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.

 

The 8th Annual Proactive Accountants Conference: 12 to 16 July in Bali!

We recently spoke to Rob Nixon about his software business: Panalitix. It is a software as a service that provides accounting data from small businesses to accountants around the world.

Panalitix has an exciting event coming up that accountants should definitely catch. They are hosting their 8th Annual Proactive Accountants Conference between 12th and 16th of July. The conference will be in Bali, Indonesia. Accountants will get a chance to meet their colleagues, hear some great speakers and attend networking events (and of course, spend time in BALI!).

Jack Daly, will be the keynote speaker. Among other speakers, the conference will feature Keith Abraham, creator of Living with Passion, Daniel Priestley from the program Key Person of Influence, Tamara Trentain, digital marketing expert and Karen Abramson – CEO Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting.

Make sure to catch the conference in Bali! 375 accountants have already signed up for the event here.

To know more about outsourcing in the Philippines, you can read our blogposts featuring BPOs like VKW Inc, the Outsourced Accountant and Wint & Kidd. You can check out our executive interview section for all our interviews. You can also read our blog post on doing business in the Philippines, if you are looking for more information about BPOs in the country.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkFNyLDBzH0

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An Introduction to Domain Driven Design

The PayrollHero offices are buzzing with new energy. This week, the entire team flew in from Manila and Whistler to Singapore and worked through two days of intense training on Domain Driven Design with Kiro Harada. After the rigorous learning retreat, the team emerged with renewed perspective and restless enthusiasm. In an endeavour to contribute to our community, we want to share with you what Kiro taught us.

The learning retreat was conducted by lean and kaizen expert Mr. Kiro Harada. Kiro flew in from Japan and spent time with us both as part of the workshop and to guide us after it.

Domain Driven Design is all about communication. The gap between what developers want to create and what stakeholders in the company understand can be massive, potentially detrimental to the company. Even between developers, it is hard to maintain a common language as domains grow larger. This makes it tougher to model a problem which leads to further miscommunication.

Blind men and the elephant

For you and me, miscommunication sounds like an obvious problem. But what does it mean in a tech company for people who are not familiar with domains and modelling? To give us an idea of what he meant, Kiro told us about the 5 Blind Men and the Elephant. Each blind man gets a part of the elephant: like the leg, the trunk or the tail. Individually, the blind men know everything about their allotted parts. But when they regroup, one man calls his part a tree, the other man calls his part a snake, and so on.

Different perspectives colour reality and computer programmes cannot distinguish between the two. So what can you do to ensure that everyone is on the same page? The solution to the Blind Men and the Elephant problem is for each blind man to observe his part, regroup, model (or draw) what they observed, go back, make observations and repeat the process till they finally put it all together. You collect information and switch positions to ensure that everyone’s perspectives are clearly understood. The idea is to move from a state of –

Not knowing what you don’t know (or alternatively, knowing what you know)

to

Knowing what you don’t know

DDD is intended to take you back to the drawing board, where you design incrementally. The model must constantly evolve – from building a scenario that describes a model which is written into code that creates new scenarios, and the loop regenerates itself. Exploring models with creative collaboration while consciously focusing on the core domain is what DDD helps you do.

ddd_graphic.001

DDD in Practice: Modelling a Vending Machine

The concept of DDD can be vague unless you put it into action. Kiro chose to do just that by splitting us into teams and giving us a problem to model. The only instructions were to code for a vending machine.

Round 1: True to PayrollHero’s style, my team decided to code for a machine that vends beer. We got down to writing all components involved in the machine: beer, a tray to hold the beer, a coin collection box, refrigeration involved (liquid nitrogen, of course), landing tray, the works. We then wrote down all the actions involved, inserting the coin, choosing a brand, waiting for the beer. Then we wrote down all possible scenarios: what if too many coins were inserted, what if the power ran out, what if the machine go stuck while vending the beer, what if the beer wasn’t cold, what if… and we went on and on.

Till Kiro came up to us and said our time was up.

