Integrating payroll with your HR and finance systems can significantly streamline your payroll processes and reduce the likelihood of errors. However, setting up payroll integration can be a complex and time-consuming process, so it's important to understand the steps involved. In this blog post, we'll walk you through the process of setting up payroll integration, including any necessary data migration, testing, and training.
Configuration
If your integration is occurring in conjunction with a payroll system migration, the first step is to configure your payroll integration solution. This process involves setting up the necessary payroll information, such as employee information, payroll schedules, and tax information.
Data Migration
The next step is to migrate your existing payroll data to your new system. This involves loading employee data, and possibly includes historical information or opening balances for employees.
Access
After configuration, the developer should be provided with account credentials. Be sure to share these in a secure way and check with your developer on their approach to handling and maintaining the security of those credentials. With the necessary login / account keys, the developer will be able to test the API’s before proceeding with development. Your develop may request access to both your live environment and sandbox accounts separately. Having a sandbox can dramatically speed up development and allows for risk free development of integrations.
Data Mapping
As part of the migration project or otherwise, the developer will work with you to establish correct data mappings between your HR and Payroll solutions. An experienced payroll integrations developer will already have understanding of the relevance of different data types and their impact on payroll and will provide a recommended mapping and validation schema for your review. Its important that you review this schema as it is the fundamental basis for the integration going forward.
Development
Your integration developer will, based on the approved data mapping and business logic, establish integrations between your platforms and perform internal unit testing before undertaking user acceptance testing with you. During this time, they will keep you informed of progress and may require further clarification from you relating to discrepancies in data or data validation schema. If you have provided a sandbox environment, they will develop against that environment allow for full testing of the integrations in an unconstrained way. If a sandbox environment has not been provided, the developer will be building against your live environment, typically in a way which provides constrained operation of the integration (e.g. constrained to one employee or a test entity, or without writing data).
Testing
After development is complete, it's essential to test your payroll integration solution to ensure that it is working as expected. This process may involve testing the integration in parallel to a manual payroll processing cycle, either within a sandbox environment or in a constrained fashion within your live environment. In this phase it’s important for you to validate that the integration is performing those functions it was designed to do.
Go-Live
Once your payroll integration solution has been tested, it's time to go live. This is the final step in the process, and it's essential to ensure that you have a plan in place for resolving any issues that may arise. Your developer, having implemented numerous Go-Live’s in their lifetime will walk you through this process to ensure that there is a fallback plan in place.
In conclusion, setting up payroll integration is a complex process that requires careful planning and attention to detail. By following these steps, you can ensure that your payroll integration solution is set up correctly, and that your payroll processes are streamlined and accurate. With the right solution in place, you can improve the efficiency of your payroll processes and reduce the likelihood of errors.