Question

Design Mitigation Plan

What are the control measures currently in use to protect against payroll errors?

What are the vulnerabilities related to payroll error found by the risk assessment team?

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MUST BE 250 WORDS

Answer 1

What are the control measures currently in use to protect against payroll errors?

1. Ensure correct employee data

Payroll mistakes are just that mistakes. And sometimes they occur because of incorrect employee onboarding information. This is an easy fix. Create verification processes for both employees and managers to confirm that new staff have correctly entered their name, social security number, bank account deposit number, deductions for benefits), and have accurately filled out their information on their tax forms. If you have the budget, an employee self-onboarding software can help your new employee complete paperwork electronically before the start date. And thanks to e-signatures, you’re able to ensure the employee has verified the information.

2. Work with a compliance-first mindset

It’s late at night and you’ve had a long week. You just ran payroll and you’re struggling to reconcile taxes, employment regulations, and new requirements. How much advance notice were you supposed to give your employees of scheduling changes again?

Sound familiar?

Staying on top of all the laws can be tough, but it’s critical to eliminate unnecessary payroll mistakes. Before a new team member starts their first shift, provide an estimate of where, when, and how often they’ll work. When schedules need to change, use compliance tools that automatically record schedule amendments, calculate the required predictability pay, and capture employee consent to the change.

3. Eliminate human error

Common payroll mistakes are just human errors that any business owner can. Maybe you give an employee a bonus gift card and forget to record it on payroll. That well-intentioned award can actually negatively impact your employee if not listed in their pay. Manually processing payroll isn’t just time-consuming. Think about all those hours spent pulling information from various sources, like your spreadsheets, timesheets, and banking information. Manual payroll can lead to miscalculations, oversights, and even missing key data. Plus, that makes record keeping and organization even harder.

4. Empower your employees

Preventing payroll mistakes (and potential future litigations) can be as simple as giving your employees the tools and processes needed to communicate with you and your managers about any payroll inaccuracies. If your employees catch payroll discrepancies, have a formal process in place so they can report these issues and more importantly, you can quickly resolve the discrepancy before they become bigger problems. Use an easy communication tool or payroll discrepancy form where they can notify you or your managers on any timesheet or payroll errors.

5. Increase security

As a manager, you’re looking for ways to keep both your staff and your business safe. And security is a big issue when it comes to payroll. Manually payroll leaves your business vulnerable to payroll fraud, like identity theft and misappropriation of funds. Fraudsters from an outside source can also steal employee tax and salary data if the business doesn’t have proper safeguards in place.

Using cloud-based solutions for time tracking integrated with payroll services can mitigate security risks, as these providers have advanced security measures in places such as two-factor authentication, data encryption, and security certifications to ensure your data is properly stored and protected. Additionally, most payroll providers have built-in security features that can alert your business of payroll fraud.

What are the vulnerabilities related to payroll error found by the risk assessment team?

Falsified Time Sheets :

Falsification of timesheets is a very serious matter even if it is only a couple of minutes. What this employee is doing potentially amounts to dishonesty and theft, in that they appear to be acting deliberately to mislead you and accepting payment for time they have not worked. There are a couple of issues here. One being that he is leaving early, the other is that he is misrepresenting what time he leaves on his time sheets. In relation to the leaving early, this is a potential disciplinary offence but, it may be difficult to discipline in the first instance, especially if there is a custom and practice of “knocking off” early amongst staff. However, if all the staff follow the rules and this employee is the only one who is leaving early, then it might be appropriate to take disciplinary action.

Unauthorized Access :

Unauthorized access is when someone gains access to a website, program, server, service, or other system using someone else's account or other methods. For example, if someone kept guessing a password or username for an account that was not theirs until they gained access, it is considered unauthorized access.

Bogus Time and Attendance Applications:

The answer towards this are the futuristic mobile apps with selfie based attendance (which uses AI based face detection technology) & workforce management system in which an employee marks his/her attendance by just taking a selfie picture from their work place (office or on-site). Doesnt it sound interesting? Sure, it does. One of the example is the award-winning TimeKompas App. These are very simple to use, comes with lot of features, are highly secured and is integrated with payroll generation as well. So it gives you "Picture to Payroll" in only few clicks. And the best part is their pricing. Many of such apps come on SaaS model at a monthly/yearly nominal subscription fees per employee. Many apps like TimeKompas are Highly Secured, Fake-Proof, Geo-Fenced and can even help you with your sales & service team management (Targets, Route Planning, Visits, Timesheets, Orders, Claims etc).

Unauthorized Modification of Time:

During the Term of this Agreement and at all times thereafter, Dealer shall defend, indemnify, and hold the Company harmless from any and all Bodily Injury and Property Damage Loss(es) to the extent such Bodily Injury and Property Damage Loss(es) result(s) from the negligent acts or omissions of Dealer or Dealer’s subcontractors, agents, employees, partners or their successors and assigns (“Dealer Parties”) or from an Unauthorized Modification of any Product made by any of the Dealer Parties.