We got no coding done. We barely opened a laptop screen. There was no product, just a bunch of ideas. Round one was an epic failure. We had a brief discussion on what to do. Kiro told us we needed to start small. Create a scenario, build a model, implement it and then go back to the drawing board to create another scenario.

Round 2: We needed a fresh perspective. We started from scratch, this time making sure that the developer in the room coded while we built the model. The process seemed slow but was far more efficient. Every non-developer would review the code to make sure everyone understood what was going on. When time was up we had our minimum viable product. By making our core domain small, we had a flexible model that we could work around. It was evident that Domain Driven Design helped us create our MVP within 45 minutes.

Timeboxing: The Bomb

In theory, DDD now seems like a simple idea. Even when you are modelling a vending machine, applying DDD to one problem is easy. What if you are dealing with 20 different problems at a time? Kiro showed us how multi-tasking can wreak havoc on a team. We were made to stand in a circle and pass around a “bomb” in alphabetical order. We were just getting good at it, when Kiro threw in another bomb that we were supposed to pass around in height order. A few seconds later another bomb was introduced that was to work its way around the group in order of birthdays. As you would imagine, we took ages figuring out how to pass three bombs around simultaneously. It was inefficient, messy and absolutely hilarious.

The idea of multi-tasking is just not sustainable. It wastes time and does not capture anyone’s complete focus. Timeboxing is far more effective. Getting work done one at a time allows you to apply DDD, keep everyone involved on the same task and thereby get everyone to focus their energies on a single plan.

Day 1 ended on a high note. Kiro threw ideas on modelling different problems at us and the developers enthusiastically practiced on them. The team was exhausted but an idea was borne out of a full day’s worth of training. We had big plans for the future, with new features in the pipeline.

Day 2 picked off from the previous day’s final tip – timeboxing. When you do tasks one at a time, it’s important to prioritize which feature from your backlog should be worked on. At PayrollHero, developers choose a bunch of issues and then vote on them. After ranking the issues, Kiro suggested we vet through what the problem really is before we go deeper into solving it.

Fact vs Opinion

Once you have identified a problem, it’s worth evaluating whether the problem is relevant or even real. Differentiating fact from opinion is another one of those obvious steps but everyone often misses out on it when you are deep into the process of solving a problem. It’s worth hitting the brakes and breaking down the problem and solution.

Problem Solution
Fact The problem should be based on solid data, maybe customer feedback or some other data analytics A solution that arises from analysing the facts of the problem. A quantifiable improvement is preferable
Opinion What the developers believe the problem is An opinion about the solution may be a source of new problems or ideas

Moving from the problem to a solution is what Kiro calls a Hero’s Journey. Using the facts of the problem, developers need to use their imagination to model the solution. The next step is to design the model and then implement the solution. Often the implementation brings up new problems and the cycle begins again. (If you were wondering, the name comes from the Star Wars protagonist, Luke Skywalker, who was faced with the problem of saving the galaxy, then he met Yoda, and finally used the Force to save Princess Leia and bring freedom and peace to the galaxy. Kiro is quite the sci/fi fan).

heros_journey_web_1024

This marked the end of the learning material that Kiro taught us. After this, we talked about models specific to PayrollHero and practised tackling them. An interesting exercise was to build a simple model, say a delivery system, and throw scenarios at it to see where the model breaks. The entire team enjoyed the brain teasers but more importantly, it helped us look at our product with fresh eyes and a different angle to approach our pipeline ideas.

The next few days are all about using DDD for some rigorous introspection and using the new learning as a foundation for future ideas. We also got the entire team to spend some time together with each other and our new interns. We went out for lunch, dinner and drinks. It was a great experience for both developers and non-technical members of the team. Overall, we learned that modeling can and should be used to make decisions, both for R&D and sales and marketing. It was not just about app development, it was a new way of thinking and building on ideas and executing them. While we are constantly improving our methods and changing our approach, we want the PayrollHero team to stay on their feet and continue being awesome consistently.


