From the monthly archives: "April 2013"

About our Sister Company, Profile Software International

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Profile Software International develops payroll payments systems and associated products. The company does not develop payroll systems, but rather interfaces to all the major payroll systems in South Africa.

The company’s main product, Profile Integrate, caters for the three streams of payment off payroll viz. Emoluments Attachment Orders, Third Parties e.g. Employee Benefits, Medical Aid, Unions while sending detailed schedules and individual salary payments.

In addition, Profile Software International has developed a unique and powerful Employees Benefits reconciliation module allowing the employer to upload the post employee allocation benefit statement from their EB Administrator, enabling a quick and accurate comparison between what payroll data was supplied to the EB Administrator and how it was allocated by employee. The company has also developed a unique and powerful Medical Aid statement reconciliation system allowing the employer to do a detailed comparison between the Medical Aid Service Provider’s statement and their payroll system. The Employer can check contributions down to deduction code level and make adjustments to payroll where necessary.

Profile offers our clients a solution which keeps 5 years history at their fingertips

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Your superior Payroll Payments Provider for the past 10 years.

Since 2003, Profile Software International has provided clients with the best integrated payroll payments solution on the market.

One of the biggest headaches businesses of any size has to go through is paying their employees. The payment of PAYE, medical aid, pension/provident funds and retirement annuities, UIF, etc. the whole process has become a very cumbersome task.

Another problem that business owners experience with payroll is in Third Party payments and reconciliations.  Most companies provide the information required by the Third Party via manually produced schedules or spreadsheets with the associated inefficiencies and inaccuracies.   Errors not only cause delays in the operations of these departments, but can also leave the departments with an increased workload.

In addition, the current economic situation has made it incumbent on Payroll and HR solutions providers to ensure savings and efficiencies, therefore, not only is choosing the right HR and Payroll system therefore essential, so is ensuring that third-party payments and reconciliations are done correctly and effectively.

The Profile system has been designed to specifically handle the myriad of post-payroll administrative functions effortlessly and efficiently, and, being Internet-based, starts saving the company money from implementation.

Profile is an independent, generic payroll payments system that interfaces to all the major payroll systems and has been specifically created to deal with payment streams off payroll. Because it is simple to use, there is a lower risk of inevitable human errors.

Profile’s powerful Third Party Reconciliation tool allows the data to be automated and processed accurately and in a timely fashion, relieving all departments of added work burdens.

The expansion of the Internet has ushered in a new era of outsourcing where businesses, both large and small, can access the dynamic and flexible systems necessary in business today. The traditional approach is not cutting it anymore.

Being Internet-based, Profile Integrate is a solution that can be used from anywhere, and requires no software installation, no licensing fees or support costs. The software will allow any organisation to streamline processes, regardless of size, and ensures that as the business grows, there are no associated growing pains with the effective enablement of third-party payments and reconciliations.

We have effectively taken all the buzz words that are used to describe the cutting-edge of technology in business, and, as early as 2004, made them a reality – software as a service, cloud computing, simple integration and ease-of-use.

When choosing a third-party payroll payment tool for your business, the overriding consideration should be ease of use. This is not ease of use for your accountant or your book keeper that has only ever worked on one software product; it is ease of use for the business. Remember that there is more to payroll software than just producing a payslip. It needs to provide you with the reports that are necessary to pay staff, it should provide reports for the accountant to use and it should keep up-to-date records of staff details. And most importantly, it should enable simple and effective Third-Party Payments and reconciliations

By interfacing with all the major payroll systems as well the Financial Services companies in South Africa, our solution makes pre- and post-payroll activities as simple as a couple of mouse clicks.

Another time consuming area in payroll is Emolument Attachment Orders (EOA’s), commonly known as Garnishee orders.  Payroll departments often experience reconciliation issues at month end. A lack of pertinent payment information on EAO’s also results in the employer running the risk of threats, warrants, and other legal action against them.  In addition, the employee ends up being debited with unnecessary costs, and the expensive and inefficient processes found at most companies means that the employer’s organisation also suffers in the long-run.

 

Profile offers our clients a solution which keeps 5 years history at their fingertips. Our product enables the employer to control and monitor the outstanding debt on behalf of the employee. Payments are made timeously with the required information which minimises any penalties in interest and legal fees. With Profile, the employer is in total control of the payments and capital balances. Profile automatically reconciles and synchronises the payments and sends the payment schedules to all creditors and magistrates.

What our clients say about Profile

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“By using Profile I am saving 2 days in processing manual payments and compiling the monthly schedules for the Third Parties.”

Liezel Lubbe (Altech Group)

 

“I could not live without this product”

Kuvashini Gounder (Independent Newspapers)

 

“Since using the reconciliation function on Profile the queries from both employees and Third Parties have reduced from 70 per month to no more than two.”

Neco van Wyk (Nampak 12 000 Employees)

 

“Our administration by Employee Benefits is very good, although NOT 100%accurate.  With Profile we know our data is 100% correct every month!”

Milana Pretorius (Smollan Group 16 000 Employees)

So why battle your way through your company payments and reconciliations every month when there is one simple, integrated solution that will do it all for you?

An end to EB fund maladministration

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Pension and provident fund maladministration makes the news regularly, with repeated reports of blunders on the part of fund administrators and deliberate fraud in some instances. David Brown, Managing Director of Profile Holdings, says that the reasons for most of the inconsistencies and maladministration of these funds lie in historical requirements and inefficiencies.

