Navigating Manual Checks in Payroll: Tips & Best Practices

[00:00:01] Welcome Back Folks, It's Episode 145, We're Talking About Manual Checks Today, And Before I Get Into It, Like Always, What's Up, Walt? I'm Good, I'm Good, I'm Going Through A Fun Implementation, You Know, Parallels And Stuff Like That, But Man, Still Grateful To Be Here To Be With You, To Have Everything That I Have, Man, So, Just On The Same Energy, Bro, Just Trying To Get It, Look, I Have My Down Days, Too,

[00:00:31] You Know, Yeah, I Mean, Yeah, We're Only Human, Right? Yeah, But How About You, How You Doing? I'm Good, Yeah, Thank Goodness, I Still Hear A Slight Echo In The Background, We Gotta Figure Out, It's Less Than Before, But We'll See, But You Made Me Think Of A Couple Of Things When You Said You Do An Implementation, One I Thought About Anita Letang, She Just Did A Second, She Just Updated Her Book, How To Pick Your Next Payroll, She Has This Version 2 Now, What It Made Me Think Of Is In That Book,

[00:01:01] She Points Out A Really Good Point About Payroll Professionals And How Often, So Let Me Ask You, How Often Do You Think Payroll Professionals Get To Implement A New System? Well, How Often Do I Think? Yeah. During Their Career? Yes, During Their Career? Thank You, Yes, During Their Career.

[00:01:19] I Could Only Go Back Based On My Experience And I, If I Think About The 24 Plus Years That I've Been Doing It, I Would Say I've Only Done It In My Career About Three Or Four Times. So That's A Lot. So She Says The Average Is Like Maybe One Or Two. Wow. Because, Yep. Because, You Know, If You're, If You're At One Place For A Long Time, I Guess It'll Change Depending On How Many Times You Jump Around.

[00:01:45] But, If You're At One Place For A Long Time, You're Not Go Through, You're Not Going To Go Through Systems Much, Right? You're Not Going To Change. You Know, It's A Big Undertaking, It Costs Money, So The Chances Of One Company Doing It For The Time You There Are Slim. Maybe You Do It Once, Right? I Think We Just Came Up, I Think We Just Came Up Kind Of In An Era Where Folks Started To Job Hop More.

[00:02:12] You Know, It Became More The Regular To Stay Somewhere, I Don't Know, Two To Four Years Instead Of, You Know, Where Our Parents Stood At Jobs 10, 15, 20, You Know What I Mean? I Got A Sister-In-Law That Has Been At Her Job For Like 37 Years, Something Crazy, Yeah. No, Nope. It's Not The Norm Anymore. So, Yeah. So, I Thought, You Know, When You Said You Do An Implementation, I'm Like, Well, You Know What? It Is A Blessing.

[00:02:39] You're Getting To Do Something That Not A Lot Of Payroll Pros Get To Do And Definitely Not Often, You Know? Yeah. And I Think, Look, Every Implementation Is, Could Possibly Be Different, Right? Yeah. Oh, For Sure. For Sure. And That's The Beauty Of It, Correct? Because You Really, You Really Sharpening The Pencil, The Sword, However You Want To Call It, You Know, You Really Getting Your Skills Up.

[00:03:02] And I Could, I Could Tell On The Show Because The Things That You, Like, You, You've Gotten More Granular With Some Of The Examples And This, Like, It's Pulling From A Different Place Being That You're Doing It. So, It Was Good. It Was Good. Yeah, Man. Yeah, Bro. So, What Do We Got Today, Man? We Talk A Little Bit About Our Financial Fitness Challenge. Yeah. Anything New? Yeah. Honestly, Look, I Think I'm Just Gonna Be Transparent, Like, Yeah.