PayrollHero Team at Domain Driven Design Workshop Singapore

PayrollHero Singapore Payroll Team

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Cloud Computing Part II: 5 Companies that are Changing the way Business is Done

pablo

As a sequel to our previous post on cloud computing, we thought we would give you an idea of how cloud computing is being used by companies to help businesses in South East Asia. Below we have 5 companies that are changing the way businesses function. Some of them are catered towards bringing in more consumers through the door while others are helping business move day-to-day operations into the cloud so that businesses can spend more time and money on their core competencies.

Loyalty Apps

Perx: This Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software collects loyalty cards into one neat app. For a consumer, you earn points every time you purchase something. Accumulation of points leads to rewards. Perx says that consumers spend 7 times more with the app than without it. Some of the merchants under Perx’s belt are Subway, Joe and Dough’s, Maki San and Salad Stop.

For you, a merchant, Perx gives a huge client database by putting you on their map. The company uses Amazon Web Services to control all the data it collects. Perx’s data analytics gives information about consumption trends, how much a consumer would spend on lunch, where they are located: in short, everything you would like to know about your customer. Perx offers this wealth of data to all its merchants for a fee. As an added marketing platform, Perx features companies on their email and blog which is sure to boost your presence in the community.

Foursquare: While Foursquare does not collect virtual loyalty cards, it uses its core competency – geolocation data and services – in order to bring businesses to consumers. For businesses that claim their names in the Foursquare directory, all rewards and deals that are offered will be displayed to the user.

Inventory Management

TradeGecko: Singapore’s leading user-friendly inventory management software uses the Cloud. It helps retailers and wholesalers to manage multiple warehouses and the entire supply chain without using conventional methods like excel. TradeGecko allows remote monitoring which helps retail managers to control operations at multiple locations. TradeGecko also has Xero integrated into it to digitize the accounting end of the business as well.

Unleashed: Similar to TradeGecko, Unleashed provides analytics on turnover rates, overstocked items, managing margins across different channels (retail, wholesale, e-commerce) and all this in real time.  Unleashed also integrates other Cloud solutions to its app.

Food Delivery Apps

Slurp: Created by Silent Mode, Slurp is the Malaysian version of Foodpanda. It uses cloud based POS systems that help restaurant owners process delivery orders. While Slurp does not deliver food, it has a data analytics service along with a customer app and a waiter app, all in the effort to make ordering food a smoother and error-free process.

Giving credit to the ‘little guy’ in your company

The PayrollHero Way
Giving credit where credit is due is an important task for managers to keep the morale of their employees up. Employees like to be noticed and praised for a job well done.

Why are managers not giving enough praise? Besides the fact that you are busy running around, taking care of daily operations; making sure everything is running as it should, finding out which employee did well for the last 4 weeks will take more effort. Most of the time, this task is not on the top of the priority list and so easily overlooked.

PayrollHero can help you look good to your employees!

Surely there are times where you wish you would have remembered to at least say ‘Good Job’ to Bob the cashier for working 8 hours and being the most helpful. Human errors like this can be avoided by using a simple app, where you can monitor your employees day to day work and track how they are performing accurately.

By using the employee feedback app, Daily Pulse, employees are able to ‘like’ their colleagues that was the most helpful at the end of the shift. Another plus, your customer can give their feedback using the Customer Feedback app too- by voting for the employee that was the most helpful to them.

You, the manager, will receive the data in real time via Xray Insights app. The app will show a clearer view of each employee performance and tracks the employee who is getting the most ‘likes’ on that particular shift. Information is readily available for you at a touch of a button. This makes your job so much easier! It also eliminate subjectivity in your decision as it is based on figures- not hearsay.

Work Place Transparency

At PayrollHero, we want to break the conventional workplace hierarchy by making information more transparent within the company. Using mobile or web apps, all managers can readily access whatever information required anytime, anywhere. We recognize that being on the ball is important when running a business- so time should not be wasted on you waiting for information from other managers.

The Data Might Even Surprise You! 

You may be glad to find out that the employee that is actually doing great is the person you least expect. It could very well be the person who is clearing the dishes- that is the most helpful employee among the rest and the most ‘likeable’ to your customers.

The app works by making sure every employee is acknowledged, from the chef to the janitor. You can be the best manager who knows exactly the deserving employees to give credit to at the end of the day.

