With 20 years in the business, Payroll and Pensions Controller Jason Lowe has lived through many payroll migrations.
But he has never experienced one which worked as seamlessly as the recent changeover from bureau to hosted services at waste management company Biffa.
Biffa is a leading integrated waste management business in the UK. It provides waste collection, treatment, recycling, and disposal services to around 80,000 local and national customers.
esl now handles the company’s combination of more than 5,000 weekly and monthly paid employees.
As well as greatly increased flexibility, the move to esl has brought Biffa another major advantage – significant business growth has been achieved without increasing the headcount in the payroll department.
Jason said: “We have added a number of new local authority contracts recently without having to make our own staff numbers any bigger.”
Since the esl system went live in April, 2006, Jason has been delighted with the colossal improvement it has made to the company’s payroll system and the ease with which it has been implemented.
He said: “It is such a user-friendly system, designed with payroll professionals in mind.
“All we have to do is import the time and attendance data into the payroll system and the result is a quicker turnround which gives us more time for checking.
“We now know we are 99.6% correct in our payroll and can now maintain a very high level of accuracy because we look at each payslip before payment is made.”
Improvements introduced by esl have been far greater than expected.
Jason explained: “Previously we had to transfer the input to the bureau and then wait for an hour for it to come back to us. Now we are working in real time which has accelerated the payroll output substantially.”
The other advantage is all third party deductions such as Share Save are paid by BACS, cutting out the need to raise 300 cheques a month. t is all dealt with as soon as it is deducted from employees, removing one more burden from the payroll team.
Jason is delighted with the increased overall business flexibility which has allowed Biffa to introduce a general ledger interface for the first time. Biffa is also in the process of combining the payroll and personnel systems. New employee records are added by payroll staff on behalf of Human Resources, so data is only input once which reduces the potential for errors.
He added: “The systems reporting capabilities are fantastic. We can export files to our central computer system, so the Cost Centre Manager can review costs more efficiently.
esl is more than just a payroll provider. The staff are extremely helpful and they never say they can’t do anything. Instead they will suggest another way of doing it.”
Jason has worked at Biffa for three and a half years and has no hesitation in saying that he is delighted with the services provided by esl. “They have certainly made my life an awful lot easier,” he added.