[00:03:32] Kind Of, You Know, Just Getting Back Into It And Then Doing It And Then Kind Of Fell Off A Little Bit With The Spending. Like, Remember How I Said Eating Out And Stuff Like That? So, Just Being Transparent, Just Like, Yeah. Being Busy With So Much To Do And Then Just Like, Yo, I, Neither One Of Us Feel Like Cooking Here And Then Like, You Know, Whatever. And Then, You Know, We're Just Like, Oh, Let's Just, Let's Just Order Something Really Quick. And All In. And Just Fall Back Into That Trap. Yeah.

[00:04:00] Well, It's Only A Trap, Remember, If You're Buying Groceries And You're, Right? Because Then, Right? So, It'd Be Interesting And I Don't Know, Maybe You Can Take It As A Takeaway Like, Or If You've Already Done It, How If You Didn't Buy As Many Groceries Like, What's The Grocery Bill Versus The Eating Out Bill? Yeah. On A Month To Month, You Know What I Mean? Like, How Does That Compare?

[00:04:26] Well, When You Put It Like That, Like, We Bought Less Groceries. So, That's Good. So, You Are Just Saving. Yeah. Yeah. We've Just Been. Because As Expensive As Groceries Are Today, It Might Be, You Might Be Saving Money By Eating Out. We Do The Buy One, Get One Free. Mostly Every Time, Bro. Wow. Look At That. That's Crazy. So, Even That Is A Nice Little Savings Hack, Fitness Challenge Hack. You Know What I Mean? There Was Something That I Wanted To, That I Just Did. Didn't Make A Note Of It.

[00:04:54] But There Was Something I Was Like, Oh, Yeah, I'm Doing This. Because What It's Making Me Think Of Is Things That I'm Already Doing. I've Already Tried To... Because Again, Right? I Don't Gotta Wait For The New Year Type Of Thing To Change Habits. It's Like, Hey, If I'm Thinking Of Changing A Habit, I Change A Habit. Or Try To At Least. Because You See, As We See We're Human. It Takes Time. What Did You Say? It Takes Like 20 Days Or Something For It To Become... 21 Days. 21 Days Before It Can Like A Solid Habit And Things Like That.

[00:05:22] So, You Know, All We Could Do Is Just Keep Trying To Be Intentional About It. So, Yeah, I Was Just Talking To A Friend Earlier And It Was Like, You Know, He's Like, Where Does The Money Go? And How... Where Is It? And I'm Like, Well, If You're Not Intentional About Tracking It... Yeah. You're Not Gonna Know Where It Goes. Exactly. Exactly. So, Yeah, I Still Haven't Done My Look Back Yet. I'm Still In A... You Know, I Usually Do It In Preparation To Filing Taxes.

[00:05:52] So, I Still Have Time, Kind Of, But I Do Want To Get Ahead Of It. And I Thought... Oh, You Got Something Here For News? Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. Well, It's Not Really News. Just A Little... Just A Couple Stats. All Right, Shoot. Yeah, Come On, Share. About The National Debt. Share With The Class. And The National Debt And Then Payroll Taxes, Right? So, I Wanted To Know How Much The U.S. National Debt Is. And As Of February This Year, The U.S. National Debt Is A Little Over $36 Trillion.

[00:06:22] And So, That Includes Debt Held By The Public, Federal Trust Funds, And Other Government Accounts. And The U.S. Has The Largest External Debt In The World. So, Wait, I Didn't Know That. You Said Debt Held By The Public. What Does That Mean? Like, Our Debt Is Counted In The U.S. Debt? I Believe So, Yes. Really? That's Interesting. Yeah. Mm-hmm. National Debt. Wow.

[00:06:48] Yeah, And Then I Was Looking Up Payroll Taxes, You Know, During The Implementation, And, You Know, Just Wanted To Just Throw A Quick Stat Out There. So, Payroll Taxes Contribute To, You Know, We Know This, You Know, Federal Revenues, Which Help Pay Down U.S. Debt. But Payroll Taxes Do Not Directly Determine How Much Of The U.S. Debt Is Obed. So, In 2023, Payroll Taxes Made Up 35% Of All Federal Revenues.

