Payroll and Employment Hero
Are you using all of the software you are paying for?
Two businesses on Employment Hero, two pension syncs that were never set up. Here is how to check yours after your next pay run.
In the last few weeks we have taken on two businesses running payroll on Employment Hero. In both, the pension sync had never been set up.
One of them believed it was. They had also been told their payroll journals were posting into the accounts automatically. They were not.
Nobody did anything wrong on purpose. The features were paid for and sitting there, and somewhere between implementation and the day to day they never got switched on. Everyone assumed someone else had checked.
Why nobody notices
A sync that is not running looks exactly like one that is. Payroll still calculates the contributions, the payslips still show the deductions, and the pay run still closes on time.
What is missing happens somewhere else: in the pension provider’s portal, or in the accounts. If nobody looks there every pay period, the gap can run for months before the pension provider, an employee or the auditor finds it for you.
That is the uncomfortable part. Payroll can be completely right and the process around it still wrong.
Pension sync
Pension sync sends each pay run’s contributions and employee changes from Employment Hero straight to your pension provider. Joiners, leavers, opt outs and contribution changes all travel with it, so the provider’s records match payroll without anyone retyping them.
Without it, someone has to upload a file or key the figures into the provider’s portal every pay period. That works until the person who does it is on holiday, leaves, or assumes the system is doing it already.
When it stops, the cost is not just a late payment. Deductions have been taken from people’s pay and not passed on, which is a serious matter for The Pensions Regulator and an awkward conversation with your staff. We wrote about the check that catches it in Payroll calculated it. Finance paid the wages. Nobody checked the pension arrived.
Journal integration
Journal integration posts each pay run into your accounting software as a journal, mapped to the right nominal codes. Wages, employer NI, pension and deductions land in the accounts without anyone keying them.
Without it, someone types the journal in by hand or posts one total and sorts it out at year end. It is slower, it is easy to get wrong, and the mistakes tend to surface when the accounts are being finalised, which is the worst time to find them.
The mapping matters as much as the connection. A journal that posts automatically to the wrong codes is still wrong, just faster.
Three questions for your next pay run
You do not need to be a payroll specialist to check this. You need ten minutes after your next pay run and three honest answers.
Can you see this period’s contributions in your pension provider’s portal?
Not just in payroll. If the only place you have ever seen them is the payslip, that is your answer.
Did your last pay run post a journal into your accounts, or did somebody key it in?
Ask whoever does the bookkeeping. If they are not sure, it is probably being keyed.
Who checks, every pay period, that both actually happened?
Not who set them up. Who looks. If the answer is nobody, or the system, the first two questions are worth asking every month.
While you are looking
Pension sync and journals are the two we find missing most often, but they are rarely alone. If they were never switched on, these are worth a look too:
- Bank payment files. Are wages paid from a file Employment Hero produces, or retyped into online banking?
- Employee self service. Can staff see their own payslips and update their own details, or do those requests still come to you?
- Leave and timesheets. Are they flowing into payroll, or being collected separately and keyed in?
- User access. Does everyone with access still need it, and does anyone who has left still have it?
- Reports. Are the reports you rely on scheduled to the right people, or run by hand when someone remembers?
None of these is a disaster on its own. Together they are the difference between a system that runs your payroll and one that you run around.
How we can help
We have run payroll on Employment Hero since 2019, back when it was KeyPay, and we are a certified Employment Hero partner. We know the platform from both sides: setting it up properly, and running payrolls on it every week and every month.
If any of those questions gave you pause, we can:
- Check what is switched on. We review your Employment Hero setup and tell you plainly what is working, what is missing and what is set up but not quite right.
- Set up what is missing. Pension sync, journal integration and the rest, mapped and tested against a live pay run so you know it works.
- Run your payroll for you, if you would rather hand the whole thing over. If you are already on Employment Hero, there is no migration to get through.
LitE Payroll runs weekly and monthly payrolls for UK employers on Employment Hero. A named payroll manager and a deputy sit on every account, and on larger projects we work alongside a network of specialist consultants.
We charge setup work by the hour and agree an estimate with you before we start. If you are not sure what is switched on, twenty minutes on the phone is usually enough for us to tell you.