Singapore Leave Eligibility and Entitlements

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Stephen Jagger

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.

5 Things Business Owners Need to Know About Payroll in Singapore

Posted on February 1, 2016 by Pragya Gupta

business-Singapore-PayrollHero

Payroll in general can be quite confusing. In Singapore, there is the added task of ethnic-based levies.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind while generating payroll and paying contributions to the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore:

Contributions and Levies:

Singapore’s social security is paid out by the Central Provident Fund. Every working Singaporean or Singapore Permanent Resident contributes to the fund along with his/her employer. There are four accounts within the fund that can be accessed at different point of an employee’s life.

There are additional levies: Foreign Workers’ Levy, Skills Development Levy and the Ethnic funds (there are four accounts within the ethnic fund). The levies are paid out of the employees’ salaries. Employees may choose to opt out of the levies by signing the relevant forms.

The contribution and levies need to be paid every month. We have a more detailed post about this here.

Taxes

Employers need to complete a tax clearance form for any non-Singaporean (foreigner or Singapore Permanent Resident) that

ceases to work in the firm,
will be sent on an overseas posting or
is leaving Singapore for a period of over three months.

The purpose of the tax clearance is to ensure that PRs and foreigners have paid their taxes before leaving the country. The employee’s salary/bonus/OT payment may only be disbursed after their tax clearance form has been approved by the government.

Form IR21 needs to be submitted a month before any of the above possibilities occur. Failure to notify the government can lead to fines up to $1000. For more information on tax clearance, this is the link.

Hiring Employees:

The Singapore Employment Act is a statute that covers everything you need to know about hiring employees.

Some things to keep in mind are: Singapore does not have a minimum wage. The wage is settled through negotiations between the employee and employer. There are market rates for positions: for example this is a summary of restaurant wages in Singapore.

Another important distinction is between a full time and part time worker. A full time employee works a minimum of 44 hours a week. Anything less than that is considered a part time job. Part time workers have their own set of rules when it comes to leave, hourly rate, over time.

All the information you need about part time work is provided here.

Income Reporting

The Auto Inclusion Scheme requires employers with over 15 employees to file their employees’ income information before the 15th of March every year. The filing can be done electronically. A total of four forms need to be filled:

Form IR8A – for all employees
Appendix 8A – for payment of benefits-in-kind
Appendix 8B – for gains from employee stock options
Form IR8S – if excess CPF payments were made

Employee Records

Since March 2008, the government requires firms to keep a record of all its employees, their income and contribution payments to the IRAS for the last 5 years.

Learn More About Payroll

If you want to learn more about payroll in Singapore, visit our website and get in touch with us. We’d love to chat with you!

Why Assuming Payroll Is A Big Mistake

Posted on January 25, 2016 by Stephen Jagger

What is assuming payroll? Does your company do it? How much does it cost you?

Assuming Payroll

Assuming payroll is a term we use when a company pays employees in advance of the completed pay period, assuming the employee will make it to work between payment and actual calculation of payroll.

For example, Wayne Enterprises pays Bruce a whole month’s salary on January 25 assuming that Bruce will work the next five days. On January 27, Bruce had an emergency situation which led to him missing work. Since he already had been paid, Wayne Enterprises will have to deduct his salary in the next month, to make up for him missing work.

Why is it done?

Since this is clearly a complex way of paying employees, why is it done? Firstly, it gave companies time to go through the tedious calculations for generating payroll. Secondly, back in the day when Wayne Enterprises handed cheques to its employees, Bruce had to go down to the bank and cash it in. Since all companies paid their employees at the end of the month, employees would spend hours at the bank just to cash in a cheque. Paying them in advance solved the problem. The opportunity cost of deducting an employee’s salary next month was far lower than paying after generating payroll.

Today, in the twenty first century, that argument does not hold anymore. Wayne Enterprises uses GIRO and other electronic payment methods to pay its employees. The opportunity cost of deducting from the next month’s salary is now much higher.

Some companies still stick to the old way of doing payroll. When we dug a little deeper and asked our clients why they did it, they said it was because their board of directors had left the rule as it was made many years ago.