[00:07:18] So, That's Not A Lot, Right? We Say Our Taxes, Our Taxes Do Pay For Some Stuff, But It Said That Our Taxes Only Made Up 35% Of All Federal Revenues. So, The 65% Of The Government Is Getting It Through Other Means. Interesting. Yeah. Interesting. That's Good Stuff. I Love The Stats. I Like Yours Too. What You Got?

[00:07:42] This One Is, You Know, So, As We Record, It's Day After Super Bowl, And It's Usually The Biggest Call-In Day Of The Year. So, Although A Record Number Of Employees Plan To Miss Work On Monday, We Continue To See Forward Progress With Managers And Employees Having More Open Conversations About Taking The Day Off, Swapping Shifts, Or Making Arrangements To Come In Late So That The Business Is Covered.

[00:08:07] But, It's Estimated 22.6 Million U.S. Workers Will Call In Sick Or Come In Late Today. You Said 2.2? 22.6 Million. Yep. Did You Call Out Today? I Am Blessed To Work From Home On Mondays. So, And It's A Payroll Week For Me, So, There's No, Yeah, There's No, You Know, That's The Funny Thing Too About Payroll Folks, Right?

[00:08:34] We Often Get Used To Like Not Being Able To Do Certain Things On Certain Days. And I Think It's Just Kind Of Par For The Course. Those Blackout Periods. Yeah, Like We Have A Blackout Period Every Other Week Basically. Yeah. You Know. I Don't Know About You But I Don't Know Very Many People That Are Hopeful About The World Of Work. And I'd Like To Change That. My Name Is Marcus Mossberger And I Started The Hope At Work Podcast Where You'll Find Two Things.

[00:09:03] Number One, Really Interesting Guests. And Number Two, Innovative Ideas About The Future Of Work. Check It Out.

[00:09:53] And. So, Let Me Ask You. Go Ahead. Then, Like, Do You Think That People Will Be, Will Benefit More From The Super Bowl Being A Little Earlier? Oh My God, Put It On Saturday. Oh. Saturday. Do Saturday Afternoon, Four, Five O'Clock. Yeah. You Know What I Mean? Six. You Could Even Do It The Same Time On Saturday. Yeah. And Then It's A Big Part. Then You Can Have A Party. Like. Because You Can Recoup On. Oh My Goodness. That Party Is Going Till Four In The Morning. You Know What I Mean?

[00:10:22] Especially If It's Your Team That Wins. Forget About It. Those Parties Are Going All Night. Like, I Don't Understand How It Has To Like It's Silly. It Needs To Change. I Know You Should Submit That Idea. Yeah. We'll Tag NFL In Our In This Clips. Speaking Of Which, And I Got A, I Meant To Post It Yesterday Like On My Facebook And What Not. But You Know, No Shade To Saquon And Jalen Hurts.

[00:10:48] But It Is Literally The Philadelphia Offensive Line Is Literally The Biggest Offensive Line Ever. Yeah. Height And Weight. Yeah. They Were So Comparisons During The Game And How Much More They Weighed Than When The NFL First Started. You Know. In History, The Biggest O-Line. Now, If You Know Football, Your Offensive Line Is The Key To Your Quarterback Success And Running Back Success.

[00:11:17] So No Wonder, Because I Mean, I Think Jalen Hurts Is Good, But Like His O-Line Makes Them That Much Better. So Quon Barkley Is Absolutely Benefiting From That O-Line. Broke Records, All Kind Of History. So It's Like, Because As A Giant Fan, I Felt The Way. I'm Like, Well No Wonder, Of Course. And I Kind Of Want To Talk To Giant Nation About It. Like, Yo, Relax. Like, It's Not The Giant. Like, Unless The Giants Had A Great Matching O-Line, He Wasn't Gonna Do As Good There. You Know What I Mean?

