Dewsbury College, in West Yorkshire, offers a wide range of courses to the community, from entry level through to higher education courses and part time adult education. Previously part of Kirklees council, the college privatized in 1993. The college also incorporates the Batley School of Art and Design and holds a high profile within the community.
Offering such a wide range of courses makes it essential that the college employs qualified staff, not only on a permanent, full time basis but also part time staff that can offer specialist subjects to demand. Currently it employs over 750 staff, from full time teachers to part-time lecturing staff as well as services staff including cleaners.
Running the monthly payroll for the college can be complex with so many different types of staff contracts. The college payroll department relies upon Payrite payroll software from Rutherford Webb to administer its monthly & weekly payrolls, as well as to provide management reports.
Flexible payroll
Prior to investing in payroll software, the College had relied upon payroll bureau services from the Council. However, relying on an external system did not provide the flexibility for control that the college required. According to Mike Stead, Payroll Manager at the College:
“The Council system was not providing us with the type of reports and other information that we required. This prompted me to draw up a list of criteria, from essential items to desirable, which we provided to prospective vendors rather like a tender process.”
The essential criteria were comprehensive and included being able to export data to the Human Resources database and accounts package, the ability to define and run different reports and define employee pay codes. Many employees are on fixed term contracts for different areas of the college and reports need to be financially coded with proportional employer National Insurance and Pension contributions. Similarly the pay slip needed to show separate lines of pay data for each role.
Reviewing the Shortlist
It also needed to be flexible enough to run the two monthly payrolls to the permanent teaching and part time employees and one weekly payroll for the services staff.
Initially Stead was open to whether the solution would be in-house or a bureau service.
However, the criteria that he presented soon reduced the list of nine prospective vendors down to just four and that the final solution would be in-house.
“We selected our short list from the list of Inland revenue accredited suppliers, since it was important that any payroll software that we used could make online tax payments to the Inland Revenue. This gave us a good base to start from. From our final short list of four, we were able to rule out two suppliers, one on price and one on availability. Of the final two, Payrite won hands down on functionality and value for money”.
Going live
Having chosen the Payrite Software, Stead worked with Rutherford Webb to transfer data from the old DOS-based system and populate the new software. Despite being very labour-intensive, since all the information had to be entered manually into spreadsheets before importing into the system, the result is cleaner data overall.
“We audited and sifted the data and so it meant that when we went live the data was true and accurate as we could possibly make it,” said Stead.
From implementation in January, the system went live in April, and Stead is delighted with the results. Working with Rutherford Webb during the start up, Stead was impressed with the approach of the support staff.
“Rutherford Webb really grasped what the college was about and quickly understood how and what we wanted to run our payroll. The implementation team were particularly good at transferring their knowledge to us. We have just processed our seventh month and managed to do everything – the tax returns, all the deductions we need to do. The system tells us when to pay them and it does everything we want it to do, and I can also see the possibilities to do so much more.”
Prior to implementing Payrite, Stead relied upon the bureau to file the tax returns on behalf of the college. Being able to handle the Yellow Book tax returns himself, gives him greater control and visibility.
Stead is also using the reporting functionality in Payrite to provide budget and pension information to other departments for forecasting. The flexibility of the reporting has enabled Stead to provide information by department and salary grade, which previously was restricted by the local government coding system.
“With Payrite I can provide information that other departments request much faster and more efficiently,” said Stead.
Selecting Payrite has also freed up Stead to take on a more managerial role. Previously most of his time was spent checking claims and forms, preparing them for input and inputting them. Now he is able to run the payroll, putting in temporary adjustments and see immediate changes in taxes and pensions. This enables easier checking before despatching for BACS and publishing payslips and reduces errors overall.
With a full-time assistant responsible for most of the routine checking, much of Stead’s time is taken up doing contractual changes and arranging payments to external bodies, such as the pensions companies and Inland Revenue.
“Taking the system in-house has not only saved us money, but has proved to be a much more efficient and effective way of running the payroll. As we start to interface more with our HR and accounts software, we will really see our investment pay dividends,” concluded Stead.