Top 3 Toughest Aspects of Payroll in Singapore

Assuming Payroll

Often times, companies generate payroll and pay out an entire month’s wages to an employee before the month has ended. We call this assuming payroll. This is how it works: If payroll is generated an the 25th and paid out on the 27th, the manager pays the full month’s wages, up till the 31st, assuming that the employee will make it to work on the last few days. If he doesn’t, the manager Optimizing Work Productivity with Happinessneeds to deduct his wage in the next month

Assuming payroll is an inefficient and inaccurate way of paying employees. We’ve come across many business owners who do it in Singapore. Most of the time, it’s because they have been doing it for years and have never thought about changing the rule. We help our clients transition from assuming payroll to regular payroll which saves clients money and time. Here is a blog post on exactly how to transition from assuming to regular payroll.

Irregular Clock-in Timings

When an employee clocks in at 8.57am instead of 9.00am, the biometric device records it to the exact minute. Your HR manager needs to manually correct the irregularity because coming in 3 minutes early does not mean that the employee will get paid for those extra three minutes.

The PayrollHero app has a threshold feature that solves this problem. An HR manager can set a threshold: if an employee clocks in between 8.55am and 9.05am, their clock-in time resets to 9.00am, automatically correcting the irregularity that your HR manager would have had to deal with otherwise.

Disparate Systems for Time, Attendance, Scheduling and Payroll

payrollhero-benefits-featuresBusiness owners have multiple systems that deal with different HR problems; a biometric device to measure clock ins, a separate Excel sheet that imports data from the biometric device and generates payroll, another Excel sheet that needs to be updated every week with schedules for each employee and a whole other system that employees use to apply for leave. With so many systems to deal with, no wonder an HR manager barely has any time to engage with employees or find innovative ways to overcome Singapore’s labor crunch.

An end-to-end solution that removes any need for multiple devices is exactly what an HR manager needs. PayrollHero allows employees to click selfies on their phone or an iPad in the work site when they clock in. This data is stored in the Cloud and used when payroll is generate by the system. The same app is used when applying for leave or checking schedules for the week. An HR manager can use the app on his laptop, phone or any device with internet connection anywhere in the world and have full control over what is going on at his work site.

While these problems are seen as some of HR managers’ biggest in Singapore, they are faced by managers in the Philippines and pretty much any other place too. Some of the other problems HR managers need to deal with are changing tax laws, a labor crunch and laws against foreign workers in the country.

We hope that this post serves as a solution to some of your biggest HR problems. Do let us know your biggest HR problem and how you are currently dealing with it.

 

How Happy Are Your Employees? Want to Know?

How happy are your employees? Do you know? Do you think it matters?

employee happiness reportWhat if you could tell how happy your employees are. Would that change how you make decisions? Would you adjust your operating procedures?

Today we are pleased to announce the Employee Happiness Reports.

“Optimizing Work Productivity with Happiness!” ​is the core ideal that drives PayrollHero. We’re always looking for ways to measure, track and help clients improve productivity, performance and happiness across their organizations.

We have begun a deep analysis of thousands and thousands of clock photos to analyze the sentiment of the photos. We can then correlate the happiness ratings across other metrics like commute distance, wage, location, plus much more.Optimizing Work Productivity with Happiness

Some clients have begun receiving their beta Employee Happiness Reports and we will continue to work with them to understand what data is useful, how it can be actioned and what else should be included.

Some of the questions we are working to answer are;

  • Are my happiest employees the highest paid?
  • Which of my retail locations are happiest?
  • Do my employees commute times effect their happiness?
  • Are my happiest locations my top revenue generators?

Already a PayrollHero client? Want to know the answers as they pertain you your business? Contact us and we’ll get you your first report free.

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10 Hidden Gems in the PayrollHero Product

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The PayrollHero app is a powerful product in which time, attendance, scheduling, leave management and payroll generation are the broad categories of its features. Within these features are some nifty tools that could really improve the efficiency of your business’s HR managers.

