Overview

Payroll departments are often on the front line when it comes to employee enquiries. Common queries range from pay, timesheet and leave questions, through to processing new hires and terminations for managers. Some requests are time critical for the current pay period, while others can wait until after the rush of getting the current pays out.

This article will guide you through the basics of payroll support management and how a simple-to-use and affordable help desk software can reduce support costs and improve efficiency.

How most payroll teams manage support today

Most payroll departments rely on email for payroll requests and support, giving multiple team members access to a shared payroll support inbox. While this can work well for smaller organisations, it quickly becomes unmanageable for mid to large organisations handling dozens of requests, requiring a wider scope of responses and priorities.

Issues with managing support from a shared inbox

Many payroll departments manage queries and issues scattered across multiple communication channels including email, phone and chat. Prioritisation can become difficult as workload increases, especially when it’s pay week.

Common challenges 

• • Ad-hoc management of queries / requests
  • Queries often not a priority because of a pay run
  • Unclear as to the status or who is responding
  • SLA’s not tracked

The shared inbox approach has many points of failure, particularly when it comes to managing workload across limited payroll resources, tracking status and communicating with employees in a timely and structured way. Additional manual work is created when you don’t have the capability to:

• • Create repeatable processes and responses for common queries or issues
  • Prioritise and communicate effectively
  • Track and analyse the root cause of issues so you can prevent them in future
  • Provide self-service help through a payroll knowledge base

Further, when enquiring about solutions such as a ticketing system, payroll is time and again dismissed and told that:

• • We have a ticketing system for IT (such as ServiceNow) and we’ll adapt that
  • It’s not worth the effort of implementing a ticketing system just for payroll
  • It would be expensive and the cost / benefit is unlikely to stack up
  • The payroll team would need extensive training and support

But times have changed!

Benefits of a dedicated payroll ticketing system

Payroll is slowly getting more and more recognition in the business, as the critical function that it is. Just like every other department, it’s long overdue to receive the budget and resources it needs to evolve into a modern function.

Key benefits of investing in a payroll ticketing system:

• • Centralise all queries & requests: For better management & tracking
  • Improved communication: With all employees & across the payroll team
  • Better governance: Including audit trails & resolution outcomes
  • Streamlined efficiency: To automate routine tasks
  • Boost productivity: With automated routing, notifications & alerts
  • Reduced query volume: Through a self-serve knowledge base
  • Empower your payroll team: Especially during times of immense pressure & stress

Another major plus of a payroll ticketing system is the ability to see all open queries at a glance. The entire team can see exactly how many open queries, who’s working on them, what priority they’ve been given and the status of each one.

What to look for in a payroll ticketing system

A payroll ticketing system should be configured specifically for payroll departments, based on payroll support practices (not IT support!). It should streamline the process of managing and resolving payroll-related issues by providing a centralised platform for all queries.

Features should include:

1. Intelligent ticket management: To manage queues & prioritise (including ticket age, priority/timing, subject area & issue difficulty)
2. Ticket classification: Type (e.g. request or query), source, priority & criticality
3. Templates: So you can design your own automated or quick responses
4. Seamless workflows: Such as forms for new hires or terminations & notifications for communication
5. A sharable knowledge base: To assist employees to self service
6. Scalability: The ability for your solution to scale alongside the organisation, accommodating for increasing enquiries
7. Analytics and Reporting: Monitor & report on ticket response/resolution times, as well as the ability to analyse & share metrics such as:
   • • Unread and open tickets
     • Effort (active support time)
     • User satisfaction

Paytools support ticketing solution

Paytools has partnered with (and integrated to) Freshdesk to provide a payroll ticketing system that meets all of the requirements above. Not only is it purpose-built for payroll, here’s a few other added perks:

• • It’s resource light: Paytools assists with the setup and support to get you going within hours (not weeks or months).
  • It’s inexpensive: A small additional cost to add as a module within the Paytools platform. While there may be an initial investment, the long-term benefits will quickly outweigh the costs.
  • 100% payroll focused: Everything we do is designed specifically to make the lives of payroll people better and support good governance for those accountable for payroll.