Read our post on Scheduling Best Practices for Managers.


Want to learn how to be a better manager?

Join our next Meetup on 10th Jun 2015 @ 4pm in Singapore.

We will be focusing on tips and tools you can use to better optimize HR and payroll processes, while cutting costs on time and creating a happier work culture.

To register >>> Capture

 

 

 

Meetup on Growth Hacking in Asia

silicon straitsYesterday, Aulia and I stepped out of the office after work and headed to Ayer Rajah Crescent for a Meetup. It was on Mastering SEO to Boost User Acquisition, hosted by Growth Hacking Asia and Silicon Straits Co.Lab. Growth Hacking Asia is an organisation that advises Asian startups on how to succeed. The speaker was Jeff Li, SEO Manager at Expedia Asia and Head of SEO at AirAsiaGo. Jeff gave us some invaluable insight that we thought we should share and spread the love a little bit.

Jeff first explained to us how Google crawlers work. Page rankings are based on how relevant the page is according to Google. The factors that make up relevance involve keywords, links that lead to your page, quality of links, responsiveness of your page and site structure to name a few.

While keywords are important, Jeff says:

“SEO strategy has shifted from
keyword focused to topic focused”

Content in your website is key to bringing in traffic. The search user’s journey begins with the Search Interest, then to the Search Engine Results Page, followed by the landing page and finally the conversion from just a page visit to the action that we want the user to take. Therefore, having content that is relevant and useful to your target audience will get more hits and pull up your rankings.

A good reminder about content: Content should be shared in a way that makes your site look original, not in an attempt to crack Google’s algorithm.

Next, focusing on content will get you nowhere unless you know where to put it. Spamming is a big no-no because it creates a bad name. Paying a blogger a minimal fee to write about you may backfire if the channel that the blogger posts it on is not relevant to you. However, asking a guest blogger to write on your site may bring links back to you. Similarly, writing about another blogger and going by a pay-it-forward philosophy is great for both parties’ site traffic and creates goodwill: something like good internet karma.

While we are on the topic of linking, we never forget to link our site’s homepage to different parts of the site like the product category, the merchant page and general content pages. These pages are further linked to our products. However, linking these pages back up the chain is important too. A good internal linking strategy keeps the user on the site by giving more relevant information, which could lead to a higher conversion rate.

Jeff then gave some neat tools to learn how to optimize websites. Screaming Frog is a tool that simulates search engine crawlers. It helps you understand whether your site is accessible by crawlers. Google Search Console (previously known as Google Webmaster) is a great tool to pull up your page rankings and “be found”, as Google puts it.

With all these tools, the 2 biggest challenges with SEO are the following:

  1. Understanding the huge amount of data that you have on your site
  2. Figuring out what your competitor is doing

While the second point is an inevitable evil, we can do more about the first point. When asked what an SEO team should aim for, Jeff gave us some KPIs:

  1. Conversion rate
  2. Traffic
  3. Rankings

The second and third points lead back to the first: how to generate leads by first generating traffic, then pulling up your page rankings and eventually taking off your business from there. Simple in theory, but an elusive concept at best.

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Part I on Cloud Computing: 3 Reasons Why Your Business Should Use Cloud Computing Now

cloud computing Cloud Computing, by definition, is “the practice of using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer.”

Let’s be honest, that sounds terribly boring. And you’re probably wondering: I don’t even know what half of that means.

As an intro to cloud computing, take a look at the infographic we have for you. Now, let’s talk about why your business needs to upgrade its IT infrastructure and adopt cloud computing with arms wide open. Using cloud computing services helps you increase efficiency, cut down on costs, and change the way you do business.

