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between these. You can calculate an employee’s payroll with 100 per cent mathematical accuracy. You can calculate their tax correctly, deduct their social security contributions correctly, calculate their net pay correctly down to the last cent and generate the bank file without a single error. But if that employee does not actually exist, the sum of all those correct calculations still produces the wrong result. That’s why I believe the payroll system of the future should not only be a calculation system, but also a verification system. Identity data, bank accounts, contracts, commencement of employment, time records, social security declarations, tax records, organisational structures and historical payroll movements can be assessed not as independent records, but as different pieces of evidence of the same reality. And AI can be used here not only for automation, but to identify inconsistencies between these pieces of evidence. Perhaps in the future, when payroll closes, the system will not simply tell us:
Most payroll systems today operate on the assumption that the data they are given is correct. If an employee’s identity has been entered, the employee exists. If an IBAN has been entered, the account is correct.
operate on the assumption that the data they are given is correct. If an employee’s identity has been entered, the employee exists. If an IBAN has been entered, the account is correct. If a salary has been entered, it should be paid. If an employer has been set up in the system, the employer exists. The system generally asks: “Was payroll calculated correctly based on this data?”
The system of the future will have to ask a second question:
“Is this data correct?”
And perhaps even a third:
“Does this data make sense in the real world?”
There is an important difference
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GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE ISSUE 28
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