[00:11:45] Like, It's Yes, They Need To Be Skilled, But Your O-Line Creates Those Gaps For You. Man, That's So Good. Like, I'm Trying To Think About, As You're Speaking, I'm Trying To Think About How To Put That In Terms Of Payroll, Right? So If Our Offensive Line Is Like Our Processes. Processing, I Think It's Probably. And Our Different Things And Policies That We Have In Place. Yes. You Know, For Us In Order For Us To Be Able To Do Our Job. Because We Can Be Talented Payroll Pros And HR Pros. Yep.

[00:12:14] But If We Have Certain Things And We Don't Have Certain Things In Place, It Could Make It, Could Make Life A Lot More Difficult Than It Has To Be. Yep. I Think That Payroll Folks Need To Really Remember Is Not The End Result. It's How You Get To That End Result. It's How You're Documenting, How You're Saving Your Files, You Know, How You're, How You're,

[00:12:39] Like, I Want To Say Over Say The Word Documenting, But Like, How You're Recording Your Transactions, Being Organized, Right? Like, Auditing Is An Annual If Not Quarterly Thing. And It's, You Know, What I Like About As Much As My Finance People Drive Me Crazy, They Make You Better Because It Forces You To Like Record Keep In A Way That You Can Explain It To Someone Else And Someone Who Doesn't Know Payroll.

[00:13:08] They May Know Numbers And They Know Accounting, But They Don't Get The Payroll, Nor Are They Privy To All The Details And Things Like That. So It's Like, You Gotta Kind Of In Generalities And Help Them Understand. So It's How You Do Those Things That Get You To The Good Payroll. Because You Could Get Lucky And Have A Good Payroll. But If You Don't Remember How You Got There And How You Did That, Then, You Know, So, You Know, For Me, I Like It's That Checklist Process.

[00:13:36] It's Making Sure That Your Checklist Is Good, Comprehensive, And You Use It Every Single Time You Process And Not Get Overly Confident Like, Oh, I Know My Checklist By Heart. You Know, And Keeping And Keeping Room In That Checklist For Things That You Learn Payroll To Payroll Because Something Could Come Up In A Payroll That You've Never Experienced.

[00:14:06] So Now You Gotta Add That To The Checklist. Yep. Yep. So. What Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong. Will Go Wrong. Absolutely. Yeah. So, Yeah, Man. That Is It. Where Are We At On Time Right Now? Because I'm Sure. Gotta Pay The Bills. Yeah, Gotta Pay The Bills. This Doesn't Have A Time, Like A Clock. You See A Running Clock? As You're Setting Ambitious Goals For 2025, Remember That A Well-Organized Team, That Word Again, Organized, is the foundation for success.

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[00:16:25] That's W-W-W-T-I-M-E-T-R-A-K-G-O.com. TimetrackGo.com. Let's Go. Let's Go. To The Batmobile. Let's Go. Let's Get Into It. So, We're Talking About Manual Checks. And Walt Really Put The Main List Together. So, I'm Going To Feed Off Of His As Well. But, What I Was Realized, I Was Like, Well, Wait A Minute. What Does Manual Checks Mean? Right? Mm-hmm.

[00:16:55] I'm Sorry. I Just Need To Make My Screen Bigger Because I Don't Got My Magnifying Glasses On. My Father Was Legally Blind, Y'all. So, I Got to Work With Me Now. So, What Is It? Well, I'm Joking Around. Jokingly, I Say, If You Manual Checks, Don't Do Them. Not Joking. Try To Keep A Strict Policy Of What Becomes Eligible. Right?

[00:17:21] Like, Put It Through, Try To Make, Put All The Friction You Can Into Get Doing Manual Checks. Especially If You Have A Big Team. You Don't Want Them Running Willy-Nilly, Running, Doing All What They Want. They Like Have To, Hey, Submit A Type Of Request Or Something Like That. Or Some Type Of Process. Or Process. Absolutely.