Let’s help fix the problem

Our client success head, Kieran Peppiatt, has seen through a number of companies changing their system of Assuming Payroll to the regular kind:

“Many of our customers have seen cost savings by changing from the assuming payroll method to the regular one. It’s more efficient, easier and more accurate.”

PayrollHero calculates deductions but we always advocate doing payroll the regular way. It eliminates any chance of inaccuracy and makes the payroll process smoother for your HR manager. When you have a high churn rate, it is even more important to adopt the regular method.

Download a one page Assuming Payroll info sheet below:

Why You Shouldn’t Assume Payroll – PayrollHero

PayrollHero’s Top 10 Posts of 2015

Posted on December 29, 2015 by Nix Eniego

Time flies by so fast! 2015 is already coming to a close.

In just a few days, we’re waving goodbye to the year that was, as we say Hello to 2016.

We’re excited for the coming year since YOU have tons of stuff to watch out for! We’ll be making more exciting content for you to read, watch, and listen to.

But for now, let’s take a quick look back at PayrollHero’s Top 10 Posts of 2015.

1.) ATM Withdrawal Limits for Philippine Banks

Our most viewed post of 2015 is this quick guide on the ATM Withdrawal Limits for Philippine Banks.

There are a lot of banks in the Philippines and they all have their respective ATM withdrawal limits. On top of that, the banks also charge fees per transaction, so this article gives people a better understanding of which bank to use so that fees can be minimized as much as possible.

2.) How To Prepare An Alphalist for the Philippines

The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) has issued certain guidelines and basic information requirements in preparing a company’s alphalist… But not everyone knows exactly how to do it.

PayrollHero gives you a quick overview on how to prepare an Alphalist in the Philippines.

3.) 8 Restaurant Recommendations In Fort Bonifacio, Philippines

Because we love you, we’ve listed some of our favorite restaurants in Fort Bonifacio (BGC). Check out our blog post and maybe you can even spend your New Year Celebration in one of these restaurants!

4.) Visit to Manila’s White Cross Children’s Home

Although the team’s trips to White Cross happened in 2014, this story was still one of our top performing blog posts in 2015.

The team documented their journey to White Cross Children’s Home in San Juan, Philippines with lots of pictures. You can see them all in this post.

5.) What is the SSS? (Philippines)

There are thousands of people everyday who search about SSS (Social Security System). And this short blog post gives you an overview of what SSS in the Philippines is all about.

BONUS: For a detailed guide on how to compute your SSS deductions and other payroll concerns, you can download our FREE Payroll Kit here.

6.) Employer Contributions in the Philippines: Home Development Mutual Fund (Pag-IBIG)

Employers also benefit from the wealth of information we share on our blog. In this case, we wrote about PAG-IBIG and how employers (and employees) should handle it.

7.) The Philippines Restaurant Industry at a Glance #infographic

We created an infographic on the Restaurant Industry in the Philippines. It gives you a quick glance on key stats on the restaurant landscape in the Philippines.

Feel free to share this infographic on your own website or social media pages.

8.) Employee Contributions in the Philippines: BIR and SSS

Yet another top performing post about SSS in the Philippines! Check out this blog post, which is more detailed than the one mentioned above.

In this article, we’ve also provided a link to all the necessary BIR forms.

9.) Employer Contributions in the Philippines: PhilHealth

As you may have noticed, PayrollHero blog readers are really loving our quick guides on information about government deductions/benefits.

This one covers everything you need to know about PhilHealth. (Get our FREE PayrollHero Kit here)

10. An Introduction to Domain Driven Design

And lastly, the PayrollHero team was able to enjoy two days of intense training on Domain Driven Design with Kiro Harada.

In this blog post, we shared what we learned from Kiro, so you too can be part of the experience. This learning retreat was attended by team members from Manila, Whistler, and Singapore.

Conclusion

It was an amazing experience for us this 2015. We enjoyed writing and creating awesome content for you guys!

Rest assured that we’ll keep delivering only the best this coming 2016! So don’t forget to visit our blog regularly, okay?

Happy New Year, everyone!

FREE Payroll Kit for All Employees

Posted on December 28, 2015 by Nix Eniego

If you’re an employee and you’re reading this, then you’re in luck!

