Hours by text message at nine at night
Pay day is Friday. On Wednesday evening a restaurant client texts the payroll clerk a photo of a handwritten sheet of hours. A builder emails to say a new labourer started last week, with no address, no National Insurance number and no starter checklist. A retail client forgets to mention that someone left a fortnight ago. On Thursday morning, the payroll team is chasing six clients for missing details while trying to run twenty payrolls.
Every month the team asks clients to send changes earlier and in a standard format. Every month, most do not.
The format is the client's choice, not yours
Payroll clients send information the way that suits them: a text, a WhatsApp photo, an email with a spreadsheet attached, a phone call. Each one means the payroll team has to interpret, retype and chase. Missing details are only discovered when the clerk tries to enter them.
Cut-off dates are communicated once, usually when the client joins, and then forgotten. There is nothing in the client's week that reminds them the payroll needs their changes by Tuesday, so they send them when they remember.
New starters are the worst case. The payroll software needs particular details before the employee can be paid correctly, and clients rarely know which ones until asked.
What late and messy changes cost
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Changes sent late | Pay runs squeezed into the last day |
| Many formats | Retyping and misreading hours |
| Starter details missing | Employees set up with incomplete information |
| Leavers not reported | People paid after they left |
| No record of what was sent | Disputes about who got it wrong |
Payroll errors are unusually visible. An employee who is paid wrongly tells their employer, and the employer tells the practice, even when the mistake started with their own late message.
The payroll changes portal we build
- Each payroll client gets a portal page for their pay run showing the cut-off date and time, with reminders sent a few days before and on the morning of cut-off.
- Changes are entered in structured forms: hours per employee from a list already filled with their staff, new starters with the fields your payroll software needs, leavers with a leaving date, and one-off payments or deductions.
- Completeness checks stop a starter being submitted without required fields and flag unusual entries, such as hours far above an employee's normal pattern, for the client to confirm.
- Clients who prefer can upload their own timesheet export, which is mapped to employees and shown back to them for confirmation.
- When the client submits, the changes are timestamped, and your payroll team gets a list ready to import into your payroll software, such as BrightPay, Sage or Xero Payroll, where the software supports imports or an API.
- Late submissions are logged, and a report shows which clients regularly miss cut-off, for the conversation your practice chooses to have with them.
Your payroll team still runs and checks every payroll. The portal makes sure what they start from is complete and on time.
Pay runs that start with everything
Changes arrive in one format, before cut-off, with the details needed. The team spends pay week processing rather than chasing. Starters are set up properly first time. And when a client disputes an error, the portal shows exactly what they submitted and when.
Is your payroll week like this?
- Clients send changes by text, email and WhatsApp
- Hours arrive the night before the pay run
- Starter details are often incomplete
- Leavers are sometimes not reported
- You cannot prove what a client sent and when