In this article
If you are new to processing payroll yourself or have been doing it for a while and want to make sure you are making the most out of Pento, this article will provide some handy hints and tips on how to help make payroll processing smooth and efficient.
1. Bulk upload what you can
The ability to bulk upload various pay items in Pento is a great time saver. There is no point in bulk uploading 80% of the items and then manually adding one or two here and there because there are only a few of each of those. Those 30 seconds here and there soon add up.
Remember, you can upload multiple pay items or amounts on one sheet - you don’t have to do different sheets for different pay items if you don’t want to. So get all the variable data on one sheet and upload it in one go!
2. Create a template for variable data - and duplicate it!
Just because your variable data comes from various places in the business, for example, your Site Managers may collate overtime, but the Head of Sales authorises commission, it doesn’t mean you have to be the one getting the info from Slack or emails and populating your variable data upload sheet.
Create a master version of the template you want to upload each month into Pento, duplicate this and give it to anyone responsible for providing you with variable data each month. Enable those people to complete the sheet accurately and by the date you state. Then all you have to do is extract the information from the various spreadsheets into one, or you can upload each spreadsheet sent to you - whatever you would prefer.
3. Integrate your HRIS system
If you have an HRIS that integrates with Pento, then make sure you sync it up. Putting information like new starters, salary increases, and personal details changes into your HRIS and watching it appear in Pento is a huge time saver!
4. Change your checking process
Whether you’ve had a bad experience in the past that means you like to check your data line by line for peace of mind, or you haven’t ever considered checking by exception, Pento has a heap of functionality that allows you to check by exception rather than checking everything. The first port of call is in the Percentage Change column that sits within each payroll.
By checking only those people with a % change highlighted in this column, you will save time spent unnecessarily checking the people whose pay hasn’t changed from the previous month.
Secondly is the variance report. This shows changes from the previous month as a percentage. It’s displayed at a pay item level, employee level, and company summary, so you can check what matters to you. By applying filters to these reports, you can easily remove anyone whose pay falls outside the exceptions that work for you. Want to see people whose pay is different by more than 10%? You can apply exclusion filters to show only these employees and then drill down into why there are differences
5. Be open to changing how you do payroll!
You won’t maximise Pento’s potential if you aren’t open to changing how you do your payroll process.
If it’s hard at first to stop checking everyone, wean yourself off this process slowly. Start by having a really low tolerance for % changes on your variance report and increase this gradually over time. Taking it a step further back, selecting a small group of people to exclude from your checking process at first (maybe monthly salaried people who haven’t changed for months) and then build this group up month after month when you know they are being paid correctly even without checking them.
Look at your internal cut-off dates. Yes, you may still need these to ensure you have all the data required to process payroll, but does it need to be eight days before payday? Start by moving the cut-off date to three days before pay, and you should find that you only need to go in and do payroll once, rather than going in earlier in the month and then making changes.
6. Put the time into building your payroll
The more time you spend building your payroll, not just at the point of onboarding but frequently throughout your payroll life cycle, the more time you will save in the future.
Set up pay items at a company level. This means you can easily upload data into them each pay period, and they are readily available to attach to each employee. The custom addition and deduction feature is excellent for those genuine one-off payments, but if you have to reimburse expenses once, you will likely need to do it again.
Add your enhanced policies to Pento. Yes, you might just have one person on SMP, and they might be getting full pay for three months and then SMP only, but by putting your policies in Pento, you simply have to enter the leave dates. Pento does the rest, which is even quicker than just keeping a note of the salary for three months and a reminder to put them on SMP only after this.
7. Reach out for help and support if you need it
Pento is super intuitive and easy to use, but you don’t know what you don’t know.
The support and advisory teams can give you hints and tips on anything from how to do things in the product to understanding payroll legislation. The extensive support and guidance you get from these teams is a tremendous added value to your company and is part of your Pento package. So don’t worry about how many times you’ve reached out in the past - if you are wondering how to do something or have a question, reach out to us, and we can get you an answer rather than you spending time trying to figure it out, leaving you free to work on what is essential to your business.