Getting More From Your Payroll Data with an On Platform Solution

In an effort to simplify a NetSuite implementation and prioritise improvements to operational and accounting department functionality, many customers move Infinet Cloud Payroll to a future phase of implementation. 

Whilst this allows NetSuite customers to go live quicker and with more focus on the core scope of the project, it’s important to ensure that your business is taking a ‘continual improvement’ approach when it comes to further building upon the foundation of your initial NetSuite implementation. 

What is On Platform Payroll for NetSuite?

Infinet Cloud Payroll is a NetSuite Native Payroll solution that is 100% on platform and gives Australian, New Zealand and UK based NetSuite users the ability to manage all aspects of payroll including timesheet & expense management, payroll processing, streamlining pay runs, employee self service portals, super stream synchronising and most recently, one touch payroll compliance. 

Whilst US companies are able to take advantage of NetSuite’s existing payroll and HR functionality, companies using NetSuite in other parts of the world look to SuiteApp solutions that satisfy the functionality and compliance requirements of their country. Infinet Cloud Payroll for NetSuite is the only solution built specifically for Australian NetSuite customers and provides the ability to replace other disconnected or siloed payroll systems, such as MYOB and Xero, which benefits users by centralising data, simplifying their software ecosystem, removing the need for clunky integrations or worse, manual upload and reconciliation of payroll data.

What are the Key Benefits of Bringing Payroll On Platform?

Our clients report a number of key benefits after implementing Infinet Cloud as their NetSuite Payroll solution. From better visibility of payroll data, decrease in time for pay run processing through to a simplification of their IT and software ecosystems, Infinet Cloud customers know that managing payroll in NetSuite is a superior solution to using disconnected systems. 

Better Visibility of Payroll Data and Performance Metrics

Payroll data is critical when it comes to managing your workforce planning as well as measuring the performance of your payroll team. More often than not, when a disparate payroll system is used, critical information remains within the confines of the payroll system and team. This is a problem for management and executives as this data is critical in making decisions about capacity planning, new hire requirements or even ensuring that your salary and wage agreements are in line with government compliance requirements tasks such as the recent changes that were made to Annualised Salary Reporting.

Reduction in Payroll Processing Time

Payroll is a time consuming job and one that requires a high level of attention to detail. Many companies are still using a range of digital and paper based time capture systems that leads to excessive data entry into a payroll system, such as Xero, Sage, Keypay or Kronos. This manual and disparate process not only takes time and effort to administer but is also prone to human error, and we all know errors in payroll are a high risk to any business. When your payroll solution is a part of a centralised ERP system, you give yourself and your employees a modern and streamlined way to capture employee timesheets and have this automatically feed into your payroll processing system. You also have the benefit of being able to use this data alongside other information, searches and reports in your ERP which can be hugely insightful and beneficial across all departments. 

Simplified Management with a Data Rich Employee Record

NetSuite and Infinet Cloud Payroll when used together becomes a powerful HR platform that incorporates all information about your employees. From personal details, skills, education and training through to job performance, WHS and onboarding, the NetSuite employee record becomes a single place to enter, track, store and report on any information about your employees and departmental teams. Many of our customers report that after implementing Infinet Cloud, they were able to get rid of not only their legacy payroll solution, but also countless spreadsheets and other systems that were implemented to control specific employee related information tracking. This all led to a simplification of how they managed both payroll and non payroll related employee information and gave them detailed insights into their employee data.

Advanced Employee Portal for Self Service and Payslip

Some of the more modern cloud payroll solutions offer an employee portal for employees to log in and self manage their personal information such as address, bank details as well as get access to payslips, manage leave etc, however having this in a separate system essentially means that the information is siloed and any other systems that house employee information will either need to be integrated to ensure consistency of information or that somebody will need to take ownership of keying in information changes as and when they occur. This creates a lot of additional work for your admin team and again, is prone to error. When you take advantage of a solution like Infinet Cloud, duplicate data entry is a thing of the past as you are using your core Business Management Platform as the single source of truth. 