 

“The current Act allows fund administrators to be as inefficient as they are, because it allows a 2.5% variance. Any variance is unacceptable, as far as I am concerned, when you’re talking about people’s hard-earned money just disappearing,” he says. “There is a fallacy in the fund environment that administrators need the contribution amount and income to calculate the contribution and allocate it to the member. The Act specifies that the employer must provide the information regarding salary and percentage of contribution OR sufficient information to identify the employee and their contribution. All past systems have been written around EB administrators having the correct information, and that has resulted in the situation we see today.”

 

Section 13 of the Act, Regulation 33, specifies that the Initial Contribution Statement shall have the full name, date of birth, ID number or employer pay number, or other means of identification, date of membership, pensionable emoluments of member and percentage or amount of contributions, split between member and employer as well as an indication of any voluntary contributions paid. These requirements were created when electronic information was limited. However, despite technological advancements, fund administrators are using the same inefficient systems.

 

“Historically, electronic information between systems was limited. Today, administrators are taking data and changing it into another format, so it is no longer the information that was given originally. When there is a need to be able to compare to the original data, it is difficult to do because of the changes in format. This has multiplied into the administration nightmare we are seeing today,” says Brown.

 

He adds that the comparison between what the employer provided and what the EB administrator provided to the employee has caused great concern, with some wanting to report these inconsistencies to the Financial Services Board. “There is a need to legislate EB administration, and we are in fact seeing the Board to request this legislation.”

 

For a start, Brown says that administrators must give the employer back an electronic picture each month of what was allocated, but that current EB administration leaves a lot to be desired. Brown explains that as result of enabling clients its system, Profile Holdings has provided their clients with new visibility into fund maladministration, causing many of them to start wanting to audit. However, many administrators are reluctant to provide the required information because they know it will show their incompetence.

 

“Our environment allows us to link third parties to the employer seamlessly through a common gateway. Since we link the employer to multiple third parties and vice-versa, EB maladministration becomes immediately apparent,” says Brown. “Past employee benefit information from administrators proving to be challenge, however, because if it is undervalued, the employer has to cough up the difference. Our system highlights these exceptions quickly and accurately, resulting in the embarrassment of a number of EB administrators that have realised that inconsistencies can no longer be hidden.”

 

Brown says that while many of the fancy systems out there claim to get the data 100% right, they don’t even get it 95% right. “They get it about 11% right. With a system like ours, everything is automated and all the calculations get done properly. Doing it this way, there is less administration on both sides and a guarantee of 100% accuracy.

Third Party Recons as easy as clicking a mouse

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Third Party Recons as easy as clicking a mouse

Third party payroll reconciliations are about to become a touch more complicated in South Africa next year, when a provident fund for domestic and farm workers go into effect in March. According to budget documents that were recently tabled by Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, the labour department is also considering a medical aid scheme for the private security sector. All relevant employers will then have to comply with these new pension and medical aid and submit payment on behalf of their employees.

Such changes to legislation tend to make complex payroll processes, such as these third party payments and reconciliations, even more difficult. Business owners in South Africa already have to contend with and keep track of the pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) tax, the Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), garnishee orders, retirement annuities, and so on.

“Payroll and especially third party payments are among the biggest headaches that companies of any size face,” says David Brown, Managing Director of Profile Integrate, a company that develops payroll payments systems and associated products. “Whether you employ ten people, a hundred, or a few thousand, with ever-changing laws to keep track of as well, payroll and particularly third-party payments and recons have become cumbersome, complicated and incredibly time consuming for all business owners.”

The problem, Brown says, is that many companies still process these systems manually, since they might not have money to invest in expensive software and pay the annual licensing fees. “The information required by the third party is usually manually and inefficiently produced on spreadsheets, which is when human error and inaccuracies inevitably creep in. Manual processing amounts to too much work that has to be done in too little time. Oftentimes when third party statements are compared to payroll, the amounts do not correspond. Such errors cause delays and can subsequently also leave the finance and accounting departments with an increased workload.”

Brown says that it is time for companies to look beyond these traditional approaches and to the Internet. “An Internet-based software solution, such as Profile Integrate’s Third Party payment and reconciliation tool, automates complex third party data and allows it to be processed accurately and quickly. It requires much less work, with payroll managers processing the data with just a few clicks of the mouse, freeing up the employees in the finance and accounting departments to do other work.”

Companies need not switch over to other payroll systems to be able to use Profile Integrate’s third party recon tool, says Brown. “The other benefit of Profile’s third party system is that it works hand in hand with your company’s current payroll software to make the monthly reconciliation of medical aid, pension fund, and any other electronic statements from a third party simple, fast and efficient. Data is recorded in real-time and automatically populated,” he explains.

Apart from saving time, it saves users money as well. “It makes detailed comparisons between the third party statement and the payroll, both pre- and post-payroll run, thereby saving time and money. It also has the functionality to compare different databases, highlighting any variances in seconds, indicating what is on payroll and not on statement and vice versa – something which usually takes hours when the reconciliation process is being done manually. It ensures that all the data is 100%. “One of our clients has informed us that since using the reconciliation function on Profile, the queries from both employees and third parties have reduced from 70% per month to no more than two.”

Another major benefit of Profile Integrate’s third party reconciliation tool is that it can be used from anywhere, since it is internet-based. “It requires no software installations, licensing fees or support costs.”