1. Thresholds

Imagine your employee clocks into work at 7:50am every morning. He officially starts his work at 8am. But the payroll software you use records him entering 10 minutes early. To prevent it from adding those extra ten minutes into his payroll, your manager logs into her account to correct the infraction every single day. Now imagine her doing that for all the 40 employees that work for her. It simply doesn’t make sense. PayrollHero has the perfect solution to this.
PayrollHero uses thresholds to automatically remove infractions. For example, a threshold 10 minutes before and 5 minutes after official clock in time ensures that clocking in within that 15 minute period automatically gets recorded from the 8:00am point. The manager wastes no time correcting irregularities for all her employees and the business owner can be sure of the fact that no errors were made correcting infractions.

2. Leave Management

Leave management is a new feature in the product! Your employee can now apply for a leave through the app. Leave is automatically accepted and deducted from the total leave available in the year. HR managers can reject a leave request and offer a reason. The leave management system in PayrollHero does away with emails and informal systems of recording leave. All leave requests and rejections are archived in case you need to refer to them at a later date.

3. Mass import – Multi insert

The mass import tool is a neat tool for companies that have hundreds of employee records that need to be imported into the PayrollHero product. We provide a template for you to enter all your employee information which can them be uploaded onto PayrollHero. It saves countless hours manually entering information onto the app.
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4. Resolving attendance

Resolving attendance is one of the most powerful and flexible tools in the product. For example, if an employee comes into work out of their regular schedule, their manager may count the extra hours of work that the employee has put in. The manager can change a whole list of variables from clock in time to approved over-time hours.
Resolving attendance gives huge responsibility to the manager. This is counterbalanced by the fact that all changes are archived with a record of who made the changes and resolved attendance. As a business owner, you can check in to make sure that the records reflect the situation at hand.

5. Hipchat Integration

Hipchat is a team based chatting, media sharing service. It enables teams to communicate better. Especially if all employees do not work in the same work site. PayrollHero has a Hipchat integration. The Hipchat integration lets you see when employees are online and which work site they clocked into. You can even download the Hipchat app onto your iOS device.

6. Keyring

Oftentimes, managers hand over items to employees and hold them responsible for taking care of them. For example, if an employee is usually the first person to the work site, he is given the keys to the place and is responsible for opening the store. PayrollHero allows you to record what items are handed to the employee. Some of the more common items are:

  • Company email accounts
  • Key holder agreements
  • Locker usage access
  • Uniform
  • Company car keys
  • Software license
  • Mobile Phone

The idea of the Keyring function is to hold the manager and the employee accountable for important assets in the company. If the employee leaves, there is a checklist of items available on the employee’s profile that needs to be accounted for.

7. Geo-tracking

PayrollHero allows you to track the location of every clock-in. This means that when an employee clocks in through the app on their phone, you can ensure that the employee has clocked in at their work site. Even if the employee clocks in offline, the app stores the information till the device is connected to t he Internet. The app then uploads the information to the Cloud.

8. Portability of the App

Traditional clocking in devices involve installing infrastructure like a biometrics machine or a punch card system. PayrollHero does away with any infrastructure by having a mobile app. An employee may download the app on their smartphone (iOS / Android) and use it to clock in and out. Most business owners have an iPad at the work site for their employees to record attendance. However, many of our clients prefer not having an iPad and encouraging their employees to se the mobile app instead.

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What Payroll Period Suits Your Business Best?

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Payroll periods are generally categorized into 4 types:

  1. Monthly: Payroll is generated and usually paid out on a monthly basis. It occurs 12 times a year
  2. Semi-monthly: Payroll is generated twice a month and paid out either on the 1st and 15th of the month, or 15th and 30th of the month. It occurs 24 times a month.
  3. Bi-weekly: Generated and paid out every two weeks, bi-weekly payroll sounds a lot like semi-monthly but runs 26 times a year. We’ll go through the differences further into the post.
  4. Weekly: Payroll is generated and paid out once a week, leading to 52 cycles a year.

Type of Business

Why are there so many different payroll periods? Depending on the type of business, employees and employers find it easier to keep tabs on over time, social security contributions and erratic work schedules if the payroll period is shorter than the usual one month period.