[00:18:10] Profile For Your Accumulators So That It Goes On To The W2 Properly. It Can Be A Live Check Or Direct Deposit. But It's Processed Outside Of The System Automations And Like All The Bells And Whistles And Things That You Have Built Into Your System. It Could Be Something Outside Of That. Where You're Trying To Just Maybe Doing Manually Calculating Things And Punching It In. And Then Some Systems Have Functionality That Make The Process Really Easy.

[00:18:36] I Got Caught Out There Once On An Interview And They Were Like, Well, How Would You Do A Gross Up? And I Was Like, I Would Use The System. Like, Cause Yeah, Cause I Manual Check And Has Some Systems Have The Functionality To Gross It Up. Right? And I'm Sure There's A Manual Way To Gross Up. But I Haven't Had To Do It In So Long That I Didn't Know. I Was Like, I Would Have To Look It Up If I Did It Manually. Hey, We're On This Leveraging Technology Kick. Yeah.

[00:19:06] Leverage It. It's Always Good To Know How To Do Things And Have Something In The Manually. A Manual. Something In The Manual For You To Look At And To Be Able To Type It Out Or Write It Out Or Whatever You Need To Do. But Leverage That Technology. Yep. So I'm Going To Get Into Some Best Practices And Some Stats And Some Challenges For Manual Checks. So I'm Going To Get Through It. So, Hi, I'm George LaRock.

[00:19:33] And I'm Looking Forward To Exploring The Critical Trends Shaping The Future Of Work And Technology With You Over On The WorkTech Podcast. Now, This Podcast Is A Little Different. I Bring Together Industry Leaders, Innovators, And Investors, And We Go Deep Into Market Intelligence That Matters To HR Pros And Tech Providers Alike. So Give The WorkTech Podcast A Listen Here On The WorkDefined Podcast Network. And Please Subscribe If You Like It. See You There.

[00:19:59] For Accurate Calculations, Right?

[00:20:35] So Using A Manual Check Can Ensure That All Earnings And Inductions Are And Taxes Are Calculated Properly. Especially For, Like You Said, Writing A Off. You Know, People Want To See How Much The Bonus Will Come Out To Be. And You Can Give Them An Accurate Amount. You Can Do Like An Estimate. You Can Use It For An Estimate. And You Know, You Can Do Those Adjustments And Everything Like That For Outside Of The Standard Payroll Cycle. You Know, You Can... Those Manual Checks Provide Detailed Documentation And Allow You To Keep A Comprehensive Record

[00:21:03] For The Other Reasons For Issuing Manual Checks. So By... So Let Me Say That Again. So By You Maintaining Detailed Documents And Having A... Even A Log Of Manual Checks That You Trass That Help You, You Know, Stay In Compliance And Have Those Things Available For Tracking And Auditing Later. That's Something That We Do Currently At My Job Now Is That We Monitor Those Manual Checks

[00:21:30] And We Use It For Our KPIs Monthly As Well. You Know, For Error Tracking And Stuff Like That. Regular Reconciliation, You Know, That's The Best Practice. Frequently Reconcile Those Manual Checks. You Know, And Make Sure That You Haven't Missed Anything. You Know, So That You Don't Have Any Discrepancies. Train Your Staff. You Know, Readily Train Your Staff On Those Manual Check Procedures To Minimize Those Errors And... Ensure That You're Compliant.

[00:21:56] Look, Only A Small Percentage Of Payrolls Are Processed With Manual Checks, Right? So It Says About Companies Often Process Manual Checks For Around 1 Or 2% Of Their Total Payroll Transactions. Yeah, I Would Say That So Be All Right. So Some Of The Challenges With Doing Manual Checks, Right? End Of Year Reconciliation. So Manual Checks Can Complicate Those Year-End Recons. And Especially If They're Not Documented Properly. Yep.

