FEATURE INSIGHT
were paid four-weekly prior to being transferred onto NPS. Historically, some of them had submitted their timesheets for the four weeks together, but though this practice had not previously been an issue it was going to bring to light a ‘feature’ of the NPS that had not previously been encountered. On receipt of three or more timesheets from a relief signalman in the week of transfer to NPS, it was necessary to extend them all and combine them into a single or multiple timesheet set. However, as part of this it was also necessary to remove from the total payable hours the basic hours for two weeks, which I did. (The NPS would advance the missing two week’s pay – in other words, payment in arrears and for current weeks.) However, inevitably there were some errors (e.g. wrong rate of pay applied), but I recall receiving five queries that substantial underpayments had occurred. Checking initially a few of these revealed and confirmed that though all the due and payable hours were shown on the payslip, the cash amounts shown for them were considerably lower than they should have been. How could this be, as nothing like this had previously occurred in the implementation? Using the cash amounts in the payslips I reverse-calculated the hours that had been actually ‘paid’ and established that in each of the five cases there was an underpayment of exactly 166 hours 40 minutes. This is a strange but precise amount, but there is a simple – though not obvious – explanation. I remember my manager almost joyfully telling me and my colleagues the
explanation that he’d obtained from the computer centre. The time ‘lost’ equates to 10,000 minutes (166 × 60 + 40) which is the maximum prescribed in the computer programme as payable for one week’s timesheet. The payable hours from the combined timesheets had breached this amount causing a reset to zero with only the excess actually paid. If you think about it, it would be very unlikely (and very undesirable) that anyone would work every hour of every day in a week: 7 x 24 is 168 hours – so, 10,000 is a reasonable limit. This was my first encounter and lesson with programming ‘features’, but it served me well in later implementations. Computer ‘mistakes’ are almost always caused by programming. Features of 1971 AEOs My second memorable event occurred when a query fell to me to resolve. An employee at one of the stations had lost a lot of his pay and there seemed no obvious explanation. I checked his payslip for the current week and noticed a sizeable deduction for an attachment or earnings order (AEO). Searching his personal file revealed it was a priority type AEO made many months underpayment of exactly 166 hours 40 minutes ... in each of the five cases there was an
previously under the Attachment of Earnings Act 1971. At the time I had no idea what this was. Working back through the employee’s payslips for quite a few previous weeks I saw that for many of them no deduction had been made. I located the last time a normal deduction had occurred but for several weeks after this no deduction had been made because of the employee’s low earnings due to absence through sickness. Prompted by this I read the notes accompanying the AEO and then began calculating the effect of low pay for several weeks followed by normal earnings on the person’s return to work. During the period of low pay arrears of protected earnings and the normal deduction had built up, with the former being progressively cleared after the return to work until the point when arrears of normal deduction kicked in with a significant deduction. The deductions were accurate; and if weekly earnings stayed unchanged the arrears would be cleared within two weeks. All I could do was contact the employee’s manager and explain what had happened. It was up to him to decide whether to make a ‘loan’ to help the employee. Ever since this particular event I have had a fascination with AEOs whatever shape/form they take. n Your first time The Editor would be delighted to receive an account of your first time participating in a payroll software implementation project for publication. Please email editor@cipp.org.uk .
Some interesting years 1944 – The paper-based pay as you earn system for collecting income tax from employees’ wages begins. 1951 – (1) First sale of commercially available general-purpose computer in UK. (2) UNIVAC introduces the first magnetic tape storage device. 1954 – Lyons Tea Company starts payroll processing on LEO – Lyons Electronic Office – a computer it modelled on the Cambridge University EDSAC (electronic delay storage automatic calculator) computer. Later, LEO was offered as a payroll bureau service. 1956 – (1) Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology experiment with direct keyboard input to computers. (2) IBM (International Business Machines) ships RAMAC 305 computer system based on the new technology of the hard disk drive which is capable of storing about five million characters of data allowing real-time random access to large amounts of data. 1958 – Phone companies develop digital transmission for internal uses – specifically to put more calls on each of the main lines connecting their own switching centres. 1961 – Demonstration of timesharing systems that enable many users to share a computer. 1962 – IBM 1311 disk storage drive with a removable disk pack is announced. Each pack weighed about ten pounds, held six disks, and had a capacity of two million characters. 1968 – The bank automated clearing service (BACS) commences.
| Professional in Payroll, Pensions and Reward | April 2019 | Issue 49 44
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