Streamlined ATO and Compliance Reporting

When it comes to compliance, payroll is one of the fastest moving and most often changed areas of managing your ATO obligations. Infinet Cloud is dedicated to a small number of geographical markets (Australia, New Zealand and the UK) so they are able to ensure that new functionality needed to seamlessly handle changes in your reporting obligations are built into the platform well ahead of new legislation requirements going live. 

Infinet Cloud Solutions were one of the first Australian Payroll Software providers to be approved as compliant to super stream reporting and more recently single touch payroll processing. 

How Can I Use My Payroll Data to Run My Business Better?

Before bringing their payroll on-platform, many of our clients hadn’t considered the benefits that gaining transparency and reportability into their payroll data might bring. If you are considering moving to native NetSuite payroll, consider the following.

Improved Reporting and Analytics

Before moving to Infinet Cloud, most businesses we have worked with had very little visibility into payroll related information, which lead to high volumes of report creation requests often with a very long lead time as the payroll team were the only people with access to the system

In addition to this, without the benefit of a flexible saved search or report writing tools, which are native to NetSuite, the ability to customise, filter or amend reports was limited and time consuming. Even generating a simple journal file to upload to their NetSuite to automatically create payroll entries caused weekly headaches. In addition to this, trying to record ERP related information, such as an employees department, what project their time related to or even claimable expenses required manual intervention and for most customers the level of effort to do this outweighed the benefit of having the information.

By using Infinet Cloud as their payroll solution, our clients have been able to access a wealth of new insights and data without any extra effort from the payroll department or other team members.
 

Leave Management and Liability Accrual in Real Time

In addition to a separate payroll system, most of our clients were also using either spreadsheets or another software package to manage their leave and liability accruals, which was periodically updated in NetSuite. This meant that the data and reports they were relying on to make decisions across the business were only correct when they manually updated the records in NetSuite. 

Having a leave management system within your business management platform means that your balance sheet is always correct and that any payroll transaction is instantly reflected across all areas of the system as any GL impacts are instantly recorded upon saving the transaction. 

From a resourcing management perspective, they also found they had better visibility of team availability as the leave calendar could now be used to assist with planning and scheduling workloads. 

Transparency into Employee Utilisation and Project Expenses

For services and project focused businesses one of the biggest challenges for not only payroll, but for management and employees themselves is consistently maintaining time tracking records. More often than not, this type of time tracking is separate to timesheets that are used for the purpose of payroll which means two different sets of time sheet records need to be recorded, interpreted and managed. This double handling leads to less productivity from each team member where they could be using this time to complete billable work. 

In addition to this, expenses that are incurred by employees, but are billable to clients such as meals, travel and accommodation related to work related travel, are easy to miss which eats away at project profitability margins over time. Due to the complexity of recording this information and the process that goes into applying and categorising these expenses and applying them to projects, most companies will absorb these costs centrally as the cost of administering them outweighs the benefit of billing them to clients. 

On Platform Payroll Opens the Door to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

Your Payroll function is one of the easiest areas of your business to outsource, and with an on platform solution, you will still have the benefit of transparency and visibility into payroll related data and insights. At TeamBlueSky, we have worked with hundreds of companies to implement Infinet Cloud and then take ownership for the day to day management of their payroll function as well as responsibility for ATO reporting compliance. 

Partnering with our team of payroll professionals can lessen the burden of your back office and allow your team to focus on tasks that help you drive more business, increase efficiencies and streamline your operations. Many clients have been able to redeploy payroll teams into other areas of the business and have been able to scale their workforce without having to worry about the impact this has on their team. 

If you are interested in learning more about TeamBlueSky, our BPO services or how we are able to help you implement on-platform payroll for NetSuite, then reach out to our team for an obligation free discussion. We’re here to help.