Confessions of a payroll manager – Pay attention!
Another episode in a series of occasional yet insightful/inciteful, anonymous and whimsical reports revealing the arcane, weird and sometimes torturous world of payroll frequented by payroll professionals. D uring those rare quiet times in payroll you can sometimes find yourself doing a bit too much ‘wool gathering’ and not paying enough attention to detail. This time last year I was taught a lesson – which I won’t soon forget – about the dangers of complacency and daydreaming. I thought I’d share what happened, and maybe stave off something similar happening wherever you are on planet payroll. I’m sure you all have tasks that you do so often it becomes automatic. When walking to work daily I set off and, so it seems, the next minute I’m there – but with almost no knowledge of how it happened. To a payroll manager, payrolls are very much like that. After you’ve done them for long enough it almost feels like they run themselves. But, actually, you know what? They really don’t. Regardless of how many times you do them you must never take your eye off the ball. Payrolls are a little like chocolates (just go with me on this). You don’t dislike any of them but there will always be a favourite and even one you tend to forget exists; it’s the Picnic bar in chocolate terms. At Crumbitt’s, the Picnic bar of payrolls is a small payroll with only five people dating from a decade ago when Mr Crumbitt took over a small local company, Tip Top Toppers, that makes novelty pencil toppers. The staff TUPE’d over and have remained
on their own little payroll ever since. Tip Top Toppers (TTT) sit at the end of my checklist of jobs. I always leave this payroll just for me as it only takes a few minutes to run the calculations and generate the BACS file. Once – and ironically, given what happened – I joked with the team that I could run the TTT payroll blindfolded; it was that quick and simple. We never heard from the TTT employees other than at Christmas when we would get a card that they’d all signed. A good job done easily. Well, the lesson of this story is never become complacent. It was the day before pay date and I was at my desk running the nominal interface when suddenly I had that feeling of being at the top of some polished wooden stairs in fluffy socks. As my sense of unease increased I did what all list makers do when feeling discombobulated – I checked my list. My eyes raced down the list of ticks settling on an empty box at the bottom: ‘Run TTT’. I hadn’t run their payroll! I remembered that when I’d been finishing the payrolls, Jace had wanted some help with a P11D query that took longer than we thought and really knocked me out of rhythm. (And we might have also been a bit distracted by a round of teas, a box of misfit biscuits and some new photos of Albert.) I quickly opened the payroll and set it running which as a start made me feel a little better but we had no chance of getting the normal BACS file to the banks on time. I sent Billie to the finance department to see what we could do to get a payment there for the next day. I was a little on edge waiting for her return, and I almost felt like
my reputation as a payroll manager was on the line. When Billie came racing back it was a moment before I clocked her smile and knew that they’d sorted something out for me. There’d be a slight extra cost, but in times of crisis getting people paid takes priority. My amazing team did what they do best and buzzed around to make sure that the paperwork was with finance and I went home that night a relieved – and very grateful – person. There was never any comeback on that incident. Indeed, as far as the employees at TTT were concerned, everything was as normal – they got paid, so all was well. Only we knew the frantic scramble that enabled that to happen – and only I knew the heart-thumping panic of nearly leaving these lovely people without pay. We got a Christmas card from the TTT staff last year, along with some free samples of their bestselling pencil toppers for 2018. It was a sweet gesture and one that serves me well as I always keep my green long- armed-alien topper on my pencil to remind me to always check my checklist. I’ve been running payrolls for years but complacency can be sat outside the department knocking to come in at any time. So, if you’re like me, get yourself a pencil topper and never forget to pay attention! o The Editor: Any resemblance to any payroll manager or professional alive or dead, or any payroll department or organisation whether apparently or actually portrayed in this article is simply fortuitous.
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | March 2019 | Issue 48 54
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