What is Payroll processing?

Payroll is a list of employees that are paid by the company. Payroll is the total amount the employers pay to the employees. A payroll function involves the development of an organization pay policy that includes flexible benefits, leave encashment policy.

Payroll management also includes payslip components like basic, variable pay, HRA, and LTA. and also gathering other payroll inputs like the organization’s food vendor supply, etc.

Payroll and HR management also involve releasing the employees’ salary, depositing the dues like TDS, PF, etc with appropriate authorities, and filing returns.

Put together Payroll processing includes the calculation of the Net Pay after the tax adjustments and other deductions.

Payroll processing and HR management

• Payroll processing and HR management is a highly complex task for most small businesses due to the various compliance requirements in India.
• Most startups do not even have a well-established HR system and processes leading to a discrepancy in hiring the top talents, retaining good employees, and even while building a productive workplace culture.
• By outsourcing payroll and HR management to Mera Online CA, an individual can enjoy a stress-free and error-free payroll cycle every month.
• Also, our HR experts can help in implementing world-class HR processes in the organization from day one to support the growth of the business.

Payroll processing in India

Pre-Payroll Activities

Defining payroll policy

The first step is wherein the policies to the bank during the payroll processes need to be established. These policies need to be approved by the management to turn these policies into standards. Policies like the Pay policy, Attendance policy, leave and benefits policy, and more.

Gathering inputs

At this stage, the inputs are gathered from various departments to ensure the accurate calculation of the payroll.

This data collection can seem tedious at first but registering with Mera Online CA will make it more hassle-free.

Input validation

It is necessary to verify the validity of the data once it is gathered as a minute mistake can ruin the entire payroll process.

It is necessary to ensure that the list contains all the active employees and no records of inactive employees. Checking the data whether it adheres to the company policy. Ensure the present in the right format.

Payroll Calculation

This step is when the validated input data is fed into the payroll system for actual payroll processing. The result is the Net pay after adjusting the necessary taxes and other deductions.

Once the payroll process is over it is always better to reconcile the values and verify the accuracy to avoid further errors.

Post- Payroll

Statutory compliance

The payroll administrator needs to religiously adhere to statutory compliance. There are various statutory deductions like EPF, TDS, ESI is deducted during the payroll processing.

These deductions are then paid to the respective authorities or government bodies.

Payroll accounting

Every organization is required to maintain an accurate book of accounts and the salary that is paid for one of the significant entries in the books of accounts.

Payout

After complying with the steps above the salaries can be finally paid in cash or cheque or via bank transfers. For hassle-free transfers, it is better to have salary accounts of the employees.

Report

Preparing a report is the last stage and it is necessary to prepare an accurate report containing information such as the department or location-wise employee cost.

Various methods of payroll management

Excel-based payroll management

At the initial stage of operations and when a company has a handful of employees they opt for excel based payroll management.

In excel based payroll management the calculation is done on excel sheets using the standard payroll calculation template. The already set mathematical formulas help the payroll officer to do the computation. But this method has many errors like

• High chances of clerical and mathematical errors as the data are entered manually
• Difficulty in adding and removing employees from the payroll list
• Chances of duplicate data and omission of entries at times
• Need to monitor the tax updates and other statutory changes like the PF, PT, etc.

Outsourcing Payroll

When the payroll is outsourced an external agency is taking care of the payroll function. The payroll service provider based on the pay cycle every month provides various other data such as the attendance, leaves, and reimbursement details.

The external service provider then computes the payroll and takes care of the statutory compliance. Since payroll is a crucial function Mera Online CA can help you comply with all the needs.

Challenges in Handling Payroll Management Process

Because of these two reasons, payroll management processing becomes difficult

The requirement of statutory compliance

Nonadherence to the statutory laws can lead to a penalty of fines and in the worst case, it will even threaten the existence of the business. However, when you register with Mera Online CA you automatically process payroll in compliance with the statutory laws.

Dependence on multiple payroll input sources

Before the payroll is processed it is necessary to get all the data together from varied sources like the attendance register conveyance facility availed record, data from the HR team like salary revision information, etc. making it a tedious process.

For years the HR and payroll managers managed the payroll on excel sheets but excel sheets have problems like dependency on excel formulas for calculation of salary, complexity in adding and removing the employees, and other limitations like manual data entry, and difficulty in extracting information.