[00:22:25] Or If There Are Discrepancies Between The Manual And Automated Records. So Say You Did A Manual Check And Then You Put In The Wrong Amount When You Submitted A Payment To That Employee Or Something Like That, Right? Because Sometimes We Do Manual Checks To Get A Figure So We Can Do A Payment Some Other Way. And If You Transpose Something While You're Typing It In, That Could Throw Something Off. Yep. So Increased Error Risk, Enough Said There. It Could Be Time-Cosuming Depending On What You're Doing.

[00:22:55] And Manual Checks. I Remember There Was A Payroll Where, You Know, The Live Checks Got Delivered Somewhere Else Or Were Lost. And We Had To Get Those People Paid Like That Day. And We Couldn't Do A Wire So We Had To Cut. We Had To Do Like Wisely Cards Or Payment Cards That Day. And We Had To Submit Manual Checks For The Whole Population. So It Was Like 50 Some Odd Employees. Right? And I Know Some Of You Have Probably Experienced That Before Too. So Look, That Can Lead To Delays And Efficiencies, Right?

[00:23:25] So That's It, Man. That's All I Really Had. And You Know, I Just Want To Get To The Question Of The Day Before We Close This Out. So In Your Opinion, Brian, Do You Think That Manual Checks Will Ever Go Away? No. No? Okay. No. I Don't Think So. I Think... You Don't Think Earned Wage Access Will Ever Take The Place Of Manual Checks? I Mean It Would Change How Earned Wage Access Changes?

[00:23:55] No. No. Because I Mean Anything Is Possible. But... Yeah, For Real. But No, I Mean The Way Earned Wage Access Works Now, It Still Attaches Itself To... Have You Ever Been To A Webinar Where The Topic Was Great But There Wasn't Enough Time To Ask Questions Or Have A Dialogue To Learn More? Well, Welcome To HR and Payroll 2.0, The Podcast Where Those Post-Webinar Questions Become Episodes.

[00:24:18] We Feature HR Practitioners, Leaders, And Founders Of HR, Payroll, And Workplace Innovation And Transformation, Sharing Their Insights And Lessons Learned From The Trenches. We Dig In To Share The Knowledge And Tips That Can Help Modern HR And Payroll Leaders Navigate The Challenges And Opportunities Ahead. So Join Us.

[00:25:10] It's Still A Part Of Your Normal Payroll Schedule. Okay. Right? Now, If We Start Running... If We Start Getting To A Situation Where... I Mean We Can Run Off Cycles Now, But We Can't Run Same Day Off Cycles Yet. Yeah. That Is When Manual Tracks Can Go Away. Okay. Yeah. And We're Not There Yet.

[00:25:38] I Don't Know, You Know, If We Can Run It... Yeah, We Can... And I Guess In Some... I Guess In Some Systems You Probably Can... But When You Deal With The ADPs Of The World... You're Restricted To What You Can Do. Right? Yeah. What Do You Think? No, I Agree With You, Man. I Think That There'S Always Going To Be Some Need...

[00:26:02] And It Depends On The Environment Or The Software That You Have As A Payroll Provider Or Company Or Whatever It Is, Right? You Know, I Think There'S Always Going To Be A Need For Those, Right? Because You May Have An Option To Pay Someone Through A Wisely Card Or A Payment Card And You Do That Manual Check. So I Think That As Long As Those Options Are Available, There Will Always Be A Need For A Manual Check. Like If You Have To Do An Adjustment On A Person's Taxes Say, Hey, We Found Out That This Person Actually Is Exempt.

[00:26:31] They Qualify To Be Exempt From Certain Tax And We Tax Them. So We Have To Give Them A Refund And We Have To Do That Through An Adjustment, A Manual Check Or Whatever It Is, Right? So, Yep. I Think There'S Always Going To Be A Need For Them. Yeah, Exactly. Agreed. Agreed. And Yeah, Agreed. I Mean Payroll, The Way We Do Payroll Would Have To Change For That. For Them To Go Away. Yeah. Good Stuff, Man. Let's Do It. All Right, Y'all. Thank You For Tuning In. Yep. Yep. Until Next Time.

[00:27:02] Peace. Peace.