9 payroll tips to set you up for success in 2024
Payroll
Author
Laura Bohrer
Date published
03.01.2024
Good payroll management is critical to business success. Timely and accurate payroll processing increases employee loyalty towards the company, ensures compliance, and helps maintain the financial integrity and stability of the organization.
Making improvements in how you manage payroll should therefore be a top priority if you want to start the new year strong. Here are nine payroll tips that will set you up for success in 2024.
1. Make a plan for checking for legal changes in payroll
Employment law changes or changes in compensation and taxation rules often affect payroll. In order to remain compliant, businesses need to adapt their payroll systems and processes in a timely manner.
The only way to avoid oversights in payroll compliance and prevent fines is to keep up to date with legal changes. A valuable payroll tip for 2024 is to create a schedule for checking for legislative changes that affect payroll. Alternatively, you can invest in a good payroll software that is regularly updated by the software provider.
2. Set up a comprehensive payroll and compliance calendar
If you haven’t done so already as part of your year-end payroll checklist, you should start the new year by setting up a detailed payroll and compliance calendar. The calendar should provide a comprehensive overview of your payroll schedule and all important dates relating to payroll compliance.
Dates and information you should add to the calendar include:
Due dates for tax filing and reporting,
Public holidays,
Cut-off dates for payroll,
Pay dates,
Reminders to check for legal changes,
End dates of pay periods, and
Quarter closing dates.
3. Check if payroll outsourcing is an option
Payroll outsourcing can save businesses a lot of time and money. Also, putting payroll into the hands of an experienced payroll provider reduces compliance risks. For instance, payroll vendors are typically better informed about legislative changes that require the payroll department to take action.
If one of your New Year’s HR and payroll resolutions is to improve your payroll compliance, then you should definitely make a start on researching payroll outsourcing options that suit your business needs. First, however, you should assess whether outsourcing really is the right option for you. Check out our comprehensive list of payroll outsourcing questions.
4. Start conducting regular payroll audits
Ensuring payroll compliance is crucial and many businesses strive for optimizing their processes in this regard. Other than outsourcing payroll processing to an external expert, businesses can conduct regular payroll audits to detect and correct payroll errors, prevent payroll fraud, and ensure employment law compliance.
A payroll audit is a strategic assessment of all your payroll data, processes, and records. During the audit, you verify that all your processes are compliant and that all your data, payroll records, and files are in order. Introducing regular audits is a great way to start the new payroll year strong.
5. Diversify your payment options
The ultimate goal of processing payroll is to get employees paid accurately and on time. But there is another aspect businesses often forget about when it comes to paying employees. How you pay your employees, that is through which payment methods, is becoming increasingly important.
If you not only want to process payroll accurately in 2024, but also improve the payroll experience for your employees, you should diversify your salary payment methods. For instance, you could consider implementing Earned Wage Access (EWA) or introducing a payroll card to give your employees more flexibility and reduce financial stress.
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6. Integrate your payroll and HR systems
Payroll and HR integration is a hot topic for businesses. Integrating payroll and HR systems offers a range of different benefits. For instance, integrated HR and payroll systems enhance the employee experience, put an end to duplicate files, and save businesses valuable time that would otherwise be spent on manual data input.
There are different payroll software integrations businesses can implement to create seamless workflows and enhance the efficiency of their processes. They include time and attendance management, HRIS and HCM, accounting, and expense reporting.
7. Implement payroll analytics
Whether they are used for workforce management or payroll, analytics tools can be real game changers for businesses. Both payroll and people analytics can provide you with valuable insights to make informed business decisions.
For example, overtime hours and overtime payments can tell you which departments are understaffed and should be prioritized in your hiring and recruiting strategy. Additionally, gaining detailed insights into payroll costs can help improve your financial planning and budgeting.
8. Aim for pay transparency
Pay transparency is a heavily discussed topic. Openly disclosing information on salaries used to be almost unthinkable. But as the voices demanding more transparency in compensation are growing louder and an increasing number of countries are enacting pay transparency laws, businesses have no choice but to follow suit.
There are different approaches you can follow for implementing pay transparency in your organization. For example, you can include salary information in all your job descriptions or publicly share salary information on your website for everyone to see. Aiming for more pay transparency in 2024 could not only help you attract more talent, but could also reveal hidden gender pay gaps that diminish the fairness of your employee compensation strategy.
9. Think about payroll as a strategic asset
Payroll is more than just a way of getting your employees paid. In fact, payroll holds incredible strategic value for businesses. Leveraging the strategic potential of your payroll will allow you to take your payroll to the next level.
In concrete terms, this means:
Aligning payroll with your company vision and business objectives,
Collecting, consolidating and analyzing payroll data,
Making payroll reporting available to key stakeholders,
Following a strategic approach to payroll management, and
Enabling payroll managers to provide strategic guidance to the business.
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