Generally, as a business owner or a payroll head at your business, you generate reports monthly so it seems practical to generate payroll on a monthly basis. However, this may not be suitable to employees, especially in the construction, F&B or retail business where work is valued on an hourly basis.

Type of Employees

Frequency of payroll depends on the type of employees in your business. Usually, full time employees are open to monthly salaries because they have a stable income.

However, part time workers with erratic schedules prefer a shorter pay period so they can manage their finances better. Since hourly workers are most prevalent in industries like F&B, retail and BPOs, markets that we work with very closely, we know that employees favour biweekly or even weekly pay in order to stabilize their finances.

For example, if an employee works 50 hours one week and 10 the next, she might want to be paid weekly in order to cushion the next week’s dip in work.

Costs of Generating Payroll

As a business owner, you also need to track how much it costs to pay all your employees, Many payroll vendors charge on the frequency of payroll generation, in which case, monthly payroll makes sense. But, if the costs are not too high, it may be prudent to generate payroll more often.

It is easier to calculate over time over a shorter pay period. You are less likely to make mistakes. Another cost that is important to look into is the opportunity cost of calculating social security deductions more frequently.

Usually, contributions are calculated monthly, so it is definitely a hassle breaking it down to a semi-monthly, bi-weekly or weekly basis. The most error-prone would be bi-weekly, with 26 weeks to account for where payroll may be generated twice or even thrice a month.

Finally, the frequency of payroll generation depends on a set of factors: the share of employees working part time versus full time, the costs of generating payroll and the kind of business that you own.

Weighing the costs and benefits and communicating with employees on what suits them best are the first steps to take before settling on a pay period. Do let us know what kind of pay period has worked best for your business!

Biometrics VS Selfies – Which is Best for Your Business?

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Restaurants and retails stores usually generate payroll by multiplying their employees’ hourly rate with the number of hours worked by each employee.

The number of hours worked is measured by a time sheet that employees punch in, a biometric device or (if you’re one of our awesome clients) the PayrollHero app that lets your employees take selfies to clock in and out.

We get a lot of questions about why businesses should change from biometrics to anything else. Some say that the biometrics system is already ideal… that it’s fast and accurate. While all of this might be true, we have a strong argument for why biometrics may not be the best option for your business.

The PayrollHero app – an all in one solution

Biometric devices work as a standalone system. You need to get a whole new software for processing information from the device and integrating it into the software that calculates attendance. Often, you need another system to monitor scheduling, manage leaves and generate payroll.

On the other hand, PayrollHero’s TeamClockMyClock app records all the information you need to know about your employee on the cloud. It is an end-to-end solution that relieves you of the hassle of integrating multiple systems together.

The only device you will ever need is either of the following: iPad, smartphone (Android or iOS), or a computer (PC or Mac). PayrollHero’s apps are compatible with these devices so you are assured to have a streamlined process from start to finish.

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Wear and tear

The biometric device is subject to wear and tear. If you have hundreds of employees using a couple of biometric devices, you are more likely to face this issue. However, MyClock or TeamClock are is accessed within an iPad / smartphone (or computer),  which is less likely to undergo the kind of wear and tear that biometric devices are prone to.

Software updates

The PayrollHero app updates from time to time to give the user a better experience and introduce new features (for example, we have just introduced leave management! Check it out). The app is always improving and finding ways to make time and attendance easier for businesses, whereas the biometric device can only go so far in it capabilities.

There are other issues with the biometric device too. Biometric devices lead to manual calculations when there are minor infractions where employees come just a couple of minutes early or late.

We handle this problem by implementing thresholds within which these infractions are excused. This frees up time for your HR manager to do more important things, like finding the best talent for your company and managing employee relations.

Altogether, the biometric device may be faster in recording clock ins, but the time wasted by the HR manager in fixing the inefficiencies in the device is far more.

So if you’re ready to let go of your biometric device and embrace the selfie clock in, contact us at sales@payrollhero.com or visit our website to learn more.

