Payroll
SAVE UP TO 50% OF YOUR
PAYROLL COSTS BY
OUTSOURCING TO US.
Running Payroll accurately is arguably one of the most critical employer responsibilities. But even if you use a reliable Payroll processing system, it cannot account for operators who get sick, go on leave and resign, affecting the continuity of your payroll processing.
Working with The Focus Group’s trusted Payroll Team negates this risk altogether, guarantees accuracy, saves you time and money and offers peace of mind with 24/7 service and zero downtime.
Payroll Services
Audit Existing Payroll
Our first task when taking over your payroll is to conduct an audit.
A payroll audit is an analysis of a company’s payroll processes to ensure accuracy. Payroll audits examine things like the business’s active employees, pay rates, wages, and tax withholdings. You should conduct a payroll audit at least once per year to verify your process is up-to-date and legally compliant.
The benefits of conducting a Payroll Audit include:
- Prevent payroll fraud by weeding out ghost employees or mismarked time cards
- Catch manual errors made when entering numbers into a system
- Spot calculation mistakes if doing payroll by hand
- Realize you need to factor in a raise
- Remove terminated employees from your payroll
- Verify your tax withholdings are accurate
- Accurately account for paid or unpaid time off
- Compare hours paid to when employees clocked in
- Ensure you are compliant with employment laws (e.g. overtime pay)
We Take Full Control Of Your Payroll Processes
The best way to optimise your business is to prioritise your strengths and seek outside expertise where needed.
We take control of your Payroll by importing it into our Sage VIP system. We achieve this by importing your business data into our secure database using a data dump from your current payroll system.
The Sage VIP Premier Payroll and HRM systems allow us to drive your business with a single integrated package:
- For an unlimited number of employees across multiple different companies
- Report writing tool for legal, standard, and company-specific reports
- Process-driven system that follows a systematic HR approach
- Streamlines HR processes with paperless employee tools
- Suited for businesses who pay employees in other African countries
The system also allows the addition of specific modules to extend the functionality of your service:
- Create the VIP solution that best suits your business – with specialist add-ons and modules
- Premier HR puts your people in charge. It revolves around meeting the HR responsibilities of your business and is a logical, integrated, and streamlined extension of Premier Payroll.
- Simplify leave processing with Premier Employee Self-Service (ESS). Online and on their own, staff can easily update their personal details, apply for leave, submit claims, and view their payslips and IRP5s.
- For penetrating insights and interpretations of your data, Sage VIP Intelligence Reporting plugs straight into your Premier Payroll package.
- Sage SkillsMap cuts the costs and effort of attracting and retaining top talent with its cloud-based, end-to-end recruitment solution.
- Leave Management module
- Personnel Management (Basic HR) module
- Employment Equity module
- Skills Development module
- General Ledger module
- Job Costing module
- Loan module
- SMART (Payroll Reporting) module
- InfoSlips (electronic & mobile payslips) module
Payroll Tasks
Our Payroll Division provides tailored payroll administration solutions to our clients.
Payroll Setup:
- Setting up the payroll on The Focus Group’s systems and processing personal employee information
- Setting up Healthcare Employee Benefits contributions on the system
- Processing annual leave balances based on information provided by the client
Monthly Tasks:
- Preparation of the payroll and processing overtime or leave paid out
- Administration of the salaries account
- Payment of net salaries by direct debit to employees’ bank accounts
- Preparing and issuing payslips to employees
- Completion and submission of payroll associated returns including PAYE; UIF; Skills Development Levies; Employee Benefit contributions and processing the necessary electronic payments
- Processing employee’s annual leave taken
Bi-Annual Tasks:
- Preparation of tax reconciliation and return forms as required by the tax regulations and issuing employees with their annual tax certificates
Streamlined Banking Process For Salary Payments
To save time when paying employees, we create a bank transfer file in Payroll. This file contains your employee’s bank account details and the monies to be paid into these accounts. This file is then uploaded to the bank either over the Internet or using banking software to make the payment immediately.
Payroll Reports
There are different reports available in Payroll that will give you a holistic overview of the payroll processing.
These include:
| Report | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Leave Summary | This report offers a breakdown of leave transactions for a selected date range. |
| Payslip | This generates a payslip for any previously finalised Pay Run. |
| Pay Run | This is a summary of the pay run. |
| Payroll Journal | A summary of the values posted to the General Ledger in Accounting. |
| Payment Summary | The Payment Summary needs to be generated for each employee at the end of the tax year. |
| Bureau | This will show you an overview of all your companies which make use of Bureau services, not only on a payroll level, but also if a Bureau manages and makes all payments on behalf of your company. |
| Monthly PAYE | This report will display all the PAYE amounts for a pay run. |
| HELB Monthly Remittance | This report will display all the HELB payment amounts for a pay run. |
| Industrial Training Levy | This report will display the Industrial Training Levy amounts for a pay run. |
| P9A | This report will display all the employees’ tax information for the tax year including earnings, benefits and personal information. |
| Bank File Reconciliation | This report displays the bank file information per employee. |
Payroll Services
The Focus Group is excited to announce that we’ve partnered with SmartWage – a technology company that helps you offer your employees access to earned wages. As an official partner of ours, SmartWage is able to offer a seamless integration into your payroll allowing your employees to access their wages through a fully automated process that removes all risk, bias and administrative burden from you.
How does it work?
After an initial data transfer of your employees’ information, SmartWage communicates the benefit to employees in either virtual or onsite sessions. Employees who choose to opt-in are on-boarded via their mobile phones. An employee requests access of up to 25% of their already earned wages via USSD or WhatsApp any time during the month. The amount requested is paid directly into the employee’s bank account within 24 hours. At month-end, an employee is paid their normal wage less the amounts withdrawn during the month. SmartWage then shares a pre-configured payroll file that you simply upload to payroll, automatically reflecting all payslip deductions.
What are the benefits?
Concerned about employee debt? SmartWage has shown that its users on average, access just 10% of their net income monthly, even though they have access to 25%. Giving your employees the flexibility to access what they’ve earned, as they earn it reduces absenteeism and increases productivity and retention. And there is zero risk to you. Because you’re only accessing what they’ve already earned, if an employee absconds, there is no risk financial loss.
What’s more is that SmartWage offers a full financial education solution, included in their base price. This includes a financial wellness workshop, a free debt consolidation service and an on-demand financial education learning tool, delivered by mobile chatbot.
SmartWage charges a simple subscription fee that is only applied to the employees who choose to opt-in.
Get started, and find out how this low cost benefit delivers a tangible impact on your company and employees.