  1. Demand-Supply management: Cloud computing gives you the opportunity to be ridiculously client focussed using big data and data analytics. Imagine owning a gaming store that sold console games. If Game A was trending that week and Game B was not doing so well, data analytics would allow you to identify that trend, allowing you to stock up accordingly. Not only would you improve sales, you would manage inventory better and improve your turnover rates. For your business to be flexible and sustainable, you need solid data to back up your decisions. Cloud computing offers insight into your customer’s preferences. Using this data will give you the competitive advantage that you need.
  1. Cost reductions:
  • By using the Cloud, you can cut costs by moving from the CAPEX model to the OPEX model. This is particularly useful for companies that have a high debt burden. Initial capital expenditure on IT assets or building your IT infrastructure is not fully deductible, which leads to higher taxes. On the other hand, operating expenses on running services through the cloud are fully tax deductible. By moving your system to the cloud, you will be able to free up capital for other investments.
  • There is another benefit to cloud computing on your balance sheet. Think about the IT infrastructure you have set up for your business. You have 10 servers that work perfectly well on a regular basis. All of a sudden, during a special discount that you are promoting through your website, you notice greater traffic. Now you need 5 more servers to sustain the traffic. However, the investment is too expensive for the limited amount of time that you are using it for. If you could rent and pay for servers for just a short period of time, wouldn’t that make more sense than investing in assets that will not pay off in the long run?
  1. Remote-monitoring: This one is easy. By using the Cloud, you can access your company’s data anywhere and at any time. When you’re on that much needed holiday in the tropics, your spreadsheets back home will be of no use to you. With Cloud Computing, you can get back to your business at a moment’s notice and respond to any emergency, all this while sipping on some mai tais and preparing for the beach volleyball game.

Now, if you already knew all of the above, then you have probably contemplated the next question. What about security? We understand, recent security breaches that have led to disasters for some companies do not instil confidence in what we are talking about. Sensitive information is at risk when you are using Cloud Computing. But here is what’s important for your business: if IT is not your core competency, then no matter how much you invest in security, a company that rents out servers probably has a more secure system in place. Again, this is about how you want to use your resources to focus on your business.

Singapore is a great example on how Small to Medium sized Businesses (SMBs) have adopted cloud computing. Cloud Comrade, a company that provides solutions on cloud management, says that around 63% of businesses in Singapore turn to companies like Cloud Comrade for cloud technology solutions. Singapore is one of the fastest adopters of cloud computing services.

Altogether, the reasons for cloud computing, especially for SMBs was put very simply by Pavel Ershov, Parallels’ vice president of service providers business for the Asia Pacific and Japan regions:

“SMBs today have the best of both worlds to help them grow their businesses–cloud services offerings with enterprise-grade capabilities at affordable costs”


Want to learn more about PayrollHero? Check out our country specific websites:
Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand | Canada, USA

 

Benefits of SaaS | Payroll Software

PayrollHero is hiringIn the past, businesses would buy, build and maintain their own software and infrastructures despite the massive costs that went along with that. Software as a Service (SaaS) now gives companies a choice when upgrading their technical requirements. Now they can subscribe to services that are built on shared infrastructure through the internet. SaaS businesses have been expanding in a big way as more and more companies take advantage of the many benefits.

Instead of buying servers, companies use platforms like Amazon’s AWS.
Instead of buying a sales crm, companies use tools like PipelineDeals.
Instead of building a email tool, businesses use tools like MailChimp.

The list goes on and on.

Here are some benefits of moving your payroll needs to a software as a service platform like PayrollHero:

– High Adoption –
SaaS products are available from any computer connected to the internet. For PayrollHero, your team is not stuck managing payroll from a specific computer that has the software installed, instead they can access it from anywhere in the world.

– Lower Initial Costs –
PayrollHero’s SaaS model lets you scale up and down as needed. Our billing is based on the number of active employees within your business, plus, it is billed per day the employee is active.

– Painless Upgrades –
SaaS enables you to constantly get the newest features, bug fixes and enhancements quickly and easily. With PayrollHero, you can see what is happening by checking out our release notes.

– Seemless Integration – 
Many SaaS companies provide API’s so that you can tie one product into another. PayrollHero is no different, with an extensive API, you can make PayrollHero work with many other tools within your business. Some of our clients have integrated PayrollHero with Quickbooks, Workday, Zapier and much more.

Interested in learning more? Reach out and we would be pleased to chat further about how PayrollHero’s Singapore payroll software, Philippine payroll software works as well as how our international time and attendance tools can help you take control of your business.