The PayrollHero team prepared the Ultimate Payroll Kit that answers all your questions and concerns regarding the following topics:

How to Compute 13th Month Pay
How to Compute Holiday Pay & Rest Day Pay
How to Compute your BIR Taxes
How to Compute your Government Deductions (SSS, PAG-IBIG, PhilHealth)
How to Compute Night Differential Pay
How to Compute Your OT Pay

All these and more for FREE! Click here to download your FREE Payroll Guide in the Philippines.

Aside from providing smooth and efficient HR, Time, Attendance, and Payroll processes to businesses, we also provide a wealth of information for employees regarding matters concerning their payroll.

So if you always found yourself making a Google search on “How to Compute 13th Month Pay” or “How much is my SSS deduction”, then our free PayrollHero Kit will do wonders for you.

You won’t have to Google about these payroll concerns in the Philippines ever again. Simply get the guide, keep it in a folder (It’s in PDF format), and consult it whenever you want to know something that concerns your payroll.

Not only do you get a more clear and defined answer to your questions; you also won’t have to bug your company HR with trivial questions anymore. You will be well-equipped with all the basic and necessary info about your payroll. Sounds awesome, right?

So download the free PayrollHero Kit now and learn everything you need to know about your payroll today!

Video Tour of Philippine Payroll on PayrollHero

Posted on December 15, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

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?

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.

Top Industries with the Highest 13th Month Pay Bonus

Posted on December 10, 2015 by Nix Eniego

In just a few days, you’re going to be receiving your hard-earned 13th month pay from your employer. Although some have already received theirs as early as November, majority of the Filipino workforce regularly receives their 13th month pay during December.

Yes… Just in time for your Christmas shopping! (Check out our Top 5 Christmas Shopping Hacks for 2015 here).

But not all 13th month pay in the Philippines were created equal.

Some industries generally offer higher bonuses than the rest. Check out this infographic from MoneyMax.ph to find out which industry is the most generous when it comes to 13th month pay.

If you want to know how to easily compute your 13th month pay, you can check out our quick guide here.

So what can you say about this? Are you happy with your bonus?

Let us know in the comments section below!

Best Ways to Send Money to the Philippines

Posted on October 21, 2015 by

Although industry leaders like Western Union, PayPal, and Moneygram have been dominating the money transfer scene to the Philippines, several startups are giving the incumbents a run for their money. Technology has gradually stripped these companies off of their long-held dominion of cross-border money transfers. These seismic changes, according to the World Bank, has saved developing countries such as the Philippines as much as $16B/year.

If you’re looking to transfer money to the Philippines, you have plenty of options now.

So… What’s the Cheapest and Fastest Way to Send Money to the Philippines?

The straight answer is: IT DEPENDS.

When considering what’s “best” or “cheapest” or “fastest” way to send money to the Philippines, several factors come into play. They include the following:

your current country of origin
the amount of money you’re sending out
your recipient’s preference of receiving the money\s currency (dollars, euros, peso or Bitcoin)
personal preferences of both sender and recipient (turnaround time, accessibility, pickup methods, costs, and customer service)

The crew behind Time Doctor created well laid-out tables comparing hidden fees, currency conversion costs, and the average processing time if you’re sending money from the US, UK, Australia, and Europe.

Your Options in Transferring Money to the Philippines

Whether you’re an overseas Filipino employee who’s looking for the best way to send money to your family back home, a foreign entrepreneur outsourcing local web developers in the country or a foreign firm with a local entity in the Philippines, you can explore the common money transfer options below.

The list is a mix of the most popular to newcomers in the money transfer scene in the country.

PayPal

PayPal is extremely popular in transferring money from anywhere in the world to the Philippines because creating an online account is intuitively simple, fast, and of course, free. Having your account “frozen” for certain “suspicious” reasons is one possible drawback if you’re sending money through this route.

Also, keep in mind that not all banks in the Philippines support fund transfer from PayPal. It could take 2 to 4 business days for the funds to appear in the recipient’s bank account. Lastly, be on the lookout for the additional (often hidden) fees.

A Php50 fee will be deducted from the total amount for transfers to bank accounts of Php 6,999 and below, while it’s free for remittances of Php 7,000 and above.

Coins.ph

Ron Hose, Founder of Coins.ph

Another efficient way for Philippines money transfer is Coins.ph. They make money transfer to the Philippines frictionless and accessible to everyone, even through the use of a smartphone! Based in Manila, Coins.ph is one of the easiest, and most convenient way to send money in the country.

