leave from August which gives me a few more months to struggle on before someone else takes over.
    Thanks again,
    Gemma