Payroll Nightmares

I have recently been ranting about faulty G/L packages.  Now it’s time to turn my attention again to . . . . . 

I have recently been ranting about faulty G/L packages.  Now it’s time to turn my attention again to the sorry situation with Payroll packages.  Of all the financial packages Payroll is perhaps where the most improvement is needed. 

Here are some payroll points to ponder:

Can you believe that some payroll packages don’t distinguish the different status classifications that an employee may have?  Magically, they are either Active or Terminated!  What about on L.W.O.P., COBRA, Family Leave, Part-Time, Full-Time Exempt, Full-Time Non-Exempt, etc.?  Without this distinction certain benefits cannot be offered, leave balances may not be computed correctly, pay cannot be correctly computed, and the list goes on.  Without proper status codes the payroll application cannot process employees without manual intervention.

In addition, most payroll applications can’t handle multiple state income tax calculations within the same dataset!  If you are processing payroll for offices that are in different states, the payroll application software and data files will have to be duplicated in another dataset for each different state.  That means separate runs for each occurrence!  Another example is what professional sport teams have to deal with when they play away-games in another state.  Reporting these earnings to state and federal agencies becomes an even bigger nightmare!

Another pain in the backside is the inability to “post date” tax tables and pay rates.  In other words, you need to have the ability to set up new tax tables or a pay rate increase in advance and have it become effective on a given date.  We also need an “obsolescence date” to disable a table or rate when no longer active.

Now you have to remember to make table and rate changes between payrolls.  What happens if you have to re-issue a check that was originally issued with the old rates?  Tax tables and pay rates must be date driven!

Most current payroll applications are so terrible they shouldn’t be on the market.  Frustration with this situation just keeps building because developers don’t care! 

Stay tuned.