Here’s what Founder Ron Hose has to say:

“With Coins.ph, employers can save up to 70% when paying oversea employee salaries by avoiding wire fees and costly forex charges.

They can send funds over web and mobile to all major banks in the Philippines and Thailand, as well as cash pick-up across 10,000+ retail locations.

With cash deposit facilities via partners across 30 countries, employers can conveniently add funds to their Coins.ph wallets and send payments directly to employees in their own local currency.”

Whether it’s for paying your employees in the Philippines, or for sending monetary gifts to loved ones, Coins.ph is a platform you can explore.

Rebit

Banking on the fact that “no single corporation or entity owns the Bitcoin network”, Rebit offers low transmission fees when transferring money to the Philippines. Their how-it-works page provides an in-depth look of their rates and turnaround times.

In a Reddit post, one of the developers behind the Bitcoin-based money transfer method emphasized:

One important thing that we are doing with Rebit.ph is that we will not be making money off of the USD to Peso exchange rate and will be using the fairest published rate available in the market.

One of Rebit’s advantage is that their prepaid cards make Bitcoin withdrawal a breeze. If you want an easy and hassle-free method of transferring money to the Philippines, Rebit.ph is a good pick.

Transferwise

Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder and CEO of TransferWise

With backing from elite entrepreneur Richard Branson and developed by the same people who built Skype, Transferwise boasts of their extremely low transfer rates – 1% for transfers from the US in USD, 0.5% for most other transfers, and 1% for the Philippine Peso. This is definitely game-changing when pitted against other medium such as PayPal whose extra fees can go as high as 4.5% (currency conversion rates included).

According to Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder and CEO of TransferWise:

“When you transfer money internationally, banks and brokers often hide the real cost so you end up paying more than you thought you were going to. They might say it’s ‘free’ to send your money, but they’ll then apply a mark-up on the exchange rate that they often don’t tell you about.
At TransferWise, we’re always completely transparent about the total charge and we make that as low as we can. We use peer-to-peer technology to get rid of hidden charges entirely, making us much cheaper and faster than using a bank.

We’re making sure that it’s our customers that benefit and not the banking system.”

Xoom

As another web-based money transfer player, Xoom allows your recipient to receive the funds you send through its partner banks in the country ( BPI, BDO, MetroBank, and PNB) and payment centers. They also offer door-to-door delivery or cash pick-up.

Payoneer

With Payoneer, your recipient gets a branded prepaid MasterCard and can withdraw the money on ATMs minus the steep bank fees. You can check their info page for businesses who are looking into paying remote employees. Like Paypal, we recommend verifying for hidden fees (for both sender and recipient.).

Western Union

This option is ideal if your recipient wants to withdraw the funds instantly (money-in-minutes option). Additionally, with roughly 8,000 locations in the country, withdrawing funds is convenient. Money transfers (done via online transaction or in person by visiting agent locations) can be possibly sent to a bank account, Western Union location, or mobile wallet. Fees for each transaction will vary on the amount of money sent and your turnaround time preference.

Final Thoughts

As a business owner, there are many ways to transfer money to the Philippines. Thanks to the ever-advancing technology, plenty of online platforms allow money transfer Philippines to be done with ease.

What other money transfer methods have you used in the past to send money to the Philippines? Why did you choose that option? We’d love to know more about these options (and the rest of our readers as well!) so share ‘em in the comments.

The Dark, Ghastly World of Manual Scheduling and Attendance

Posted on October 12, 2015 by

Psst! Are you still using punch cards, time clocks, or any other form of manual scheduling to track employee attendance and schedule? If you are, we have bad news.

Sit down for a minute and consider the following statistics:

A full 95 percent of employees steal from their employers through time theft. More than 30 percent of these employees perform time theft by writing in earlier arrivals or later departures, or having a co-worker clock them in or out, – 2013 survey, Kessler International

Roughly 75 percent of companies lose revenues from the innocuous buddy punching. – American Payroll Association

Buddy punching accounts for 2.2 percent of gross payroll losses – Nucleus Research

Businesses lose an average of 4.5 hours per week per employee in time theft – that’s more than half the amount you pay for a regular employee in a day. – American Payroll Association

Each year it costs companies an average of $65 per employee to collect, calculate and enter payroll data. Unauthorized overtime adds yet another $292 per employee, and mistakes in time calculation and employee fraud combined cost an additional $430 per employee. Therefore, manual timekeeping methods cost companies an average of $787 per employee annually. – G&A Partners

The aforementioned figures are worth pondering, right?

