Talkin' Malta Payroll w/Jonathan Mifsud (Episode 92)

[00:00:00] So you have the person that's doing payroll.

[00:00:02] That's the first one.

[00:00:04] Then we look at the employee and the business.

[00:00:07] So we put finance HR that as the business,

[00:00:10] but we feel like the employee pays a key part in payroll

[00:00:14] that we oftentimes forget.

[00:00:16] Welcome to our podcast.

[00:00:18] It's about payroll.

[00:00:20] We're your hosts, Brian Escobar

[00:00:22] and Walter William Duncan III.

[00:00:25] Whether you're new to make payroll any different from the rest of the world? Well, I would say that the pain points are definitely the same. Obviously, legislation is different because it's different in all different countries.

[00:01:40] But I remember, we used to be an English colony.

[00:01:43] Whenever we got into what everyone used to tell us, yeah, it's based on UK law.

[00:01:47] Must be similar. part of visiting the UK was also learning a lot about that element of it, how it differs, what could be done, how to raise the profile of payrollers, which as in other countries, they're used to being hidden in the backbone of everything that happens, but no one really nicers them. Yeah. That's exactly right. Now, in addition to this, doing payroll differently, you've taken it to the

[00:03:01] next level, cause you now are a tech co-founder for a payroll software.

[00:03:07] Is that correct?

[00:04:01] problem is, yeah, he's a tech guy. He can help you.

[00:04:02] And we got together and I'm like, yeah, how can it be?

[00:04:05] I already do it for my staff with Excel.

[00:04:08] We can't build a software, right?

[00:04:10] I had no idea what I had got myself into, but yeah, that was the start of the

[00:04:15] journey then obviously we learned a lot over the last five years.

[00:04:19] And I think the focus has to be more than the technical stuff and the

[00:04:22] calculation is understanding the people that are doing the payroll, what they in just minutes, find out what a simply better solution can do for your business. To learn more and sign up for your 14-day free wrote a lot of the code of our first versions. Wow. Quite a bit of the one that we have at the moment. But at the moment, I let the guys write the code and I'm more direct what's happening and be more out there. Of course, that's awesome. Yeah, you got to as a good leader, you got to learn when to delegate to your team and when to separate yourself, right?

[00:07:01] Yeah.

[00:07:02] Yeah.

[00:07:03] And it's a difficult decision of when to do that

[00:07:04] and how to do that.

[00:07:06] Of course.

[00:07:06] No, of course.

[00:07:07] But those are the pain points for entrepreneurs Is your is the are your clients only in Malta right now? Yeah, primarily, yes. We've just actually got approved by HMRC in November. What's that? I'm sorry. So HMRC is the UK government's equivalent. Okay. Yeah, tax collection department. Ah, okay. And our hero system can now connect to the UK government as well fully compliant.

[00:08:20] Congratulations.

[00:08:21] No waiting to rope up. Yeah, the first two clients.

[00:08:25] Nice.

[00:08:25] Awesome.

[00:08:26] That's awesome.

[00:08:27] That's spreading to UK with finance and HR. We were trying to look at it maybe on a more holistic level.

[00:09:43] So you have the person that's doing payroll.

[00:09:46] That's the first one. What's been, have you encountered any payroll hurdles? Like you said you had to write new code for McDonald's. Is, can you share just generality, like what one of those things were that you didn't have? And now, oh my gosh, we got to put this in for them. Yeah, sure.

[00:11:00] So our first version really handed the simpler payroll.

[00:11:03] So, salaried stuff.

[00:11:05] They obviously are not salaried.

[00:11:07] They pay hourly. before we actually get to the text calculation, which is the stuff that we had in place. Mm, good. Wow. How'd you come up with Buddy for the name? Yes. That's a good question. The part of the answer is I didn't, I wasn't the one that came up with it. So we had, and then how designer used to work with my team big then. And for us, it was really like, yeah,

[00:12:21] we needed a Nikon for this brand.

[00:12:24] So we're like, yeah, complex. That's a great name. And when you responded, like when we first contacted, oh my gosh, might have been a year ago at this point, I was just so thrilled to get you on, oh my gosh, she's talking. Yes, we got them. We're going to get them on the show.

[00:13:40] Because I've seen how I've seen you progress and you're going,

[00:13:44] going and traveling. And I love that you are growing.

[00:13:47] I love to see in the UK. He doesn't know them as much because it doesn't go there as often as I do. I'm like, yeah, probably they need to recognize my face. So I can't be in the suit. So he ended up with the suit. Oh, well, sorry, buddy. Sorry, buddy. That's great. You get to be buddy. That's everybody speaking of updates and the changes you've had to make for code.

[00:15:01] Are you able to share again or just reiterating?

[00:15:05] I see that.

[00:15:06] Is it your brother, Jeremy?

[00:15:08] Yeah.

[00:15:08] Yeah, which is another funny story that we did last year. So we managed to be the only parallel system that connects to the government with end of the year documents. Oh, yeah, congratulations, man. Oh, my God.

[00:16:21] Yeah, that was a little bit of, man. That sounds great, man.

[00:17:41] Yes.

[00:17:42] It's so much more than seeing that, yeah.

[00:17:45] Absolutely. Congratulations. What an amazing feat, man. Alright. Italy or England? England. Alright. Excel or Google sheets? Google sheets. Oh, okay. Snow or sand? Was it slow or sand? Yeah, snow or sand. Snow or sand. Ah, snow. Snow. Oh, okay.

[00:19:02] Don't get enough. We don't get any of that here.

[00:20:03] someone getting into payroll, right? And shoot, if I may, give me two bits of advice.

[00:20:08] One for a new payroll person

[00:20:10] and one for a payroll person

[00:20:14] thinking about developing their own thing.

[00:20:19] Yeah, so I think for anyone that's new to payroll,

[00:20:24] I think it's something that can really change lives

[00:20:27] if you do it well.

[00:20:28] So a lot of people that don't do it well, because that's something we talked about on the show. And one of the episodes we had, we talked about what the career path of a payroll person, right? And at the end we said, hey, you could retire or you can, you stay in through retirement or you get to the point of expert level where you now you want to do something yourself. So for that person who wants to go on their own

[00:21:42] and be a co-founder, what advice would you give them?

[00:22:43] And it gives me, and it's so cyclical and reciprocal for me, because the better I do at my job, the better, the more I can talk about things

[00:22:47] on the show, it's just such a cycle of a relationship.

[00:22:51] And I really appreciate all of you, just amazing people to come and sharing with us.

[00:22:55] I hope folks appreciate that learning that they get free game, right?

[00:23:00] It's free learning that we're getting from industry experts.

[00:23:04] And we thank you so much, Jonathan, for joining us.

[00:24:04] type in body.hr and you go straight to our website, you could find me on LinkedIn.

[00:24:06] I post there all the time, so hopefully I can

[00:24:09] give some value and insights to anyone that's on there.

[00:24:12] But yeah, thanks guys for having me on the show

[00:24:14] and more than happy to share the insights.

[00:24:16] Thank you very much.

[00:24:17] We're here.

[00:24:18] Thank you.

[00:24:20] All right, folks, have a great day.

[00:24:21] We love you.

[00:24:22] Before we sign off, here are a couple quick things.

[00:24:25] Don't forget to follow It's About Payroll on LinkedIn