I'm about to pull my hair out with our "new" payroll company. The company we have used for like 20 years got bought out by some big company. Their accounting procedures are lacking and so much extra work for me. What the heck are we paying them for? Crap, the amount of time I'm spending trying to reconcile and record their numbers in our accounting system, I could have just done payroll myself.
Oh, and remember that bonus they messed up on at the end of last year? Where they ran a bonus payment from my side job through my full time company? Email after email to get them to reverse it (they finally did). Then instead of crediting my side job company the funds back, they sent the credit memo to my full time company and said we needed to reimburse my side job. So, I did. Then I waited until our next payroll and checked to see if they gave us the credit/refund (because I just had a strange feeling it was going to get "lost" again). I could not see it. I reconciled our payroll numbers to make sure it wasn't "hidden" as a credit in there that I just wasn't seeing but couldn't come up with it. I have been emailing and emailing about it. Finally yesterday, they emailed back that, oh! Well, they have a credit memo issued, but no, they never did actually refund us the money! WTH?!
Then we have an employee who had taken out an advance last June, so has been having the money withheld from his paychecks to pay it back. A common occurrence. There's always someone who's paying back an advance. It gets withheld from their paycheck and then the payroll company credits us this amount back on our payroll invoice (because it's really our money). Well, out of the last 7 months (we pay twice a month) there's like 8 payrolls where they never credited us back. They withheld it from his pay, but didn't give it back to us. I've been trying to get them to resolve this one for over a month now, since I discovered it. I still don't think they've paid us back and still waiting for them to resolve that one.
Then they messed up our PTO totals, which my boss handled getting them to fix that one.
And starting the first of this year they are handling our 401k, medical insurance and FSA differently. Which is fine, but they just report me the numbers in one lump and I have to spend time weeding through all their reports to breakdown the actual numbers, so that they get reported correctly in the correct expense account in our accounting system. Again, what are we paying them for?
Basically, trying to figure out all these numbers and reconcile them is all I have been doing for the past 2 days now. Ridiculous.
What else is messed up that we don't even know about? People are getting paid correctly (or we'd be hearing from them) but I really have no idea if what they are charging us for everything else (taxes, benefits, etc) is correct. My boss and I are really starting to doubt their accounting and it
appears I'm going to have to end up doing a full audit of our payroll on
them to make sure it's being done right. UGH. I really don't have time
for that.
I really feel for you. I worked for 20 years in HR and we went from being "human" and efficient to "inhuman" and bloody incompetent! Not our fault at all, but the powers that be bought in the usual whiz kid who thought Finances could save 1/10th of a second by not sending itemized payment advices back to staff members for various things (education grants mainly) but just lumping any reimbursements in one lump sum under the heading "misc". I got so fed up of trying to figure their rubbish out I just forwarded the staff member directly to Finances to sort it out. So instead of saving 1/10th of a second they usually wasted about 45 minutes per staff member. Oh, and whiz kid stayed about 4 years, screwed everything up and then left - as they always do - because it looks good on their resume. Good luck. Anna
ReplyDeleteI feel bad for the ladies that handle our account. They have always worked there and are trying to deal with all the changes too, as well as us bombarding them with request that aren't their fault. The main payroll gal did fix their report for me today, so now it breaks down the costs for me. Much better.
ReplyDeleteWow, this sounds like a huge headache. With you being an accountant, I'm sure you like numbers, but this is ridiculous!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the bumps will smooth out. One of our payrolls they are completely missing the main report (showing what every one made/deductions etc)from our online account. I asked that the report get loaded and the reply was "I'll have to send that to IT, not sure if we can now". Umm...hello, you have to supply us with this info every payroll.
DeleteThat is the worst, but it's nice that the payroll company is willing to work with you and change the format of the reports.
ReplyDeleteWe're getting there. My boss has appreciated the time I've put in working with them to get things straight. They are a good company but now they have to answer to the other company so will be interesting to see how things change for us as time goes on.
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