There was a time in the dim and distant past when all payroll processes were handled manually. This was one of the first areas of business to be outsourced and automated. It is not hard to understand why. Asia’s booming business hubs have attracted a spectrum of international businesses. Achieving a high level of payroll performance in the Asia region presents challenges for organisations of any size. From Multinational Corporations to established medium enterprise players. What are the advantages for payroll outsourcing?
Payroll is inherently complex, whether you are an employer with a handful of employees or a multinational with thousands. It has becomes difficult to keep a track of local regulations and laws related to payroll. Multi-country payroll outsourcing providers have the required expertise to handle such difficulties.
The major advantages of multi-country payroll outsourcing:
• Companies opting for multi-country payroll can benefit from the proven track record of the payroll providers in extending solutions fitting multiple clients. The one-to-many approach.
• Use of powerful tools, by multi-country payroll outsourcing providers can help deliver consistent levels of service in various countries. The shared environment also aids cost effectiveness.
• Another point is that the capability of servicing multiple clients at the same time and on the same platform. They are more likely to have optimized technical and human resources.
• Organisations opting for payroll outsourcing also benefit from the economies of scale.
• Help companies reduce the time spent behind implementation of changes by using a template-based approach. This also drives methodology and facilitates implementation in each country.
Before setting off down the road towards multi-country payroll, take a deep breath, and try to keep your expectations realistic. The market is responding with a host of technical and outsourced administrative solutions that have been discussed at length above to assist global organisations. They offer differentiated solutions designed to support the specific operating environments of any of the multi-country payroll operating models.
Managing Payroll
Managing payroll is a highly meticulous task. Even the most seasoned payroll professionals may make mistakes from time to time due to the ever-changing payroll legislations and large volumes of employee data. It is imperative to ensure that payroll is done precisely and accurately. The most minor error could potentially result in expensive damages for the organisation.
Some organisations believe that the best way to manage payroll effectively is to run payroll in-house. This allows them to be in complete control of payroll processes. However, payroll processing is often not as basic as it seems especially when handling large volume across different regions.
Here are some of the top 3 challenges that most payroll professionals face on a daily basis and how to effectively address them:
Adhering to ever-changing payroll legislations across the region
Payroll legislations across all countries are constantly changing, adding on to the complexity in processing payroll. According to research from TMF Group’s 2020 Global Business Complexity Index (GBCI), legislative complexity associated with HR and payroll varies considerably between different jurisdictions. It then falls upon HR to ensure that they constantly keep abreast of the changes in payroll legislations across the region to ensure compliance with the respective laws and regulations. Majority of the time, non-compliance can result in hefty fines imposed on the organisation.
Given the challenge in having to stay up-to-date with legislations that are constantly evolving, the common solution that most payroll professionals turn to is outsourcing their payroll function. By engaging a third-party payroll vendor, it eliminates the need to constantly monitor the individual country’s payroll landscape for any legislative changes. Most payroll vendors are able to stay on top of any major or minor payroll changes and incorporate any changes into their payroll software. This helps to ensure that organisations who utilise their payroll software comply with the ongoing changes in payroll or tax legislations.
Processing payroll for high volumes of employees
Processing payroll consumes a large chunk of time. This is because there is pre-work such as timesheets and data changes consolidation that has to be done before the payroll run. It becomes even more time-consuming if there is a need to process payroll for a large group of employees. The time spent on reviewing the accuracy of payroll records, employee timesheets to salary calculations and deduction, and compliance with statutory laws and legislations. All these hours can be used to help support the business in terms of growth and expansion.
By engaging an outsourced payroll vendor, these administrative tasks can be passed on the vendor. The payroll vendor will be responsible in ensuring accuracy and compliance. Companies who use Human Capital Management (HCM) software may face the challenge of synchronizing their employee data on the global HCM system with the payroll data in the local payroll systems. Maintaining accurate employee data across multiple systems, often manual re-entering. Some may upload the same employee data from one system to the other. It can result in the loss of several days of HR productivity each month as well as manual mistakes. Some companies outsource this process to payroll vendors to helps ensure that the right employee and payroll data is fed into internal systems. Through state-of-the-art data integration technology, some payroll vendors may have their payroll system integrated with the HCM system. This enables easy transfer of data between the platforms.
Poorly-managed payroll workflow process
Payroll is a time-sensitive process and a small delay can result in inaccurate salary disbursement and unhappy employees. As with the case of unskilled staff and an inadequate payroll system, a disorganised payroll workflow process can be highly disruptive. This may result in payroll mistakes and create opportunities for fraudulent activities. Have a standardised payroll workflow and ensure that there are appropriate controls in place. Concurrently, enforce these standard operating procedures on your staff to minimise the risk of payroll mistakes.
Secondly, leveraging on an outsourced payroll provider helps to automate these administrative tasks. This helps ensuring that payroll and employee records are accurately entered into the system. Payroll software providers also use a cloud-based platform, which provides an added layer of data security to protect sensitive information.
i-Admin is a leading regional payroll outsourcing provider, serving a wide range of clients across Asia. From local SMEs to global Fortune 50 companies. Our proprietary technology platform offers payroll solutions to 15 countries all around Asia. Furthermore, we also provide a singular web-based platform to deliver online Human Resource modules. This includes electronic payslips and employee self-portal to our clients’ employees.
We are fully aware of the plethora of payroll providers in the market. However, what makes us unique and distinct from the rest? Here is our value proposition and the suite of payroll and HR solutions that we offer:
Regional presence across Asia with local support
There are only a handful of outsourced payroll providers that have the capability to support multi-country payroll processing. i-Admin happens to be one of them. On top of payroll processing, our suite of HR solutions includes employee pass administration services and employee self-service portals to support your organisation’s cross-border HR needs.
In addition of the regional coverage that we provide, we also have local support teams to provide on-the-ground customer service. We understand that language barriers and differing time zones can sometimes add on to existing HR frustrations. We provide our clients with local customer service support. This provides that assurance and rapport in terms of understanding local practices and cultural norms.