Now let’s dig further into the dark, ghastly world of manual scheduling and attendance.

Behold the TERRIBLE TRIO!

The Deceitful Paper-Based Time Sheet

Paper-based scheduling and attendance can be as simple as jotting down everyone’s name in one column and putting in the number of hours they’ve done in a week on another column. Often, login and logout times are jotted down too. It sounds uncomplicated but here’s why this method is outdated:

Reconciling time sheets, accounting for vacation leaves and overtime, and adjusting schedules takes a lot of time! What if the staff doubles in number for the next six months? The horror!
There’s a lot of room for error, whether intentional or not. Garbled handwriting, anyone?
Since it’s taking you forever to go over the time sheets, pay is most likely going to be delayed. Delayed pay means unhappy employees which, of course, leads to a decline in productivity.
It’s not shareable. Sure, you can have neat photocopies of the time sheets but at the end of the month, most of them are lost or mangled into pieces.

The Abominable Manual Time Clock

Many businesses still stick to the manual time clock because of its low cost. In comparison to time scheduling software, it’s obviously less expensive. But really, how certain are you that the time clock is saving your business money?

It could take a few seconds for an employee to punch in and out, yet much time is required to record and compile the raw data. In short, you need to hire an extra pair of hands to do all these things. The funds that you supposedly save goes into the daily wage of the employee who collects and processes the data.

Next, you could be paying for work that isn’t done in the first place! Enter buddy punching. It’s not common for one of your employees to text a co-worker to kindly clock in for him because he may be running late for work. Or worse, someone from production got a nasty hangover last night, can’t get to work, yet one of the team members clocked in for the absentee today because they’re BFFs.

And there’s the costs of time cards. It may look insignificant at first but the monthly costs could quickly add up, particularly if you’re adding more employees.

Lastly, like it’s deceitful sister – the paper-based time sheet, the manual time clock is a vast magnetic field for errors.

The Sinister Spreadsheet

What’s so sinister about the humble Excel spreadsheet?

Let’s talk about dueling spreadsheets. While there’s no princess to be saved nor kingdoms to be claimed, dueling spreadsheets can be a waste of time, money, and effort in the long run. This occurs when multiple versions of the same spreadsheet do not reconcile with each other.

This Smart Data Collective post explains dueling spreadsheets well:

It happens because the data in a desktop spreadsheet is not bound to a single source that everyone is working from. It may be a single source, but the data may be collected at different times. There may be changes to formulas or additions or deletions that take place, and not everyone is on the same version. This is what happens when spreadsheets are used in repetitive, collaborative enterprise processes.

Research by Ventana on the dueling spreadsheets scenario revealed that 43 percent of their respondents reported that it happens frequently or all of the time, and one-third (31%) find it happening for the most important process that utilizes spreadsheets.

Despite these findings, organizations continue to embrace spreadsheets because “they seem to believe that, like the weather, you can complain about these issues but you can’t do much to change the situation.”

Put an End to the Terrible Trio of Manual Scheduling and Attendance!

Now that we’ve revealed the evil ways of the terrible trio, the PayrollHero team would love to help you prevent the above mentioned pitfalls!

Our ridiculously client-focused approach guarantee that we’ll be with you as you battle your way out of the dark, ghastly world of manual scheduling and attendance. Isn’t it about time that you seek an automated time and attendance system that provides real value for what you’re paying for?

Get in touch with us today and we’ll help your business transition quickly to a seamless time and attendance management system!

Watch Our Singapore Payroll In Action

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Stephen Jagger

Would you like to see our Singapore payroll platform run a payroll? Rohit in our Singapore office put together a quick video to show you how easy it is to run a payroll for your Singapore based business. Check it out below:

Want to learn more about our Singapore payroll platform? Reach out and one of our team would be pleased to get on a call with you to discuss your needs.