04:05 GLOBAL
The name on an employee’s bank account may not match the name on the payroll An employee’s pay may have changed to an extent that cannot be explained by their position or previous pay periods The same employee may appear more than once across multiple companies, branches or cost centres A person may be receiving payroll payments while there is no corresponding trace of that person in tax or social security records The number of employees may have increased unusually within a month without any corresponding new-hire activity to explain it The payroll total and the total of the payment file sent to the bank may be identical, while the accounts to which the money is distributed have changed Some of these are simple data errors. Some are process errors. Some are integration problems. And some are not errors. They are fraud. This, I think, is exactly where one of the most interesting uses of AI in payroll will begin. Most payroll systems today
I think the true value in the payroll systems of the future will come not from calculation, but from verification. Because calculating a false reality perfectly does not make it real.
For example: Multiple employees may be receiving their salaries into the same bank account The same identity or Social Security number may have been used for multiple employees An employee who has left the organisation, or even died, may remain active on the payroll Anyone who remembers Milton Waddams from the cult classic film Office Space may find this scenario familiar. Milton had been laid off years earlier, but due to a glitch in the payroll system, he continued to receive his salary. Milton was real. The company was real. The payments were real. The employment relationship wasn’t. A person shown as an employee in the system may have no employment contract or personnel record supporting their employment
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GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE ISSUE 28
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