Singapore Leave Eligibility and Entitlements

In Singapore, there are many types of leaves. From annual vacation leave, to sick leave, to childcare leave. The types are as follows:

  • Adoption Leave
  • Annual Leave
  • Childcare Leave
  • Maternity Leave
  • Paternity Leave
  • Shared Parental Leave
  • Sick Leave
  • Unpaid Infant Care Leave

You can see the breakdown of these leaves on the Singapore Ministry of Manpower website.

If you are looking for a tool that helps you manage your Singapore employees leave requests, balance and pay. Check out PayrollHero.sg or contact us at sales@payrollhero.com.

 

 

Video: PayrollHero Leave Management in Action

We have been fielding questions from people wanting to see our new Leave Management app in action. Below is a quick video showcasing how the first version of it works. Let us know what you think and if you have any questions, feel free to reach out – sales@payrollhero.com

PayrollHero’s Leave Management is available for purchase on;

  • All Singapore PayrollHero accounts
  • All Philippine PayrollHero accounts
  • All International TAS accounts

Announcing Leave Management by PayrollHero

We’re excited to unveil the new Leave Management app for PayrollHero. We have been working on this added functionality for the last few months and are excited to launch it to the world.

Want to learn more about pricing, full feature set and how you can add it to your account? Contact us at sales@payrollhero.com for more details.

Apply for Leave

Within the Leave Management platform, employees can apply for days off by selecting the dates they want, the type of leave that it is (sick, vacation, etc) and the reason for the leave.

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Leave Balances

Managers can log in and see their subordinates leave types and how many leaves they have left. This is also where a manager can edit the number of leaves per employee.

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My Leave History

Employees can view their leave history quickly and easily by clicking on My Leave History. Within this page, employees can view their past leaves, if they were approved or declined and the type of leave.

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Reject Leave Requests

Managers can reject employee leave requests through the upcoming leave page. Within this page it shows leave requests with the pertinent details. Managers can reject the leave request and include a note as to why.

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Reach out to us at sales@payrollhero.com to learn more!

Or check out our websites here to know more about PayrollHero: Philippines, Singapore or Global.

Video Tour of Philippine Payroll on PayrollHero

Below is a video explainer for how PayrollHero can work within your Philippine business. From setting up schedules, to clocking in and out, resolving attendance and generating payroll.

1. Creating employee schedules on PayrollHero
It is quick and easy to setup schedules for your employees. Depending on your business will depend which scheduling tool you use. Our onboarding team will help setup the processes so that your managers can quickly and easily manage their teams schedules.

Clocking in/out via PayrollHero
Clocking in and out on PayrollHero is a breeze. We have TeamClock for iOS and Android as well as the MyClock Web and TeamClock Chrome. We can setup your account to based on your needs.

Clock in/out details are run through thresholds
We automate your time and attendance policy using our thresholds functionality. All clock in and outs are run through the thresholds to make enforcement of your policies easier. We have thresholds for In early, in late, out early, out late, undertime, unscheduled work, duplicate clock in and duplicate clock out.


Resolving employee attendance infractions
Our resolve attendance functionality enables your managers to quickly and easily resolve infractions that fall outside of the thresholds. Most common is missing clock in and overtime. Each click is recorded as to who resolved what infraction and why.

Enroll employee in Government deductions

Add allowances on PayrollHero

Generate payroll
Generating payroll is simple and rules based. Once the time and attendance has been resolved running the payroll is quick. Below is an example of a Philippine payroll being run.

Other questions that you might have?

  1. How PayrollHero Computes the Pag-Ibig Deduction?
  2. How PayrollHero Computes the SSS Deduction?
  3. How PayrollHero Computes an Employees Total Hours for One Day?
  4. How PayrollHero Computes the Philippine BIR Tax Deduction?
  5. How PayrollHero Computes the PhilHealth Deduction?
  6. How to Compute the 13th Month Pay?
  7. How to Compute for Night Differential?
  8. What Is Annualized Witholding Tax (Alphalist)?

Have more questions? Feel free to consult our knowledge-base or reach out and our team would be pleased to speak further about your companies specific needs. 

PayrollHero Security

securityWe value our customer’s security and work hard to ensure that our platform and procedures are focused on security of our clients data. A PayrollHero account contains all employee information and confidential material. For that reason, we take security, encryption, and system permissions very seriously.

