Processing Blues

Today is the first time with this employer that I "confirmed" or "transmitted" payroll.  It was a HUGE eye opener for me.  Here's what I learned:

1.  There's a LOT of room for interpretation - the documentation or checklist if you will is written for someone who has been performing these tasks for quite some time.  It makes a lot of assumptions.

2.  There's way too many tasks - there are 3 pages of "run this job" or "run this report" or "print and save a copy of this".  Honestly!  The platform we use allows for the automation of many jobs to be scheduled and ran at a specific time.

3.  Terminology - what I call something is not the same thing that a seasoned department member may call it.  We need to all be on the same page with vernacular.

4.  Audits - what audits?  I looked a report that provided data for employees receiving net pays for >$5,000.  What good does that do me?  Nothing.  I had to research each and every employee..and for what?  I could only look at hours and earnings codes and assume that what was passed into the payroll system is accurate.  Talk about risk....

This process has taken me over 2 hours to complete.  For under 6,000 employees and 1 pay group that is not acceptable.  I heard earlier there was a delay due to errors by the processing team.  It sounds like further upstream we have some opportunities as well.  Part of the issue is there are so many damn manual processes with the pilot and flight attendant pay data that it creates so much extra manual work for our group.

Yep...lots of room for improvement.