Use Automated Time & Attendance Tracking To Avoid Salary Overpayments
Posted by Siddharth Deb
Tuesday, July 23, 2013
Time and Attendance Management
Recently, human errors in payroll processing, combined with audit failures, led to overpayments amounting to over £70,000 being kept by employees of the Rutland County Council in the United Kingdom. This happened despite an internal audit of their payroll system conducted a year ago, which found significant weaknesses in the time and attendance tracking system in use, though the errors went unnoticed until a staffer discovered them a few months later.
Points of Failure
Upon subsequent investigation, it was discovered that these overpayments occurred and went unnoticed from as far back as 2009, because their system did not have the ability to account for certain contractual conditions, such as overtime not being applicable to employees once they reached a certain salary level. This is why Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs department has reminded payroll administrators that: “It is important to record the correct number of hours your employees have worked to help ensure that they receive the right amount of benefits and tax credits they are entitled to.”
We can safely assume that this is not an isolated incident, and that overpayments happen often, in companies and organizations both large and small. The blame can be squarely laid on manual time and attendance tracking practices, which are fraught with errors due to the dependence on manual inputs and processes. What can organizations do to stop payroll losses through overpayments? The solution calls for automation of time and attendance tracking, which not only takes away the possibility of human error, but also provides a plethora of benefits.
Proven Returns
Studies have shown that adoption of automated timesheet and attendance tracking not only improves productivity, but also promotes compliance with workforce regulations and provides transparency into scheduling and time off data. With intuitive user interfaces that encourage employees to report time and attendance on a regular basis, and reminders to speed up submissions and approvals, HR and Payroll managers are relieved of the burdens of processing manual timesheets, allowing them to focus on their primary tasks.
With cloud-based automated systems, companies can benefit from:
- Eliminating manual processes
- Minimizing human error
- Stopping salary overpayments & time theft
- Improving scheduling
- Improving compliance with regulations
For a more in-depth look at ROI from automated workforce productivity solutions such as Replicon’s, please read our informative White Paper.
