Published On: April 17th, 2017 / Last Updated: December 25th, 2021 / 2.7 min read /

Payroll Processing in the GCC

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]A payroll is a company’s list of its employees, but the term is commonly used to refer to ”the total amount of money that a company pays to its employees”. Good employee morale requires payroll to be paid timely and accurately. The primary mission of the payroll department is to ensure that all employees are paid accurately and timely with the correct withholdings and deductions and that the withholdings and deductions are remitted in a timely manner.

10 Things to consider when selecting your payroll Software:

Classify your employees for payroll grouping. The main important task is to classify the employees. Whether you hire full-time, part-time, or intern. So you can process the payroll based on classification or grouping.
Breakdown of the compensation and benefits. The salary breakdown should be showed in terms of basic salary, allowances, expenses, pensions and other relevant deductions. Company will define the breakdown and software should be able to process according to it.
Generate electronic payment bank File. There are various banks in the GCC region, which accept different file types (SIF, TXT, CSV) and different payment types (Local, International). The software should be able to automatically generate those file types out of the box as per banking requirement. Also be easily compliant when formats change due to a new regulation.
Approvals. Proper approval levels should be defined when the payroll team is processing the payroll, it should not be able to process until it is approved by the payroll manager.
Reports. All the reports regarding payroll should be generated on the fly i.e. salary transactions, salary history, salary costing (accruals), bank transfers, leave history, payroll controls, payroll variance. The system should feature thorough compliance and ease of reporting at the click of a mouse.
Payslips. Every company has different payroll breakdown and different pay slip formats. Check whether the software provider is able to design the payslip as per your company design and breakdown.
Electronic interfaces. Check whether the software provider is able to electronically interface with your existing software solutions, including Accounting software for electronic uploading general ledger transactions and Time & Attendance software for downloading employee attendance data; i.e. overtime, absences, etc
Employee self service. Payroll software should be able to provide your employees with an access to an employee self-service portal for updating their personal information, requesting leaves, recording overtime, viewing and downloading pay slips.
Mobile App. Payroll software should be able to provide your employees with an access to an employee self-service Mobile Application. So the employees can virtually request simple services like leaves, expenses, viewing payslips, downloading employee documents.
Support. Make certain that the software provider can provide access to their service delivery staff during the working hours. Payroll is extremely time sensitive, you do not want to be facing a situation when you need to urgently reach the payroll software provider because your bank file was rejected or payroll calculations need to be revised and you cannot reach anyone at the service provider’s office.