Making Sure You Never Have To Pay The Price Of Employee Overpayments

Paying employees the right amount promptly can affect everything from productivity to how long each colleague sticks around. As such, most bosses will do everything they can to avoid issues like underpayments.

When it comes to success, though, these aren’t the only issues worth your attention. Accidental overpayments can also have significant adverse effects on your efforts. To make matters worse, reimbursing that money isn’t a case of simply asking for it back. While the law dictates you can reclaim that money, you may have to wait for future pay dates to do so. As such, a substantial overpayment one could still see you in significant debt. But, how exactly can you make sure that you never have to pay that price for overpayments?

Don’t try to tackle payroll yourself

Tackling payroll yourself is never a good idea, but it’s especially problematic with regards to overpayments. The fact is that you’re a busy business manager. You don’t have much time to spare, and that means you may rush side-concerns like employee payments. And, human errors during rushed payment implementations are a sure way to significant overpayments. The best way to avoid this is to seek help with your payroll, either through an in-house HR team or payroll accounting services like those offered by MNE. That way, you can be sure that trained professionals are taking the time necessary to make sure that all zeros are forever where they should be.

Automate payroll increases

Overpayments can often take place during promotions and pay rises. This is usually because many managers implement these things by hand, thus leaving room for the dreaded human error again. To make matters worse, an employee may assume that this is just their wage now, and could, therefore, change their living situation accordingly. That makes reimbursement much harder for you, and it’s something you can avoid by automating increases like these. There’s plenty of HR software which can send promotional pay rises straight to your payroll team for you. All without you having to type anything by hand and risk mistakes.

Conduct regular audits

When we talk about payrolls, we often refer to the biggies, like the extra zero, or the accidental double pay. In reality, though, these are mistakes which are evident right away and thus aren’t as damaging as they might seem. By comparison, a small overpayment of £100 a month might not seem like much, but that adds up to £1,200 a year. If you paid £100 extra for five years, then, you would cost your company £6,000 without even noticing it. As such, regular audits for small discrepancies like these are a must. If you’re outsourcing this service, the chances are that your chosen company will conduct audits for you. If your payroll is in-house, though, make sure to check things like pay rates and attendance records at least every six months. That way, you can at least make sure that small accidental overpayments don’t have time to add up to harmful amounts.

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