Below we have listed a complete guide of our security processes for your reference.

User Security

  • Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement

At the onset of our business relationship, we sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement as part of our commitment to your company confidentiality.

  • Password Strength Policy

We have a Password Strength Policy which ensures that a PayrollHero user will be able to log in with high security measures.

We require all passwords to use the following:

– One lowercase letter
– One uppercase letter
– One number
– 8 characters in total for password length

  • Two Factor Authentication Log In

As an added layer of security for users, we have implemented a Two Factor Authentication (2FA) log-in, which makes logging in more safe and secure.

With 2FA, users are blocked from sharing passwords – giving the user complete ownership and responsibility for his or her personal account.

Every time a user logs in, they get a time-based, one-time password to authenticate the log in process. This password changes every time you log in, and only you, the user, will be able to know this generated password.

To enable 2FA, you would need a device, usually a smartphone, and an app to generate these one-time use passwords. Here are some of our recommended apps:

Click here for a complete guide on how to set up Two Factor Authentication for your PayrollHero account.

Platform Security

  • Encryption at Rest

All data within PayrollHero is encrypted in transit and at rest, meaning that it is not only encrypted when moving from application to application but it is also encrypted when idle.

  • HTTPS

All communication in and out of the PayrollHero platform is done through HTTPS. “Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a communications protocol for secure communication over a computer network, with especially wide deployment on the Internet”.

** For both security and non-security incidents, we have employ an urgent and critical process that brings a certain priority level to the team. There is an incident commander appointed during any of these incidents and is responsible for involving the necessary resources. 

Architecture

The PayrollHero System is designed to only expose access to customer facing services. All other access requires an encrypted administrator connection.

  • Only vetted senior staff members have access to production data.
  • All access requires encrypted access to the system.
  • All access to the system requires either an encrypted VPN connection or two factor authentication to access anything.
  • All access to production data is logged.
  • All systems are isolated from each other, regularly replaced, and security patches are applied as soon as they are available.

Customer data is stored on a multi-tenant environment, as such it does exist within the same databases. Extreme care is taken to never allow customer data to get mixed up.

The PayrollHero system is designed to deal with server failures. We perform offsite backups, and frequent onsite backups. We also have an offline mode for the clock in/out feature.

If you want to learn how to use TeamClock while offline, click here for a quick tutorial.

Servers

In an effort to ensure that all your data is kept secure, we only use one of the best names in server and cloud computing – Amazon.

Technically speaking, we secure our data with the following services.

PayrollHero utilizes AWS Services that are ISO 27001 and PCI DSS L1 Certified:

  • Amazon Web Services Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
  • Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (S3)
  • Amazon Web Services Relational Database Service (RDS)
  • Amazon Web Services Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)
  • Amazon Web Services Identity and Access Management (IAM)
  • Amazon Web Services Elastic Block Storage (EBS)

PayrollHero will use commercially reasonable efforts to make the PayrollHero platform available with a monthly uptime percentage of at least 99%, in each case during any monthly billing cycle (the “Service Commitment”). In the event PayrollHero does not meet the Service Commitment, You will be eligible to receive a Service Credit as described below.

Service Level Agreement

Service Credits are calculated as a percentage of the total charges paid by you (excluding one-time payments such as upfront payments) for the monthly billing cycle in which the platform was unavailable.

  • If the monthly uptime percentage drops below: 99%
  • Service Credit Percentage: 20%
  • Service Credits are applied to Your next months invoice.
  • To receive a Service Credit, You must submit a claim by opening a support case (support@payrollhero.com).

To be eligible, the credit request must be received by us by the end of the second billing cycle after which the incident occurred and must include:

  • the words “SLA Credit Request” in the subject line;
  • the dates and times of each unavailability incident in respect of which You are claiming;
  • the affected PayrollHero account;
  • and your request logs that document the errors and corroborate Your claimed outage (any confidential or sensitive information in these logs should be removed or replaced with asterisks).

Our most up to date Terms of Service.

If you have any other questions about our confidentiality, data security, or encryption, please feel free to contact us at support@payrollhero.com.